Anyone use TSX on leopard?

[Green Chile]

Not many guys have taken 3+ leopards. You've got the sickness! Nicely done.

 

[revturbo9967]

100% agree with @Red Leg , the Berger bullet will do it's job. You will probably not like the results. This bobcat was 35 yards away with a 28 Nosler pushing a Berger 180.
View attachment 547456

I used to used the Berger 195s out of my 28 and I quickly changed because of a scenario like this. Or worse, exploding the round on a bull elk shoulder.

 

[BRICKBURN]

100% agree with @Red Leg , the Berger bullet will do it's job. You will probably not like the results. This bobcat was 35 yards away with a 28 Nosler pushing a Berger 180.
View attachment 547456

As my Namibian PH Augustinus said after walking up to the Jackal; "No Taxidermy" While shaking his head. (.270 130 grain TTSX length ways on a Jackal)

 

[Inline6]

As my Namibian PH Augustinus said after walking up to the Jackal; "No Taxidermy" While shaking his head. (.270 130 grain TTSX length ways on a Jackal)

That is exactly what I said!

I did keep the head it's still in my deep freezer. A while back one of my sons friends stopped by. He is a chef and wanted to cook us something with some of the game meats that we have. He reached in the freezer door and was like WTF! It's still there I need to have it cleaned.

 

[gibbs30c]

No sleep at all kept thinking about a wounded leopard follow up in the AM not to mention something eating my dead one if it was dead.

Leopards have very sensitive feelings, they take it very personally if you shoot them. A wounded leopard will lie in wait and Always come for you! In that thick Nam Bush not much time to react.

Mine was quite dead when we got there, but I don't think he was that night. He died facing where we were looking for blood stretched out like he was ready to spring.

The exit hole was about twice the entry hole. But I shot it head on and the bullet entered the chest cavity just to the left of the right shoulder and traveled the body length exiting in front of the left hind leg. The lungs cavity was destroyed.

Hombre 's opinion statement is true to some extent.........of course both his and my comments on opinions, are opinions in themselves!

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Wow you guys have really shaken me up and now I'm confused. I'm hunting leo next June. My 300 win mag is putting 4 shots inside of a dime 1.5 high at 100 with TSX.

Now I'm confused.

 

[Green Chile]

Don’t get confused by topics like this. I ask some things because I like the dialogue and I enjoy thinking about subjects in between the hunts. If you and your PH have agreed on something then go with it. There’s no way you can get all of us to agree with your choices. That’s not even the point. Don’t let it mess with you. 300 win mags kill a lot of leopards. If your PH likes the load then use it with confidence. Sounds like you are shooting it VERY well!

 

[Philip Glass]

I have a leopard and elephant combo hunt coming up in Zim. I'm thinking of taking one rifle (416 Rigby) to do the elephant, bait animals and leopard. I'm going to verify that I can get Barnes 400 solids and 400 TSX to print close together. Has anyone used TSX on leopard? I know that's more gun than is needed but I just returned from a 1 gun hunt (.375 TSX on buff, croc, sable and honey badger) and it was so nice to simplify paperwork and packing and always have the right gun. In this case it would be TSX and solids but if they print close together, it could be a good option. I'm checking with the PH of course but wondered about TSX experience on leopard.

It is not liked as a leopard bullet in general. You will likely be ok with that big of a caliber however. I would ask your PH.
I am headed out for leopard with my .300 with Swift Scirocco 2 bullets for quick expansion. Yet I use Barnes for most everything else.

 

[Philip Glass]

Wow you guys have really shaken me up and now I'm confused. I'm hunting leo next June. My 300 win mag is putting 4 shots inside of a dime 1.5 high at 100 with TSX.

Now I'm confused.

You want good, quick expansion with the thin skinned leopard. Get Swift Sciroccos

 

[Philip Glass]

This is something I have thought about. There is potential with the fast Bergers to blow out the off side and I'm hoping for a full mount taxidermy. What about switching the scope over to a 7x57? Any load recommendations for that?

Sorry but Bergers have yet to prove themselves as Hunting bullets for big game. I know they are all the rage with the handloaders and western hunters but they are not in the conversation for Africa IMO.

 

[Philip Glass]

I thought I read positive comments from Boddington on the SST? I've heard negative on almost every bullet made but I don't buy into this thinking that XYZ brand sucks. Some don't like X bullets but then my PH says the TSX is his favorite buffalo bullet along with A-frames. Worked well for me and put one down in less than 20 yards.

Boddington recommends Swift Scirocco 2 for leopard. I would not use SST. Y'all need to read The Perfect Shot and get educated on Hunting bullets.

 

[AimSmall]

Plenty of great feedback on cartrdges and bullets. FWIW, consider the scope. Low light, close shot, with follow-up- if required, being up close and action packed. 1x6 illuminated would be my thinking.

 

[gillettehunter]

Sorry but Bergers have yet to prove themselves as Hunting bullets for big game. I know they are all the rage with the handloaders and western hunters but they are not in the conversation for Africa IMO.

Philip I generally agree with you. On this I think you have not been properly educated. I have a thread from a couple of years ago about the Berger in Africa. I am running a 180 gr Berger VLDH in a 7 SAUM at 2900 fps. It hits a sweet spot with this bullet. I and a friend using my rifle have killed over 30 animals. All but 1 was a 1 shot kill. That includes 3 eland. I used a 2nd shot on a huge Livingston eland in Zambia although it was likely unnecessary. He was significantly bigger than my buffalo I killed a couple of days earlier.
One of my friends manages a ranch in Mt. A few yrs ago they did some depredation elk hunts. He was in on over 100 elk kills in 1 year. The majority were with his .300 WM with Berger 215 gr hybrids. The vast majority were 1 shot kills. He is convinced that bullet is the best .30 caliber choice out there. He has far more experience on good sized animals than anyone else I know. They kill a significant number of elk every year. He is probably up to 200 with that bullet by now. I understand this is an African hunting site, but if a bullet does excellent on elk then it will do the same on Kudu as they are of similar body size.
The naysayers will talk negatively about them but when you follow a couple of simple rules they will work VERY well.
1) always use heavy for caliber bullets. Like the ones mentioned above.
2) ALWAYS check to make sure the tips are not open and not plugged. When plugged they act more like a solid.
3) Best performance is usually at under 3100 fps. High speeds At close range will cause these bullets to over expand and not give proper penetration.
If you won’t follow those guidelines then don’t expect good results. Follow the suggestions above and they are extremely effective. Those who don’t like them due to a bad experience is commonly due to not following the above suggestions. For instance a 180 grain bullet in a .30 Nosler at 3250 fps is unlikely to give adequate penetration.
I set up a 6.5 running 156 grain Berger’s at 3000 fps. First 9 shots from that rifle ended with 9 dead animals. Hard to do much better than that. Deer and pronghorn.
Bruce

 

[IvW]

Point 3 is exactly the problem.....hunting in the bush means 150 is a long shot....100 or less....
If you are taking long shots it may be a different story.....leopards are shot at 35 to 60 yards(long shot)

 

[fourfive8]

Sorry but Bergers have yet to prove themselves as Hunting bullets for big game. I know they are all the rage with the handloaders and western hunters but they are not in the conversation for Africa IMO.

Yes! Bergers get press because they are very frangible and will open at extreme ranges that seems to be the trendy conversation of today. Problems of extreme range sniping of big game... like poor hits or unforeseen conditions or changing wind or misjudgment of trajectory compensation or basic extended range 100% repeatable precision/accuracy and so on never get into the conversation when discussing the best bullet for "sniping". The conversion goes straight to bullets that will expand at much lower impact velocity after a 500-700 or more! yard journey and magically hit the lethal 9 inch diameter target on an average deer/sheep sized animal at a perfect perpendicular or slightly away angle. The conversation invariably skips right over the most important parts of a high percentage lethal kill and goes straight to the expansion issue. Locally we call them "Berger Bombs". Because, after testing in media at normal range impact velocity, the results look like a bomb went off just under the skin of the test media resulting in a crater wound and very little penetration. The ideal range of impact velocity is very very narrow with these bullets. I have learned to err on the side of a tougher bullet for any job for big game hunting, never a more frangible one. There are too many available, tough, predictable expanding bullets on the market to be monkeying around with frangible, thin jacketed cup and core designs.

 

[Red Leg]

My leopard was shot around 9:00 PM in Namibia. When the light came on, he was sitting like the old RCA dog logo on the ground in front of a previous kill. I hit him with a 250 gr partition from a .338. When I came out of recoil he was gone. We edged out of the blind when the cruiser drove up.

Clearly hit, he had taken off down a dry gully about three feet deep and four feet wide with acacia trees overhanging it - a very very black tunnel on a night with no moon. With the spot light we could see the gully made a turn some thirty or forty yards away with no leopard between us and the turn.

Nick Nolte, with his .470 K-Gun, and I started off side-by-side with his head tracker holding a spotlight in his outstretched arm between our shoulders. We made a step about every thirty or forty seconds. About step two, I realized my .338 with 2.5x10 scope in fixed mounts was about as useful as a club.

Fortunately, as we eased around the curve, the cat was lying dead in full stride. The bullet had made a .338 hole going in and a .350 hole going out. It had transited the rear half of both lungs.

I took away two lessons. Were I to do it again, I would use a .30 of some variety and a relatively fast opening 180 gr bullet. I also have never been back to Africa without a quickly dismountable scope in quality mounts. In my experience, that begins with Talley's.

Any shot under those particular conditions would have been largely instinctive - like hitting quail on the rise. I would not have wanted to attempt it with a scope in place of any magnification.

 

[IvW]

Yes! Bergers get press because they are very frangible and will open at extreme ranges that seems to be the trendy conversation of today. Problems of extreme range sniping of big game... like poor hits or unforeseen conditions or changing wind or misjudgment of trajectory compensation or basic extended range 100% repeatable precision/accuracy and so on never get into the conversation when discussing the best bullet for "sniping". The conversion goes straight to bullets that will expand at much lower impact velocity after a 500-700 or more! yard journey and magically hit the lethal 9 inch diameter target on an average deer/sheep sized animal at a perfect perpendicular or slightly away angle. The conversation invariably skips right over the most important parts of a high percentage lethal kill and goes straight to the expansion issue. Locally we call them "Berger Bombs". Because, after testing in media at normal range impact velocity, the results look like a bomb went off just under the skin of the test media resulting in a crater wound and very little penetration. The ideal range of impact velocity is very very narrow with these bullets. I have learned to err on the side of a tougher bullet for any job for big game hunting, never a more frangible one. There are too many available, tough, predictable expanding bullets on the market to be monkeying around with frangible, thin jacketed cup and core designs.

Exactly.....well said....

 

[Dirtdart]

Forgive if this is off topic but some of the recent post on impact velocity took me back to an incident from years back.
An old buddy of mine long since passed was carrying my .300 Win Mag loaded with factory Remington ammunition using 200 grain Swift A-Frames. He shot a wild hog in the hip, from the hip. At the most three foot away so for all practical purposes muzzle velocity on impact. That bullet traveled length wise through the hog and lodged in the jaw bone. I dug the bullet out, cleaned it, and weighed it at 196 grains with picture book expansion.

 

[Hombre]

Confidence is the best bullet you can use. The worst bullet in the best place is far better than a great bullet in the wrong place. Go with the rifle and bullet you are most confident with. My .02 worth

 

[rookhawk]

To echo the points above, let me tell you an old fashioned African tradition.

As you all know, the 375HH is the most common African rifle ever made. Throughout the 1960s, the most useless, unreliable, underperforming factory ammo was the 375HH Winchester Silver Tip. The were just awful, except for one purpose.

Many, many PHs would hoard these old underperformers and would use a needle nose pliers to remove the silver tip from the bullets. The net result was making a sadly innaccurate, but very flimsy hollow point out of them. Those, they would use for leopards at 50 paces from a blind.

The moral of this old story is a simple one: For a leopard hunt using a medium or large bore, you need an awful bullet. In today's day, finding an awful bullet is a pretty hard thing to come across. A nosler ballistic tip, or a combined technologies winchester silver tip, or a Scirrocco, or a Speer Hot Core would be what I consider to be an awful bullet. That's what I'd shoot at a Leopard if I was really trying to ensure good expansion.

What did I use? A 375HH with a swift A-frame. Its what I had. It worked, it shattered bones and completely anchored the animal, but it was not a pleasant walk-up after the shot. Tooth and claw snarling, certain this was going to be the worst case scenario of a charge from a wounded cat. It was not, it was a paralyzed but not rapidly dying cat.

A lousy bullet would have made a swift end of the situation, but the A-frame is not a lousy bullet. In this situation, it was a very potent solid that created an undesirable, but ultimately successful situation.