375H&H Mag 300gr Nosler Partition...surpassed?

[Clodo Ferreira]

Hi Foxi,

I would like to know the whole story....the partition wall located at the 60/70% of the bullet, is really a wall. Tell us all the story....

Thank you

 

[One Day...]

Shall we assume as an article of faith that "other bullet" (pick your pet bullet name and insert here) would have necessarily driven deeper?

Hazardous proposition at best...

It seems that the key operating words in the above article are "after breaking the humerus." Also, some interesting info is missing, key among them being distance (i.e. velocity), and - it happens more often than one may think in dense cover - did the bullet hit something (tree, branches, etc.) before hitting the bull? Etc.

I seem to remember many instances in old books written in the golden age by folks (Taylor, Hunter, etc.) who actually had hundreds, or even thousands, of buffs, jumbos, rhinos, etc. to their credit, of even solids occasionally riveting, bending, swerving, entering sideways, or inexplicably embedding in large bones and staying there. Mother nature is full of surprises, and anecdotal examples of bullet failures abound, regardless of bullet types or manufacturers...

From my own experience:
- several .340 Wby 210 gr Nosler Partition shot at 30 yd at a moose and literally disintegrating on the surface (too fast!);
- a .340 Wby 225 gr (or was it 250?) old style Barnes TSX (not tipped) shot at 400 yd at another moose and completely failing to blossom these wonderful petals, i.e. behaving like a solid, coming to rest, as-new but for the rifling marks, in the hip after punching length wise from a front shot (too slow!);
- many 9.3x74R, don't remember the weight, RWS TUG German bullets - a wonderful tough game bullet - punching diameter holes through roe bucks and wild boars (poor bullet selection on my part!);
- several .300 (not sure if it was in a Wby or a Win) early Swift A Frames shot at 150 yd at a small white tail deer with a classic side lung shot, apparently totally failing to expand (or maybe the deer was high on mushroom?) - never recovered the bullets (too hard?);
- A Square early Monolithic Solids so hard that they literally forced the rifling of my pre-WWII 450 #2 on the outside of the barrels, and reportedly broke the solder joints of even modern manufacture doubles (talk about an expensive bullet failure!);
- not to mention in the days before premium bullets, many CoreLokt or PowerPoint or whatever their names were, standard bullets fragmenting to pieces at various depth in various games...

Never had the personal experience of Hornady old style non-bonded DGX coming apart on a buff at speed higher than typical Nitro Express (2,150 fps), but I believe the folks who report it.

Please feel free to add, I am pretty sure that there are out there stories on EVERY bullet ever made ;-)

Not arguing for or against the Partition here - as shown above I had my own disappointments with it - just saying that these stories are always interesting and some might be learned from them (in my case: don't shoot light for caliber NP at blistering speed, at short range, in tough animals - my fault!) but it is hard to draw universal conclusions from them...

 

[Clodo Ferreira]

Well said, One Day.

 

[Foxi]

Hi Foxi,

I would like to know the whole story....the partition wall located at the 60/70% of the bullet, is really a wall. Tell us all the story....

Thank you

Clodo,
I belive PH Karl Stumpfe is a member of this forum,isn't it ?
Perhaps he is answering your question.
Foxi

 

[Clodo Ferreira]

Ah! OK. Thank you!
When I said to know the whole story its meaning only that. Would be very interesting to know the circunstances.

 

[IvW]

Back to why would you choose a bullet that was designed to rapidly expand and then loose the front section on heavy boned and dangerous animals such as a Cape Buffalo is beyond me. Yes on soft skinned plains game they work, but are risky on the big boys!!

The best bullets to use are heavy for caliber, premium grade bullets that are designed to retain maximum weight and penetration and get the job done, every time and not only some of the time, when the "perfect shot" is presented.

There are so many premium grade bullets available that can achieve this, make your pick and keep the 65 year old technology NP for softer game if you have to.

Better choices that come to mind are, Rhinos(the best), Peregrine, Swift A-frame, TBBC, Barnes, Bitterroot etc.. etc..

Don't use bullets that could lose you your trophy or get you and the rest of the hunting hunting party into a dangerous situation.

When compared to the other premium grade bullets, NP are not a good choice for CApe Buffalo.

 

[One Day...]

No guaranty that mono's or A Framces would not have failed either, weird things happen (that was the point of the above post) but there is objectively a lesser chance that they would. Which is @IvW 's point. And a good one it is. I am on record saying that I chose A Frame over Partition starting with Eland, so it must be pretty obvious that A Frame is also my choice for buff in a bolt action.

Truth be told, I would start with not preferring .375 H&H on buff. Yep it works, and has worked long enough to be well proven, but, looking at hundreds of buff being taken (thank you outfitters and PHs on U Tube!) it seems that .375 H&H on buff tends to lead relatively often to running gun battles... .375 H&H was the classic middle-weight of choice for full bag 21 day safaris, with good reasons, but in the days of short and specialized safaris, I prefer the .416 Rigby for buff. Hits 35% harder with virtually the same trajectory. And before affordable .416 R were resurrected (created?) by CZ, I would have said .458 Lott. Hits 50% harder than .375 H&H and still flies flat enough. Come to think of it, the +35% and +50% math really seems to capture well what happens in the field, based, again, on those wonderful safari demo reels.

All that being said, I will freely admit that I am taking neither .375 H&H nor .416 R nor .458 L for my upcoming buff in Limpopo in August, but a .470 double. But I do it mostly for the romance... and because I want to get close...

 

[IvW]

Using a 350gr or even a 380 gr bullet in the 375 H&H greatly improves it's performance, especially on buffalo.

 

[Clodo Ferreira]

Thank you, lvW. For buffalo or bigger, I must agree with you!

 

[BeeMaa]

Using a 350gr or even a 380 gr bullet in the 375 H&H greatly improves it's performance, especially on buffalo.

I was looking for "heavy for caliber" FACTORY cartridges that are over 300 grains.
All I have found is Norma loaded with 350gr Woodleigh Soft Point and 350gr Woodleigh FMJ.
Are there other premium factory ammo brands that load above the 350gr mark?

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

I was looking for "heavy for caliber" FACTORY cartridges that are over 300 grains.
All I have found is Norma loaded with 350gr Woodleigh Soft Point and 350gr Woodleigh FMJ.
Are there other premium factory ammo brands that load above the 350gr mark?

Above 350gr in .375? I doubt it. Would be pushing the ability to stabilize.

 

[tarbe]

Above 350gr in .375? I doubt it. Would be pushing the ability to stabilize.

Folks seem to be making the 380gr Rhino work.

What's amazing to me is that is a solid shank bullet...so while not as long as a monometal in the same weight, longer than a cup and core.

 

[BeeMaa]

My apologies, I meant to say 350 grain or above in factory ammo.
And to tell you the truth, this is off topic so I apologize again for hijacking my own thread.

I'll check out the reloading posts and go from there.
Appreciate the input PHOENIX PHIL and tarbe.

 

[IvW]

I was looking for "heavy for caliber" FACTORY cartridges that are over 300 grains.
All I have found is Norma loaded with 350gr Woodleigh Soft Point and 350gr Woodleigh FMJ.
Are there other premium factory ammo brands that load above the 350gr mark?

Norma's load with the 350 gr Woodies @ 23000 fps is a great choice as the bullets perform very well at that velocity.

I don't like the Woodie RN solids.

Barnes X also have a 350 gr bullet, I don't like that one either.

The best bullet's in the heavyweight range are the Rhino 350 gr @ 2300 fps and the 380 gr @2200 is a real sledgehammer, pushing the 375 H&H up to 400 cal performance. Superb controlled expansion bullets for Cape Buffalo in particular. Not available in factory ammo as far as I know but well worth the effort to reload them.

The 350 gr has a SD of 0,356 and the 380 gr has the extraordinary SD of 0,386.

Have not experienced any stabilization issues with these heavyweights.

 

[BeeMaa]

Reviving an older thead here...

I was thinking about this thread and my most recent safari that had 4 recovered SAF 300 grain 375 caliber bullets.

Swift A-Frame Loaded Ammunition 375H&H 300 grain A-Frame Recovered Bullets

• BeeMaa
• Jun 15, 2019
• 5

Swift A-Frame Loaded Ammunition 375H&H 300 grain A-Frame Recovered Bullets

One of which accounted for the right shoulder on this Eland...then the same shoulder is missing from the following photo.

Eland at Koppie Dam Nature Reserve

• BeeMaa
• Jun 8, 2019
• 2

Eland at Koppie Dam Nature Reserve

Eland in the Cooler at Koppie Dam

• BeeMaa
• Sep 4, 2019

Eland in the cooler at Koppie Dam Nature Reserve taken with a 375H&H shooting Swift A-Frame 300...

It may never be settled as to whether the Nosler Partition has been surpassed by other designs.
But for me, in a 300 grain 375H&H package...I will not be in Africa without the Swift A-Frame.

That said, I will continue to experiment with factory loads, including 350 grainers to see what works best in my rifle.
We have a Buffalo trip coming up in 2022, and I can't be slacking.

 

[CoElkHunter]

Shall we assume as an article of faith that "other bullet" (pick your pet bullet name and insert here) would have necessarily driven deeper?

Hazardous proposition at best...

It seems that the key operating words in the above article are "after breaking the humerus." Also, some interesting info is missing, key among them being distance (i.e. velocity), and - it happens more often than one may think in dense cover - did the bullet hit something (tree, branches, etc.) before hitting the bull? Etc.

I seem to remember many instances in old books written in the golden age by folks (Taylor, Hunter, etc.) who actually had hundreds, or even thousands, of buffs, jumbos, rhinos, etc. to their credit, of even solids occasionally riveting, bending, swerving, entering sideways, or inexplicably embedding in large bones and staying there. Mother nature is full of surprises, and anecdotal examples of bullet failures abound, regardless of bullet types or manufacturers...

From my own experience:
- several .340 Wby 210 gr Nosler Partition shot at 30 yd at a moose and literally disintegrating on the surface (too fast!);
- a .340 Wby 225 gr (or was it 250?) old style Barnes TSX (not tipped) shot at 400 yd at another moose and completely failing to blossom these wonderful petals, i.e. behaving like a solid, coming to rest, as-new but for the rifling marks, in the hip after punching length wise from a front shot (too slow!);
- many 9.3x74R, don't remember the weight, RWS TUG German bullets - a wonderful tough game bullet - punching diameter holes through roe bucks and wild boars (poor bullet selection on my part!);
- several .300 (not sure if it was in a Wby or a Win) early Swift A Frames shot at 150 yd at a small white tail deer with a classic side lung shot, apparently totally failing to expand (or maybe the deer was high on mushroom?) - never recovered the bullets (too hard?);
- A Square early Monolithic Solids so hard that they literally forced the rifling of my pre-WWII 450 #2 on the outside of the barrels, and reportedly broke the solder joints of even modern manufacture doubles (talk about an expensive bullet failure!);
- not to mention in the days before premium bullets, many CoreLokt or PowerPoint or whatever their names were, standard bullets fragmenting to pieces at various depth in various games...

Never had the personal experience of Hornady old style non-bonded DGX coming apart on a buff at speed higher than typical Nitro Express (2,150 fps), but I believe the folks who report it.

Please feel free to add, I am pretty sure that there are out there stories on EVERY bullet ever made ;-)

Not arguing for or against the Partition here - as shown above I had my own disappointments with it - just saying that these stories are always interesting and some might be learned from them (in my case: don't shoot light for caliber NP at blistering speed, at short range, in tough animals - my fault!) but it is hard to draw universal conclusions from them...

VERY interesting bullet performance information here? I have only used the 225gr Core Lokts in my .338 WM on six elk with no problems. My buddy and his son used MY .338 and shot two moose, a black bear and a caribou with the same Core Lokts. I DO know someone who shot a caribou four times with the NP in .300 WM as they went through the animal and didn’t expand sufficiently. My VERY limited knowledge with those two bullet brands. The caribou was at 100yds and my elk were 100 yards to 25 yards. The moose and caribou my buddy got were at 125, the bear at 225 yds. Maybe longer distances would make a difference with the bullet performance, one way or another? The arguments for the “best” bullet continue as various animals fall throughout the world to the many different bullets hunters are using! When will the arguments end? NEVER! Ha! Ha! Ha!

 

[Scott CWO]

Reviving an older thead here...

I was thinking about this thread and my most recent safari that had 4 recovered SAF 300 grain 375 caliber bullets.

Swift A-Frame Loaded Ammunition 375H&H 300 grain A-Frame Recovered Bullets

• BeeMaa
• Jun 15, 2019
• 5

Swift A-Frame Loaded Ammunition 375H&H 300 grain A-Frame Recovered Bullets

One of which accounted for the right shoulder on this Eland...then the same shoulder is missing from the following photo.

Eland at Koppie Dam Nature Reserve

• BeeMaa
• Jun 8, 2019
• 2

Eland at Koppie Dam Nature Reserve

Eland in the Cooler at Koppie Dam

• BeeMaa
• Sep 4, 2019

Eland in the cooler at Koppie Dam Nature Reserve taken with a 375H&H shooting Swift A-Frame 300...

It may never be settled as to whether the Nosler Partition has been surpassed by other designs.
But for me, in a 300 grain 375H&H package...I will not be in Africa without the Swift A-Frame.

That said, I will continue to experiment with factory loads, including 350 grainers to see what works best in my rifle.
We have a Buffalo trip coming up in 2022, and I can't be slacking.

It has been settled in our camps. We don’t allow NP for dangerous game and also don’t recommend them for elk or moose. The bullet design is such that the front blows up and the back end does keep penetrating but doesn’t expand much. Why someone would think this is desirable for DG or large game escapes me. Sure, many people have used them and have successfully killed animals but why take the risk? A successful marketing campaign and paying gun writers to use them and write about them doesn’t prove anything.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

It has been settled in our camps. We don’t allow NP for dangerous game and also don’t recommend them for elk or moose. The bullet design is such that the front blows up and the back end does keep penetrating but doesn’t expand much. Why someone would think this is desirable for DG or large game escapes me. Sure, many people have used them and have successfully killed animals but why take the risk? A successful marketing campaign and paying gun writers to use them and write about them doesn’t prove anything.

I do believe the reputation of the Nosler Partition is well earned and had nothing to do with a marketing campaign. It's been in production for over 60 years now. It was a marked improvement over existing bullet designs at the time it was introduced. I've personally used it on many animals including up to Shiras moose and elk, and with just a little 7mm. No problems at all. The only bullet I've recovered was out of my moose and that was found just under the skin on the offside. Moose was dead within 20 feet of where he was shot.

All that said, things do improve. I would not hesitate to use the NP on PG, but I wouldn't on DG with the bullets that are available now.

 

[Forrest Halley]

So is it safe to say that after all this we are rounding the last bend and in the home stretch for the finish line of "It's a good bullet when applied at the proper working velocities for the distance fired at the intended game for which it was designed"? There seems to be a trend with the higher end bullets and failures reported which is generally dubbed great expectations. Too close, too fast, too far, and too much to penetrate. I've been around the forum for fifteen minutes and learned that the .375 is great for penetration holding the caveat that you must push the properly constructed bullet at a velocity consistent with the design velocity of the case. When and if you exceed that, you're on your own with no other to share the blame. This is, just my uneducated opinion, shouted from the cheap seats.

 

[Scott CWO]

I do believe the reputation of the Nosler Partition is well earned and had nothing to do with a marketing campaign. It's been in production for over 60 years now. It was a marked improvement over existing bullet designs at the time it was introduced. I've personally used it on many animals including up to Shiras moose and elk, and with just a little 7mm. No problems at all. The only bullet I've recovered was out of my moose and that was found just under the skin on the offside. Moose was dead within 20 feet of where he was shot.

All that said, things do improve. I would not hesitate to use the NP on PG, but I wouldn't on DG with the bullets that are available now.

Like I said, they have been used successfully by many and have been around for a long time. That doesn’t mean much to me. In 28 years of outfitting, I have seen them fail too many times on properly shot elk.

I have a marketing degree. It is quite common to see substandard products out-sell better products due to advertising and other marketing applications. We have all known of some great product that just didn’t stay around or have as much success due to a lack of marketing while other products become very popular.