Deep Dive into the Bullet Families of Barnes – Episode 2

Episode 2 – Deep Dive into the Bullet Families of Barnes!
Today Dale is joined by Gregg Sloan and Mitchell Kukson to go on a deep dive into the bullet families that Barnes offers. The guys discuss the differences of the TSX, TTSX, and LRX bullets. The conservation entails why would choose one offering over another, the performance you can expect to see from each, and use case scenarios to pick the right bullet for you. We appreciate your support and hope you enjoy Episode 2.

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Now I can hear. Perfect. You guys having a good morning so far? Other than you bugging me. Bugging you. Show up with my office. Hey, I got to check on you. Jason brought chips and salsa today. So that was good. I’m looking forward to that. Yeah. Going to eat some chips and salsa, huh? Later on. It’s too early. Too early. We are we’re getting after it early this morning, but can’t let time waste. So, this is going to be episode two here for the Barnes Bullets Point. Barnes Bullet points podcast. There we go. Still kind of working through doing this hosting thing. We don’t have Andy today, but we do have Greg Sloan and Mitchell Cooken. There you go. You got it right. We got it right. Okay. Um, so with that, you know, on episode one, right, we talked about the history of Barnes. So, we thought with episode two, it would be very good since we originally were a bullet company, right? Now, we are bullet and ammo company. But with that, we want to talk about our bullet families, right? Like, and kind of our top sellers, why our top sellers are our top sellers or why we think we’re they’re our top sellers. Um, and just really kind of dive dive deep into it about, you know, mainly our top three. I think I think that we’ll do kind of a brief overview of, you know, our heavy hitters, if you will, but um mainly going to jump in the top three and you keep playing with them there. Yeah. So, Greg, you’ve been here quite a while. You’ve basically seen the development of all of the main bullets that we’re going to talk about, right? Because you were talking about it on episode one, how, you know, you’ve been here for 18 years. Mhm. And you know, that’s kind of when they started to really make the TSX, right? And the TTSX. Yeah, the TTSX. The TTSX was brand new when I started. The TSX was already uh in the market, right? Okay. So, I mean, I guess, you know, to start this, like, let’s let’s go over kind of a brief overview and and you can do it however you want and Mitch will jump in anytime that you want to, right? But like let’s let’s start on Bullet Families and I guess we could even start back to the Barnes original and then start kind of working a timeline up of like how Bullet Families kind of became what they are. Okay. Yeah. So Barnes original um that’s you know that’s the the lead core you know thick copper jacket. Um it’s a fairly small offering now the line, you know, mostly lever gun type cartridges, right? Um there’s a few obscure, you know, we make a 348 Win bullet, 250 grain, that’s a really neat bullet. Um 3855, couple offerings. So some stuff that there’s not a lot of options out in the market for. Um but obviously these are pretty niche cartridge, pretty more collector in today’s world, kind of enthusiast hand loaders out there that are still shooting them. But the original is a great bullet. Um, and that leads us to we talked about the evolution of the XBullet. So, obviously we have our three main flagships that I think we’ll focus mostly on today. Yeah. But I’ll mention them now. You know, the TSX, the TTSX, and the LRX. All three being solid copper hunting bullets. Um, we also have the Match Burner line, um, which is very popular, right? And that goes against what maybe most people associate with Barnes when we think about solid copper. Um we’ve had the match burner line in the marketplace for quite a few years. Um very accurate, affordable, good option if you’re out there shooting steel, shooting paper, right? Um shooting competitions, you’re doing, you know, NRL hunter. Well, and it and it and it goes back, you know, just talk a little bit about match burner, right? Is that that is a lead bullet. Yeah. that we develop in-house that that we make inhouse and we’ve been loading it for years, right? So, you know, not to kind of jump ahead, but it’s like when the harvest collection kind of came out, right, everybody was like, why would you let do this blah blah blah? And it’s like, hey, we’ve been doing this for a long time, right? And the match burner is perfect example. Um, but yeah, go ahead. Sorry. No, you’re good. So, yeah, the match burner line is a traditional, you know, as most people would be familiar with from other bolt makers. um you know, jacketed lead core bullet. Um great line, a lot of good options there. We can come back and visit some of those. You know, we have our muzzle loader bullets, right? Our XPV pistol bullets. Um our Buster line, which is a very thick jacket, non-expanding lead core for heavy for caliber caliber options. Um and that was designed for just deep penetration, you know, handgun hunting. Yeah. bear defense, dangerous game offerings and some big bore revolver cartridges. That’s the Buster line. You know, those are kind of more niche, small offerings, you know, that we we produce and we, you know, we enjoy offering to consumers to give them more options. Um, but again, the main lines being the TSX, TTSX, and LRX. So, yeah, absolutely. um you know and and to kind of I guess introduce Mitchell right um to the audience is can you kind of go over what what your job is here how long you’ve been here and I mean you’re you’re kind of the quote unquote brains behind I don’t know if that’s really the the right term I’ll take it for the podcast but the brains behind like developing a lot of these yeah uh so I’m a R&D engineer been here eight years. I love hunting big game out west. Grew up in the the Midwest shooting white tails with shotgun slugs and turkeys and feeasants and stuff, but uh for the past eight years I’ve been focusing on elk and mu deer, right? But uh yeah, I’m a R&D engineer, so I do a lot of the uh design work for the the bullets. Um designing the exterior shape. uh little bit of new tooling design, getting gauges in test equipment, managing projects. Then more recently uh moved to a product specialist role as well, right? Uh so looking at a deeper dive of product development from u the early early stages of the product to product end uh discontinuation or whatever we do with it, right? And also looking at you know like market share, right? of like where are we lacking as a company like where could we help consumers out and and build something new as well right so like looking at overall um larger picture things of how we can bring new items to the market. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So, we’ve kind of gone over a brief overview of all of the lines. Well, let’s start like actually kind of deep diving more into the TSX, right? Since that was kind of the first um you know, what makes what makes a TSX a TSX? Like why did they go from the original X bullet to a quote TSX? Yeah. So, we mentioned this a little bit in the uh episode one, you know, kind of the evolution of the X Bullet. Yeah. But the TSX was a pretty revolutionary step. It really solved some of the issues with the original design. You know, when Barnes introduced the original XBullet to the market, it was the first monolithic solid copper expanding hunting bullet. Um, which gave us the performance we wanted, the terminal performance we were after, which was something that will expand yet retain its weight. It wouldn’t shed a jacket, you know, it has no jacket and core. Yeah. Um, being that it’s solid copper, um, deep penetration, it works well for large game, um, big bone, you know, thick hide, all those kind of things. African game, you know, elk, moose, grizzly, all the big stuff. Um, as well as light thin skin game. You know, the cool thing with this bullet, it’s a very tough constructed bullet. Yeah. But it opens instantly, right? um you know it’ll open up on a coyote yet it’ll hold together and you know works well on Cape Buffalo. So talk about why the TSX like you said just opens instantly like like when you say that I guess kind of dive a little bit deeper of why that happens and and how that happens. The cavity on these um and obviously the TSX is an untipped version, right? This is the original. Yeah. Um non-tipped and it has a open nose. Um and depending on caliber and weight, there’s different diameter of ME plat opening, but it’s a hydraulic driven cavity. There’s a lot that goes into the design of the internal cavity through tooling um to get it to expand the way we want it to into those four pedals. And once soft tissue, you know, upon impact Mhm. I call it hydraulic driven cavities. Once that fluid enters the cavity, that’s what creates that expansion. Got that’s what creates the bullet to upset to mushroom, if you will. Um, but obviously they function differently than a traditional cup and core bullet. um they’re not just smearing or having a nose cone break off or relying on yaw for expansion um or high impact velocity to just create that, you know, thin jacket to break apart and fragment or the lead to smear or mushroom. Um it’s actually got sky pedals that’s a very uniform consistent expansion by design, right? um that creates these four sharp pedals that as it’s rotating through, it’s cutting, it’s tearing, it’s creating tissue damage, it’s breaking through, but it’s also high weight retention, you know, because it’s a big solid piece of copper, right? And so it’s driving deep, um breaking through whatever’s in its path. Yeah. Um that’s how it that’s how it works. Um we design each caliber is different. Obviously, there’s different oive shapes, different meplot diameters, there’s different internal dimensions and specifics to each given caliber and weight um for its intended application. You know, we look at cartridge or cartridges that it will be loaded in, muzzle velocity, you know, expected range performance. You know, these are control expansion bullets. Um, you know, every bullet regardless of construction, be it lead core, solid copper, you know, every bullet has limits, right? Limits at where it will no longer function, you know, it doesn’t have enough retained velocity to still expand. Um, as well as limits on the high end where you can, you know, some thin jacketed bullets you can actually rip apart inore if you’re pushing them too fast. There’s too much rotational velocity. Um, obviously something you don’t have to worry about with a monolithic bullet, right? Uh, but on the high end of that, you know, they have high weight retention. So, you can shoot these out of, you know, super magnum, super high velocity. You don’t have to be worried about, you know, if I’m shooting a 300 ultra mag and I’m hunting elk out west. Yeah. I might encounter a big bull at 50 yards, right? It might be 500 yards. Um, this bullet’s going to work great on both. Um, but the TSX was really, really focused on high weight retention. you know, you see the traditional 100% weight retention expanded bullet. That’s the TSX, right? Um it really made its mark um across the world hunting big big game. Yeah. I mean, I guess you know, you were starting to kind of hit on it there. Where where do you see TSX kind of like being the perfect bullet for certain scenarios, right? Because that’s the way that I look at hunting bullets. um is, you know, I I want to pick the right bullet for the right type of application that I’m going to go on, right? If depending if I’m going on a a white tail hunt in the Midwest versus an elk hunt out west versus, you know, like you said, I haven’t been to Africa yet, but when I finally get over there, right, I’m going to pick a completely different bullet potentially, right? or or I I really want to cater my bullet to the hunt that I’m going on and to the intended game that I’m going on. Um h how does TSX or Yeah, sorry. Uh how does TSX, I guess, match up versus like taking a TTSX or LRX for example, and why would you choose one over another? Yeah. No, that’s a good question. We want to cover for sure because we get that question a lot. Yeah. You know, what’s the difference? um you know is it different materials you know are there different function velocities does it have different low-end you know expansion criteria um so we’ll we’ll cover all that in a deep dive um but the TSX you know it’s it is designed for big game hunting right um you know and that means across the board everything from deer analopee elk moose all the North American stuff the Africa stuff um to me the TSX really holds its place you know obviously with the evolution of the TTSX and the LRX, we have we now have better options, right, for certain applications, right? Um the TSX to me still stands out when I want super high weight retention, deep penetration, I want that 100% weight retention. Um, obviously the Africa big game, you know, definitely in Safari calibers, um, the really big game, but I don’t want to make it sound like that’s its only application. Yeah. Because the TSX has other sides where, you know, we build a little 70 grain TSX that is loaded in the 5.56 in the the Vortex line, right? um that a ton of guys handload and they love it on hogs, whitetail, um you know, those types of scenarios where you can you can almost make a cartridge act bigger than it is. Yeah. Because you’re using a tough constructed bolt. You know, they like to be pushed fast. Um but then there’s also those that are purpose-built and optimized for a given cartridge. Um and that velocity window of that cartridge that they don’t have to be pushed fast. You know, I’ll bring an example like our uh 355 170 grain TSX for that we developed specifically for the 350 Legend. Yeah. Um you know, we have TSX’s for 4570s, you know, 3030, you know, these lower velocity cartridges where we’ve made that bullet function within the velocity window of that cartridge in its intended application. So, they can work really well in those cases. But generally speaking, you know, if I look at it from like a top level overview, cuz you’re always going to have those one-off exceptions and, you know, kind of those very optimized specific bullets, right? Um, generally though, TSX is bigame hunting up up and including Safari, you know, dangerous game. Uh, it is high weight retention, deep penetration. Um, they are very accurate. You know, we get some crazy good groups when we when we test these TSX bullets. Um, but it’s generally going to be from that very up close to about 300 yards cartridge dependent, right? Obviously. Well, and I think that that’s very important to to understand, right? is that when when I start looking at our family groups and talking TSX, TTSX, and LRX is that I start looking at distances being more of a, you know, thought process, if you will, versus, you know, tipped versus non-tipped. Yeah. it it starts to become more like you said if if I look at a TSX being you know good out to 3 350 yards is really where it’s optimized at and I know that I have potential for shooting further distances maybe I want to step to that TTSX right um you know before we segue into TTSX which I think that was a very good way to do it I I did want to look at you know I I wanted to look at numbers before we got on this podcast because I think that it’s Very interesting. And you um you kind of brought up a little bit, but like some of our top sellers is the 30 cal 180 grain, which would be loaded into what do you think? The 180. Yeah, the 180. Really? It’s a 300 Win Mag. Okay. Bullet. Um there’s other options. 30 six. Yeah. So, pretty classic. You know, you you look at that, right? That’s probably going to be a lot of that whitetail, potentially some elk, right? Um, if you’re talking 300 Win Mag, maybe it’s, you know, a moose cartridge, something like that. And again, right, probably shorter distance shots. Um, again, super, you know, like quickly penetrate or sorry, quickly expanding, extremely deep penetrating, right? 100% weight retention. That’s what you’re looking for. But then when you look at the next couple, it’s in the 22 cal. Yeah. Right. So that kind of got to what you were talking about with guys shooting, you know, probably quote smaller calibers that are kind of hitting above their weight class, right? I mean, it’s a 62 grain and a 70 grain. Yeah. Which is like that’s a very small bullet. So the one of the things we got to cover here is uh some of the advantages of not having a tip. Yeah. I know it’s been preached tips are better for X, Y, and Z. And we’ll get we’ll get to that in a minute with the tipped TSX, the TTSX, but there’s actually quite a few reasons why you don’t want to tip in particular applications, and you just hit it is with the 22 cals and why they’re so popular. Yeah. When you look at AR platforms, AR-15s or AR10s, uh sometimes with the tip, it can actually hurt you as you’re uh getting that round through the feed ramp. They can actually break off, cause weapon stoppages, right? Have issues on the safari side. If you have a a rifle with a really big recoil and you have rounds in a a box mag, yeah, it’s going to deform the tip. It can cause issues. Um, so in a lot of those applications, you really don’t want a tip. We have law enforcement, military groups, they stay generally stay away from them. There’s a lot of exceptions, but uh for the most robust design that’s not going to have issues, it’s kind of foolproof. You you really do want a a TSX. And that’s why you see those 22 cal bullets being so popular. They’re shooting them in 223s and 5.56s. Um and that it really increases the reliability of the product. Well, and I think another thing too is they’re high velocity cartridges. Yeah. you know, within their own right. And traditionally, maybe more even what we’d call varmint type rounds. You know, if I look at like 223, even 22 250, we get a lot of guys that shoot the little 50 grain 53 grain TSX. You know, when you go shoot light, thin jacketed bullets, um, very light constructed bullets at high velocity. Yeah. and you’re trying to shoot even thin skin game, you know, it might work great on a a prairie dog, a pocket, a coyote. Yeah. Um but all of a sudden, if I’m impacting even a whitetail at crazy high velocity and I have zero bullet, you know, construction that’s going to have any sort of weight retention at all, we can have failures. Um as well as like I mentioned, jacket integrity issues where we’re actually ripping the jacket apart because we’re pushing them so fast. Yeah. And I think as we get to cartridges that also have faster twist rates, you know, a lot of the new modern type stuff, we’re also hitting higher velocities with faster twist rates. And so we’re getting a higher rotational velocity, right? And that’s where these TSXs can again really shine because I can go shoot a 62 grain TSX, you know, out of a 22R, right? Um or a 223 or, you know, a 50 grain TSX out of a 22250. Go shoot analopee, you know, or or whitetail. Yeah. And sure, you can do it with lead core bullets. I’m not saying that you have to have a culper bullet to go kill an analopee. Yeah. But these things kill like lightning, right? Unless you go I mean, I’ve I’ve used TSXs on coyotes in a 223. It’s one of my favorite coyote bullets, you know? Well, and it’s funny, you know, I started shooting barns when I was in the Southeast. I was hunting again 150, 180lb white tails, and everybody’s like, why do you need a Barnes bullet to go shoot a white tail? And it’s like, well, you can’t overkill something, right? You know what I mean? Like, I want all the penetration that I want. I’ve always been I consider myself a shoulder shooter, if you will. Like, I don’t like to track animals. Yeah. I want to knock things down in their tracks. And to me, that’s where a you know, I was loading a TTSX and I started I started shooting TTSX and then I started handloading TTSXs. But, you know, it’s it’s the it’s exactly what you’re saying, right? Like yes, you can do it with a lead, but if you just want full penetration every single time, like and you know that you’re not going to have, you know, those failures, right? Because it’s going to expand. It’s going to keep its weight retention and and drive through that animal. I mean, copper’s the way to go, you know? Yeah. And a couple things I think we also need kind of back to what Mitchell was bringing up. There are some design advantages. Um when we look at a TSX, you know, we have length limitations. You know, we have to look at stability and we can generally get a heavier offering in a given caliber with a non-tip design over a tip design. Now, sometimes there’s a trade-off there because a tip can help us be extremely aerodynamic as well, right? And it can help with with function at low velocity. Um, and we’ll get into those specifics, but you know, for example, in those 22 cals, we can build, you know, perhaps a heavier TSX to stabilize within a given twist rate versus if it was a tip design in comparison. So, uh, lever guns is another one. You know, Mitchell talked about some of the advantages with with AR gas gun type functions and potentially having the tip be one more variable, uh, to consider for for reliable functioning. But then you think about lever guns. Um, you know, obviously we can’t have a big pointed tip in a lever gun. Um, and so another place where the flatnse TSX design comes into play. Well, and it’s funny you say that because again, looking at my notes here and and numbers, one of, you know, our top five is the 150 grain that goes into 3030. Yeah. And that’s a really really neat bullet. Um, that one is unique. Uh it’s a big open nose design and it’s actually a six what we call six cavity. It’s a six pedal design. Yep. You know where our traditional rifle TSX is our four pedal. Uh the 3030 and the 4570 flatnse TSXs go to a six pedal which is like our muzzle loader bullets, our copper muzzle loader bullets and our pistol bullets, our shotgun slugs are six pedal. Okay. And what’s kind of the advantages slash disadvantages of having a six pedal versus a four pedal and why did you want to have a six pedal for those type of, you know, applications? It’s part cartridge. Um, you know, when we look at the length of nose and oive, it’s also velocity driven. You know, with those there’s a they’re they’re flat nose cuz they’re designed for tubular magazines. Um, but it gives us a huge open cavity. Yeah. And so with that big open cavity cut into six pedals, we can get unreal expansion at extremely low velocities. You know, our muzzle loader bullets will expand down to 1100 ft per second. You know, these 3030 bullets are designed to expand even out of a, you know, a lever gun, you know, out to 200 yards. You know, the 4570 bullet, same thing. And so it just depends on application where obviously if I’m going to go shoot a 300 ultra mag, you know, I don’t necessarily want this big flatnse open cavity design. It you could argue, well, it’s going to help it expand at low velocity, but it also has extremely low BC. And so there’s trade-offs, right? You know, and design advantages when you look at different geometries and shapes. Um, one thing too, this is kind of switching gears a little bit, but the TSX can have times where it may be a good option in the long range. Um, these are the exceptions, but you look at the 162 grain TSX that we developed for the 28 Nosler ammo. You know, that one kind of threw people off like why is it a TSX? Um the reason why is we wanted to get as heavy as we could um in a solid copper offering and still stabilize um in the you know the standard twist rate of 28 Nosler. It’s a one and nine I believe on that one. Yeah. And so we would have loved to say hey let’s load the 168 LRX. Y it’s a you know natural choice. Guys are hand loading it. I’ve hand loaded it. Um one of my guys in the lab you know he built a 28 Nosler years ago. uh loves the 160 LRX in it, but he had a fast enough twist rate. You know, when they standardized that, they went with a one and nine where guys that were building custom rifles might have gone with a one and eight, a one and eight and a half. So, they got away with it. You know, and at certain elevations, you can shoot a 168 LRX and a 20 Nosler with one N. Um, but when we’re building ammo, we’ve got to look at the general public across the board, make sure it works in all those applications. And so we we sat back and said, “Okay, in order to make it function and work in the Sammy spec configuration, right, of the cartridge, uh we’re going to we want to build a high BC Yeah. TSX that still expands a low velocity, but that’s a very optimized specific bullet. Yeah, absolutely. And and and that’s one thing before we move on. I feel like we’ve we’ve talked about TSX so much here, but at the same time, I think I feel like we’re kind of covering a little bit of everything, right? We’re talking more about the overall bullet constructions and everything else, but we’re just kind of keeping it back to TSX. But, you know, we just recently used the 28 Nosler on a bear hunt in Montana and had excellent um you know, uh what am I trying to say? Sorry. Um you know, excellent performance on both of our bears that we shot up there. I think your bear went all of like maybe 15 feet and fell dead and it was a 330ish yard shot, something like that. Um, my bear went 20 yards and and was dead. So, um, absolutely awesome there. But I guess what I was also going to say is that even though the TSX line is older, right, it it’s not our newest, hottest thing, we are still developing bullets around that that is more optimized for today’s cartridges, right? Yeah. And there was times if you go back 20 to 30 years, um the hot magnums, you know, the Wildcats, the STW, the Lazeroni cartridges, um the really big case, the Weatherbe stuff. Um you know, those generally they’re more open country, flat shooting, high velocity cartridges. Um they paired very well with TSX bullets because they could drive them extremely fast. Um, you know, it obviously extends the downrange because you started at a higher muzzle velocity, but you also had a bullet that was tough enough to hold up together, whether that be through, you know, rotational velocity in bore, not being worried about having deformation on the the lead or the jacket, and also upon impact, having something that actually is tough enough to impact game at those high velocities. So, another application that sometimes, I think, forgotten about, you know, we’ve kind of shifted gears in today’s world. It’s more about efficiency, right? High BC, you know, it’s not just all about, you know, all out horsepower, right? If you will. Um, we’ve become hopefully a little more educated, but there’s still something to be said there. You go push a TSX fast out of a Super Magnum. I mean, there’s tons of guys all over this world that have killed everything on this earth, right? Um, with that combination. Absolutely. All right. Well, I mean, that’s that’s a deep dive into the TSX. Um, let’s let’s transition to the TTSX. Obviously, you were here for that, you know, as it’s, you know, its infancy, if you will. Um, why would you select a TTSX versus a TSX? Yeah, that’s a it’s a good question that we get. Um, I will start with they are the same material, right? Because I know that one gets asked. Um, we see it, you know, sometimes we get emails or see it on social media. You know, it is the same copper material is used between the two. The the TTSX is simply stated, it’s a TSX with a tip, right? Um, now obviously there’s more to it than that. Um, because the tip is now covering this larger ME plat or open cavity, um, it allows us to have a little bit different function. Um, it’s not necessarily that TTSXs will expand always lower than a TSX. Okay. Generally speaking, they will. Yeah. Um, but they expand differently. You know, if I shoot a TSX into the water tank at say 1,700 ft per second or 1,800 ft per second, um, versus a TTSX, they might both expand, right? But the TTSX, it generally pops to a little bit larger. Okay. Um because it’s the interesting thing with the TSX is it’s kind of like this linear curve of velocity and expansion. Okay. It’ll basically be fully expanded, you know, and as the velocity goes down, you just get less and less and less of that pedals curling back all the way to where it’s just kind of barely peeled open like a banana pill. Right. Got it. Um you know, you is it enough expansion to create a big upset? No. you know, but a lot of TSXs will expand at 15 to 1,600 feet per second. It’s just not adequate expansion to have the kind of terminal performance we want to create enough wounding. Um the TTSX on the other hand, it’ll go from like there’s a line. Yeah. It’s either going to pop or it’s not. You know, it has that threshold once it hits enough velocity, it pops. you know, not full diameter like a highend we call it, you know, where we shoot them in the water tank at anywhere from 2500 to 3,000 ft per second, obviously. Um, but that’s the difference generally speaking because we get this question a lot, you know, what’s the velocity range of this specific bullet. Yeah. And there’s always exceptions. Yeah. Um, but generally speaking, TSX’s I usually try to recommend keeping them 2,000 ft per second and above. Okay. If I’m trying to determine what’s my maximum effective range, right? you know, and I consider my conditions, my muzzle velocity, the BC, you know, obviously there’s other factors, accuracy, you know, what’s your ability as a shooter, there’s all these other things to consider. But if I just look at the bullet itself, TSX’s for the most part are going to be 2,000 above. Again, there’s always exceptions to the rule, you know, we already talked about the 350 Legend bullet, the the 3030 bullet, the 4570, our muzzle loaders, you know, there’s always bullets that were designed to expand at much lower velocities, right? But when we look at our rifle line, that’s the TSX. The TTSX, you can drop it down a bit. It’s more that 1800 feet per second. Okay. Um, and I have seen where the tip can help. We call it, you know, sometimes I, you know, you could argue that it’s maybe just a marketing term. You know, you get things thrown out there like, well, the tip can help initiate expansion, right? Is that true or not? You know, if I go take a 30 cal 168 TSX and a 30 cal 168 TTSX and I shoot them into ballistics gel at, you know, 2600 ft per second. Mhm. You could argue that within reason, practical perspective, they’re doing the same thing, right? You know, yeah. But if I shot them both at 1,800 ft per second, you’re going to see a difference. Okay. So, so I mean with that, right, we we kind of talked about a TSX having, you know, here’s kind of your quote perfect scenarios of why you would want to choose a TSX. Let’s flip that to a TTSX. Yeah. What I what I tell people, you know, because I get asked, you know, I talk to people out in the field, you know, sometimes I help with phones or emails, you know, I go to trade shows, consumer shows. Generally speaking, if you’re a guy that’s used Barnes and you’re shooting a TSX and you love it and it’s working great. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Don’t don’t change it. Um, you know, if I get a customer or consumer that’s he’s never tried Barnes, you know, and say he’s doing, you know, pretty general big game hunting across North America, I’m going to lean him towards a TTSX. Okay? You know, it’s usually my rule of thumb. if you’ve never tried it before. There could be some exceptions where I’m going to point them to a to a TSX, but generally it’s like go to the tip version. Um I think for the most part I like I like the tip TSX. Um it gives you a better BC. They’re extremely accurate. Um I like the way they function a little bit better at the lower velocities. Okay. Um that’s that’s my and and I’m going back to what I said on the TSX again. And there’s always always exceptions, but generally speaking on the TTSX, it’s going to be, you know, TSX is 100% weight retention at high velocity. Mhm. 0 to 300 yards, right? Cartridge dependent. TTSX is more that 95 to 100% weight retention at high velocity. Okay? And I’m going to say 0 to 500 yards cartridge dependent. Right? So, so now you’re starting to get a little bit more distance out of that bullet, right? And the function window. And but but you potentially could lose a little bit, right? I mean, you’re talking 5%, right? Which is still much better than really any lead is going to do for you. Yeah, for sure. Um again, if I’m hunting Kate Buffalo with a 375 H&H, I’m going to shoot a 300 grain TSX, right? But if I wanted to say also shoot planes game, yeah, you know, maybe I’ll load the 250 grain TTSX and extend the range a little bit. Yeah. get better velocity, better BC, you know, now I can take shots out to 300 yards. Well, I mean, with that, right, like let’s say that there’s one guy that, you know, he’s a diehard white tail hunter that lives in the southeast, for example, right? We might recommend a TSX for him for that type of environment, you know, because he’s only shooting a 30 out six. He’s never going to shoot past 150 yards and he’s just shooting thin skinned whitetail. But let’s say he’s finally going on again, maybe his Africa trip or his one elk trip of his life or, you know, he’s going once every 3 years or something and he wants to step up his range, but he wants to bring that same 30 six. Would you then recommend, hey, this gives you an opportunity to then go up to a TTSX because, you know, you might be shooting out to three, four, 500 yards. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, it’s it’s definitely one that I’d say across the board if you wanted to just pick one um that can do everything. The TTSX is is a good line. I mean, it’s it’s our number one seller as a line. Absolutely. You know, it has a lot of offerings as well. Yeah. But yeah, it’s it’s now definitely for quite a quite a few years has very much overtaken the TSX as a line, right? Um but but again like you said right I mean when you look at the overall line I mean there’s we have essentially something for everybody. Yeah. Like within that line. Well and I think you could look at it this way too. Take this for what it is. If I go take a poll to the lab guys, all the lab technicians that shoot these bullets for a living, right? Every day. Yeah. You know, 40 hours a week. And most of these guys, I mean, they’re all Utah residents obviously. We we work out of Mona, Utah. Um, so this is Western Big Game is our thing. You a few of them might make a trip. One of them’s in Africa right now. Yeah. You know, which is cool. But, uh, you know, so we do other game, but most of the guys in the lab, they’re Western big game hunters, right? If I went and asked them, I don’t think there’s one of them shooting a TSX. Yeah. And that’s nothing to bash on the bullet, right? It’s just they’re shooting TTSXs or LRXs. Mostly LRXs, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I guess since we did it earlier with the TSX, we can go over kind of our top sellers. You guys have any guesses before we start playing this game? Uh 30 cal 168 or 180. Are you looking at my No computer over here? I just know what we I know what we shoot every day. Yeah. Mitchell. Yeah, I was thinking the 180. 180. Huh? Yeah. So, the top the 180 is on my list. What’s interesting is that our top five are all 30 cal. Yeah, it’s not surprising. Okay. But 180 is fourth on the list. So it goes 150, then a 130, then the 168, then the 180, and then 165. Huh. That’s interesting. Yeah. So here’s my take on that. Those those bullets right there. 30 cals are obviously popular, right? This is me knowing what I know, having shot these for a lot of years, right? The 180 is the bullet in a Win Mag. Yeah. Like that 180 TTSX is super forgiving. It’s stupid accurate whether you’re hand loading it or whether you’re shooting the Vortex ammo, right? I don’t think there’s a more accurate 30 cal bullet. I mean, we’ve done a ton of testing in 300 Win Magg with competitor evals, with lead core bullets, copper bullets, LRXs, TSXs, TTSXs, across the board. If I was a betting man and you had to say which one’s going to shoot the best because obviously every gun’s different, right? You know, there’s so many other variables, but across the board, that 180 TTSX flat out shoots in a 300 Win Mag. Yeah. Um, if I’m an Six guy, I’m probably going 168. Yeah. um 308 guy, I’m actually going to drop down to the 130. Okay, that 130 is wicked mean in a 308 win. Yeah, you get the muzzle velocity up, it still holds together good, right? It’s got a good enough BC for the range you’re going to shoot, right? Um that 130 is is mean in a 308 win. Mitchell, what’s your favorite TTSX that you’ve built since you’ve been here or designed? I don’t know if I’ve done too many TTSXs. It’s more of an LRX and TSX. Gosh, what’s the last TTSX we did? It’s been a minute. It’s been a minute. I don’t know that we’ve done a new TTSX for a while. We’ve done a new TAC TX5115. Yeah. Yep. Gosh, I don’t know on the We haven’t done one in a long time. It’s been a minute. Did the 450 Bushmaster that was a while ago. Okay. Ask me on the LRX. So, I’ I’ve got one for you. Okay. What? Okay. What What’s your favorite? So, staying out of the 30 cal that’s in our top five here. Well, you just took one away, but no, I have to mention I this my favorite is going to be something different. Yeah, I do have to credit back to the 180. I don’t want to talk about it too much, but uh I’ve hunted what what we call around here big bull elk, right? Because we have general season and limit entry. And so if you’re in Utah and you say, “Oh, I drew a big bull tag.” It means limit entry and it just took you 20 years to draw that if you’re lucky. Yeah. 20 years anymore. It’s I don’t even know. But anyways, when I drew my limit entry tag in Utah, um it’s been quite a while ago now. Yeah. Um that’s what I killed my bull with was a 300 Win Mag and a 180 TT6. So I have to always, you know, it’s got some sentimental. Um but one that is a performer Yeah. that maybe people overlook a little bit is the 65120. Okay. The TTSX um the 264 diameter. Do do you think a lot of that becomes I mean not to jump ahead of you here, but is it just because it is 65? We’ve got the 127 and the and the LRX that we’re going to talk about here, right? And that thing is again very much a performer. Oh yeah, the 127 is an awesome bullet. Um I I I’m a 65 guy. Yeah. Um, I like to take credit, but you’re you’re an everything guy. We kind of learned about that in episode one, but I was a 65 guy before the Cre was ever a thing, right? Yeah. 65284, right? I built a 65284 Norma. That was my first true like custom build that I did quite a while ago. Um, and at that time we didn’t have LRXs, right? LRXs were not a thing. And I loaded the 120 TTSX in that 65284. Crazy accurate. Yeah. I mean, I’ve I was shooting 2inch groups at 500 yards. Yeah. Um I killed cow elk with it. I’ve killed mu deer with it. You know, had family members kill deer with it. Um that bullet, you know, cuz the traditional 140 class, you know, of a 65. Yeah. That little 120 because of its construction, because of its, you know, highway retention, deep penetration, it’ll stomp 140 grain lead core bullets. Really? It absolutely like I would not be afraid. I killed a cow elk at 400 yards. Yeah. With my 65284 with the 120 in the shoulder. You know, I agree with you. I like the shoulder shot. It literally rangefinder 400 yards. Dialed the turret, put it on its shoulder. The 120 entered this shoulder, tore everything up, exited this shoulder, the cow literally dropped to where it stood, right? I mean, dead. Yeah. Yeah. 120 grain. And it’s not a giant bull. I understand that. But it was a fairly old pretty big bodied cow elk. It’s not a little teeny white tail I’m talking about. Absolutely. You know, so that bullet, it’s a mean bullet that it steps above its weight class, right? You know, and that’s a it’s been a favorite of mine. Awesome. Do we want to jump into LRX? Yeah, since we we kind of talked about it a little bit there. Let’s jump into the LRX. What makes the LRX the LRX? Yeah. So, I’ll uh I’m going to cover a kind of a general and I’m going to let Mitchell get into some specifics because I have to credit Mitchell um as his time as an R&D engineer. Um we’ve stepped up our game, right, with some of the later offerings in the LRX line. you know, there’s multiple LRX’s. Um, but I think you could almost there’s some standouts, right? There’s some step above. So, I’ll let him take the glory on that. They’re pretty cool. Um, maybe we’ll actually talk a little bit on this podcast. We’re not going to invite him back if he doesn’t talk. Yeah. Uh, LRX, I go back to what we’ve talked already with the TSX, the TTSX. LRX was taking it one step further. you know, obviously long-range hunting, right? You know, in the last 15 years has really taken off. Um, Barnes thought process was, you know, because you can always argue ethics, right? There’s a lot of opinions on long-range hunting. Yeah. Um, a lot of good, valid points. You know, we want to make sure we’re taking shots within our abilities. Um, but we’ve got to understand the equipment as well. But with the advancements of scopes, guns, rangefinders, you know, ballistic apps, all these things, there’s more people shooting long range than ever before, right? And so obviously they’re taking shots at longer ranges than ever before. Barnes mentality was we wanted to build a hunting bullet that would perform at those distances, right? You know, there’s a lot of trends where people use match type projectiles at long range for hunting. You know, I’m not going to get in too far into that, you know, but the men our We can we can we we we can piss people off on this podcast. All right, that’s always fun. Let’s do it. But, uh, the thought was, you know, and obviously some of those, you know, they had valid reasons. They’re accurate bullets, their IBC. The idea was it’s going to retain its velocity and energy downrange. Um, but from what we’ve seen and heard a lot of field reports, I mean, I can’t tell you how many consumers have come talk to me at trade shows that have had failures with other bullet types and then made a switch. Yep. You know, and that’s real world, you know, opinion and experience from them, right? And why they’ve made that change. But anyways, our thought was we wanted the consistent performance that we get, you know, and I haven’t really hit that too much yet, but across the board with these copper bullets, that is one thing. They are consistent. Yeah, you know, every bullet has its limitations regardless of material and design. Um, but if you go shoot 10 bullets in the water tank at the same velocity, all 10 look the same. Yeah. If you go shoot 10 lead core bullets in the water tank at the same velocity, depending on the bullet, I’ve seen everything from zero expansion to complete jacket core separation, right? Out of the same bullet at the same velocity. Yeah. You know, there’s not as consistent. Um, the LRX though, we wanted to increase BC. So, you know, it’s longer oives, sharper, longer boat tails, sometimes fewer grooves cut into the shank. Um, and we’ve shifted that function window down. You know, that’s really the big difference with a lot of these. You know, we weren’t as worried about maintaining weight at high velocity. So, back to the kind of the path I’ve used on those others. LRX top level is going to be more that 85% weight retention at high velocity and it’s more that zero to 700 plus yards cartridge dependent. Right. It’s important to know like you said 85% weight retention. So in order to get it to expand at lower velocities, you have a a set window. You can’t just make it do everything. Right. Right. We we shift that window left or right. So for the LRX, we have a set window. We moved it down range to a lower velocity. So what that means up front, you’re not going to get 100% weight retention. You shoot uh you know a deer at 100 yards out of a 300 Win Mag and LRX. Yeah. You’re going to shed pedals. Pedals we call on the bullets here. Uh when they expand their four pedals, you might lose one, two, even all four if it’s point blank range. And we accept that in an LRX in order to get performance downrange. And anyone here, they’re all shooting LRXs. We do not care if they shed pedals. You’re losing a little bit of weight, but at the end, you’re still Yeah. 75%. It’s not a big deal. You’re dumping that energy, right, as that happens, but you’re also still getting your full penetration that you want. So, like there’s definitely that tradeoff, but again, right, like the whole reason that you’re shooting LRX is, you know, it happens all the time, right? like you’re like, “Man, I’ve been at the range all all summer, whatever, right? I’ve been shooting up to 500, 700 yards, man. I I can really like stretch it out.” And then all of a sudden, you come around, you know, come around or o over top of a hillside or whatever and there’s elk standing there at 150 where you’re not going to be like, you know, shoeing it away to get it to 400 so you don’t shed pedals, right? Or or shed, you know, any weight. I’d rather just shoot the damn thing at 150 yards and drop it right there where it stands. Well, and and to that point though, the the LRX, that’s part of the advantage. Yeah. Is it’s not just going to work at long range. It works at close range, too. Absolutely. An LRX that sheds pedals at high impact velocity and close range is still unlike any cup and core bullet. Right. Right. It’s not bombing on impact and coming apart and not reaching the vitals. Well, and it’s funny you say that, right? like 85% for a lead guy or somebody that’s shooting lead. That’s way above what they’re ever going to get even at 100 yards, 400 yards, whatever. I mean, if they’re getting 60%, that’s right. And that 85% honestly, that’s probably more worst case scenario, right? Like a lot of LRXs can maintain 100% weight at 100 yards, right? You know, I’m just trying to show the difference that can happen depending on right bullet specific, you know, the the function criteria of that bullet, right? Launch velocity, BC, all those factors. And there’s there’s always going to be trade-offs, right? And that’s why we have so many different offerings that we do is that if you’re somebody that only that wants 100% every single time, then obviously maybe you want to select a TSX or TTSX. But if you can give yourself some leeway, if you will, and it’s like, “Hey, I don’t mind if I shut a pedal if I shoot very, very close, then LRX is the way to go for you.” Yeah. And we found, you know, through, like Mitchell said, I think the grand majority of the people that work at Barnes that are big into hunting are probably shooting LRXs, right? Um I know that’s what I shoot pretty much exclusively, you know, in my hunting rifles for out west. Um, I will bring up though there’s other benefits at times that’s maybe even not long range. Um, a few, well, I should say more medium range. Yeah. Um, sometimes lower velocity cartridges, you know, even if I don’t have intentions of shooting 5, 600 yards, right? Maybe I’m only going to shoot 300 yards. Yeah. Um, but I could be shooting something like a 7m8 or, you know, even a 65 Creedmore. some of these that are only in that 26 to 28 2900 ft per second muzzle velocity. You know, these aren’t super magnums. These aren’t 3200 at the muzzle. Yeah. You can almost kind of like extend the range on some of these smaller calibers, right, by doing that by LRX. You could load the 139 grain or 145 grain LRX in a 7M8, even if I’m never going to shoot past 300 yards. In my opinion, that’s a better choice than say a 120 TSX in the same cartridge. Exactly. You know, on that on that same thought too, uh you don’t have to shoot extremely far to see the benefits, right? You look at wind drift, uh looking at a bullet right here, it’s our new 7 mil 160 grain LRX designed for the 7PRC that has a BC of 608. You compare that to a 160 grain TSX, the BC is what, three? Yeah. If you shoot even 300 yards, you’re going to see a huge difference in wind drift, right? You don’t have to shoot seven 800 yards to see the benefits of an LRX, right? If you’re going to miss out west on a big game animal, it’s usually because of wind, right? Um so getting that BC advantage is a is a big deal in a lot of times. Yeah. You don’t have to shoot far to get those benefits. Yeah, there’s definitely a balance. Um you know, I mentioned before I’m a 280 Aley guy, right? I love the 280 Aley. Um I have a custom rifle right now, proof barrel, manner stock. Uh it’s a one and 8.44 twist. So I can stabilize any of the bullets that we make. Yeah. Um right now I’m shooting 152 um with the Vortex all our ammo because it shoots awesome my gun. It’s a great bullet. Um I’ve hand loaded 168 LRXs in that. We’ve killed Elk with it. 13. Are we ever going to release that as a component bullet? I sure hope so. If somebody over here would do something about it. We’ll see. No, we need to. It’s a great bullet. But it’s been brought up, you know, like, yeah, in fact, we’re working on load data right now for 280 a with the 160 LRX, right? You know, because there’s enough guys that want to shoot that in a 280 if you have a fast enough twist, right? You know, obviously standard is only one and nine, so it’s not going to work. But for the guys that have custom rifles with faster twists, but I don’t know, you can I’ve looked at this. In fact, I had a friend just the other day um that was texting me asking me this same question. He’s a 280 Aley guy. Yeah. He’s hand loading the 139. He’s like, “Do I shoot the 152?” He wants us to sell the 152 as a component, right? But then he’s like, “Do I go to the 160?” And what I told him is really, you know, Mitchell’s spot on. The 160 has the advantage in the win even at 3 400 yards. Yeah. But the 152 is a pretty good BC, too. It’s a good enough BC and it’s going to have the velocity advantage. So, there’s kind of a give and take. You know, I think out to 500 yards, they’re all going to do the job, right? When you talk about velocity advantage, I mean, you’re only talking about eight grains. Like, what’s the velocity differences there? Uh, it can be pretty extreme sometimes depending on the cartridge. Like, for example, like in my 280 Aley, it’s a 26-in barrel. Okay. Um, and my my 152s are getting about 3050. Okay. Um, where if I was to hand load the 160, and like I said, we’re we’re working on load data right now. Yeah. Um, I’m probably going to be more in the 2850 range. Okay. So 200 feet, maybe 29 with certain powders, right? Maybe 28. So yeah, that 200 feet can you gave up BC, but you gain velocity. So out to 500 yards. Well, and maybe 200 doesn’t sound that much out of the buzz, right? But you’re going to lose that much as you get more distance. And if you’re trying to get, you know, four or 500 yard shots out of it, right? Like you’re just you’re losing that much energy, that much velocity faster, right? And so this is one that when I really broke down the numbers and I think if you’re only shooting out to 300 400 yards and you’re already shooting the 139. Yeah. If you want to try something new, great. Try the 152 in the ammo, right? Obviously you can’t handload it yet. Yeah. Uh if you were able to handload the 152, you could argue that out to 500 yards, the 152 has the advantage over the 139 and the 145, right? um outside of wind, you know, you’re going to give up a little bit of wind drift, but it’s going to be flatter shooting, shorter time of flight. Now, if I’m going to shoot past 500 yards, yeah, that’s where that 160 definitely comes into play, right? You know, if I’m shooting a 7 PRC, no question, I’m going to shoot the 160, right? More case capacity. I can push the 160 even faster. You don’t want to be like super heavy with that 7PRC. Don’t we need like 180 grain bullet out of the 7PRC? I actually think I want to build a 7PRC to shoot a 175 TSX flatbase. Yeah, that’s that would be ideal. That would be ideal. I mean, that’s like perfect. Like, that’s what that cartridge was absolutely made for, right? For sure. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. Yeah. Is something to launch a 175 TSX flatbase. It’s like a 200yard old school 7×57 bullet. Yeah. Perfect. So, basically, you just shoot a 7m08 with a heavy bullet, right? Yeah. I guess with a heavier bullet. That’s basically what you’re doing. But anyways, I’ll let Mitchell go back to what he was talking about. Yeah, while we’re on the on that topic of the the 7PRC and the new bullet, uh it’s a it’s a good opportunity to go through kind of how we design LRX bullets, what goes into them, what makes them different. Um, and like Greg said, it’s internal and external. Uh, the shape, you get longer ojives, sleeker shapes, longer boat tails. That’s more important in that line. Y and particularly looking at this 7 mil PRC bullet, the 160 grain. When we were designing that, we actually had two or three different design iterations. And we tried uh our first shape and the BC didn’t come in where we wanted it to. It shot fine. It was accurate. Function was was there. Uh but the BC just wasn’t where we wanted to. And as a a TTSX, we probably would have said, “Okay, as long as it shoots well, it’s forgiving, has a good enough BC, let’s let’s roll with it.” But in these LRX bullets, BC is a big part of it. So, we actually went back to the drawing board, which isn’t a easy thing to do. You’re you’re set up on the press, you got people’s time involved, you have tooling that you’ve invested in, and now you’re you’re scrapping that. You’re starting over, right? But that’s that’s what we do with the the LRX bullets. And uh we came back with this new design and it’s it’s helpful. I won’t say this very often, but Horny did a great job with the 7PRC uh in their chamber design. It it really does provide a lot of advantages and it makes it easy for me to to design bullets because I can have a long nose. It has a fast enough twist rate to stabilize these copper bullets. Um and that’s a big part of why you see the Ojive is is so long here is because of that. Um, but yeah, it’s it’s creating aggressive features for a higher BC. It’s not accepting, you know, good enough. It’s he’s got to shine and excel. Absolutely. And looking at the canler, this one only has two. We do extensive testing on our LRXs. Generally, more is better. It’s going to reduce filing. It’s going to reduce pressure. Uh, but it makes your bullet longer. So, that hurts stability. You can’t have as heavy as a bullet. And two, it hurts your BC. more and more grooves means more and more BC loss. So, uh we do a design of experiments and really optimize that. We tried one groove, we tried two, three, four. Um one wasn’t enough. It was building pressure, didn’t shoot as well. Two, shot extremely well. Had a slightly less BC, but not too bad of a drop. And three, we really didn’t see any advantage. And then a lower BC. So, we we ended up going with just two grooves on the LRX. Yep. Um, and it it turned out great. It’s got a a BC of over6, right? Then when you combine that with it, it’s only 160 grain bullet, which is plenty for anything in North America, right? Um, you get that velocity advantage, too. So, we had the 168, and a lot of people asked us when we launched it, why aren’t you loading the 168? You guys are dumb or something like And you had to you tell them, well, hey, you can shoot a lighter bullet. eight lighter and the BC is over it’s almost 100 points different I think. Yeah. Um pushing it. So you you get the velocity advantage and you get BC with this 160 grain bullet. And the 160 actually functions better at long range, right? Like the 168 functions great. Don’t don’t get me wrong. If you’re shooting 160 LRX and you love it, power on, right? But the 160, um, part of that is because of the higher BC and the higher velocity, but just the cavity design, we hold it to a larger expanded diameter criteria. Yeah. Versus the 168. Okay. Um, which I’m holding right here. This bullet was actually fired into gel. Okay. At 700 yards. Um, which is pretty dang impressive. I mean, that is like fully expanded. Yeah. You know, it looks like what I would call a highend in the water tank. You know, this is you could expect that, you know, at 100 yards, but that’s a 7mm 160 grain LRX fired out of a 7PRC. We went up to the the North Springs range here in Price, Utah, set gel at 700 yards and crazy wound cavity. Yeah. You know, 20 plus inches of penetration, full expanded diameter. Like that bullet’s it’s unreal. So, I’ll go back to my question that you didn’t want to answer earlier. What’s your favorite LRX bullet that you’ve designed? And you can’t pick the 160 because you’ve already talked about it for five minutes. That That was my favorite bullet. I’m actually building a rifle around it, but I didn’t design this boy, but it is my favorite. Uh, and it’s a 65. So, um, man, a lot of 65. Yeah, I’m a a fanboy, too, like Greg. Uh, but I I shoot the the 651 127 grain LRX. Yeah. Uh, it’s pretty light. It’s a little bit heavier than Greg’s 120 grain TTSX. Uh, so but you were also pushing it out of a 65300, correct? Yeah. 65300 Win Mag. Yeah. Out of Weatherbe, out of RPM. It’s a just a wind mag neck down, right? Um, and yeah, it it it acts a lot heavier than a 127 grain, right? and kind of guys debate on is 65 big enough for elk. Um I’ll tell you in a copper bullet it is. Yeah. Right. Um I’ve personally killed six bull elk with the 127. Yeah. And my brother used my rifle. He shot another bull elk. So I’ve personally seen seven go down with that bullet. Right. Um of the seven I’ve dropped two. One was actually at 600 yards. Okay. And the other was at maybe 75. Yeah. The rest I don’t shoot for the shoulder. generally aiming for the longs just bigger target, right? Um but they don’t go far, right? I mean, I’ I’ve never lost an elk and it’s 127 grain bullet. It’s not heavy. Um so it Did you f Did you recover any of the bullets? The one at 600 I did and that’s because it hit the off shoulder. Okay. Having my off, it’s just perfectly mushroomed. I mean, it’s like you could go put it on our our poster. Yeah. And we we load that 127, you know, in the Vortex line, 65 Creedmore. Um, as well as a 65 PRC. And I know we in the Vortex LR line. Sorry. Yes. Yeah, good correction. Vortex LR line. Um, the 65 PRC we I guess for both the 65 Creedmore, we get the same question. But I think even more so on the 65 PRC, a lot of guys, they’re thinking, I want something heavier, right? And we get questioned, you know, is is 127 enough for elk in a 65 BRC? And like Mitchell said, absolutely. I’ll I’ll uh bring up we have a a good customer um out of New Zealand who’s a PH there. Yeah. Uh he’s a 65 guy. He actually shoots the 127 out of a 656. Okay. Um you know, and he’s obviously having clients come out, you know, that’s his full-time job, right? shooting red stag, shooting big boltar, right? Um, and I’ve talked to this guy multiple times, you know, we’ll chat and catch up at SCI and trade shows and he flat out says that 127 out of a 656, you know, he’s killed and had his clients use his gun to kill countless, you know, big bull red stag and tar with that thing, even out to ranges that I don’t even really want to mention on this on this podcast, but he loves that bullet. Yeah, I mean there’s not a better bullet in his mind for a 65. You know, I have a friend that I built a 65 64 that shoots that 127, you know, and he’s become a believer in Barnes because of that, you know, with shooting elk, shooting muair, you know, close and long range with that 127 with that. That’s probably why it’s our number one seller in the LRX line. Can you guess number two and number three? Uh recently I’ve I’ve been cheating. I’ve been looking at these reports because that’s part of my job now. But I know this this 7 mil has absolutely taken off. It has taken off. Right. So I I will preface that my numbers are from January of 24. Right. So like it’s giving it 18 months of data. Sure. Um, and technically we didn’t launch the 160 or the 7PRC ammo, right, until September of last year, late August, September. So, it’s had eight months, let’s call it less of data to try to catch up to the other ones. I will tell you that that one is number five, so it’s not in our top three. So, you just got to pick two other ones. It’s the 7 mil 168. Okay, Greg, do you have one? Uh, I’m going to guess a 30 cal’s in there. It is a 30 cal. Yeah, that 175. That is a 175. Look at that. You guys are on top of it. 175 is a good bullet. Um, it’s one though. I will say like we’ve made mention multiple times. I think a lot of us here that hunt with barns. Um, obviously, but we we see Hold on. You guys use our bullets to hunt with? Surprising. No. No. But I guess I should say the guys that build them on the press. Yeah. The guys that are out there loading them in ammo, right? The guys that are testing in the lab, you know, the guys in the office that are die hard hunters, most of those people are shooting LRXs. I think that’s a fair statement. Mhm. But having said that, that 175, I don’t want to take anything away from it. I will go back to the 180 TTSX if I was going to shoot one over the other. Yeah, that’s one where I’d pick the 180 TTSX over the 175 LRX. Do you know off the top of your head without me having to like research it like much difference of BC’s and Yeah. The 180 is 424. Oh 484 484. Yeah. And the 175 is uh low fives 508. I’m just making stuff up at this point. Yeah, it’s close. I know the 180 tipped is 484. I’m very familiar with that bullet. So, let’s see. Let’s see. 175. I’m going right off the website there, guys. Just just in case anybody needs to know that it is 508. Yeah. For the 175. Mitchell owes me lunch. I was right on both of them. He owes both of us lunch. I know a lot of stupid numbers that are meaningless to most people. They’re not meaningless here. At least you’re not like the Sierra guys and know every single bullet and their skew number. That’s how they talk, right? Oh, yeah. The the 3228 like not to pick on those guys, right? But like, yeah, we definitely talk about like like caliber and grain weight to describe a bullet and LRX, TTSX, whatever that it is where those guys only use skew numbers and they’ll just like rattle stuff off at me and they’re like, “Yeah, our whatever 12 1247 is doing this.” And it’s like I have no idea what there are people at Barnes that speak in skew number. They are. They do get mad when we talk their language. I’ve been here 18 years. That’s been said many times. I couldn’t even tell you a skew number of anything. But I can tell you BC of about every bullet in our catalog. Well, if you want to put this in your memory bank, it’s 30 318. I won’t remember it for the 175. There you go. That’ll be that’ll be a pop quiz at some later point of a podcast. Yeah. So, a a good thing to to look at as a a whole. Um the cool thing about Barnes is we were the the people who invented the monolithic copper bullet and it’s our bread and butter. It’s what we’re we take pride in and that’s why we have three different product lines. We have the TSX, we have the TTSX, and we have the LRX. you have a bullet for every one of your applications and you don’t see that in other brands you see they might have it’s a one other product it’s just their copper bullet line right so when you see not saying other brands are going to fail but if you see a failure in the field it’s usually not I shouldn’t say the bullet’s fault but usually you’re not using the right brand or the right product line if you shoot a TSX at 700 yards unless it’s that 28 nler bullet you’re going to have bad experience. But if you shoot the correct LRX bullet, it’s going to work great. So there’s kind of a lot of, oh, copper bullets don’t expand, you need more velocity. Well, yeah, if you’re not shooting the right brand or right product line, that will happen. So you have to you have to understand the difference differences between the TSX, DTSX, LRX, and when to use that application. It’s really cool that we have all these different product lines optimized for your purpose. Exactly. Yeah. And I think it’s worth noting too kind of along those lines. If your only experience with a copper bullet was from 20 or 30 years ago, you know, and you said, “Oh, it fouled too much. I couldn’t get accuracy. It didn’t expand the way I wanted it to.” Right. Try an LRX. Try a TTSX. Yeah. You know, um, absolutely. Because I think to Mitchell’s point, there’s a lot of kind of misinformation out there, you know, and you might have had a bad experience, but it was you were using a bullet that was intended to work out to 200 yards, right, for example, you know, and you’re pushing it beyond its limits. Yeah. Beyond its intended application and what it was developed for. So, and we’ve made improvements. You know, I think it’s worth noting Barnes is, you know, we have we hold our products to a high standard. We have high quality standards. You know, we have a lot of procedures and practices in place um to ensure the performance. Um but we’re constantly looking to improve as well. You know, that’s our mentality here across the board on the operation side, you know, in the office, in the lab, you know, out on the floor. We push ourselves to improve every day. You know, we have high expectations to hold ourselves to. And that goes all the way to making improvements to the product, right? Along those years. So, I would say again, if you’ve not tried copper, um, give it a try. And kind of back to what I already said, unless you’re looking for 100% weight retention and you’re not going to shoot past 200 yards, start with the TTSX. You know, if you’re a long range guy, start with an LRX. Right. Well, I know we didn’t get to the match burner. We are at an hour and 10 minutes. It’s a long one. We went pretty long on this one. We said that we wanted to be 45 minutes or roughly. That’s a lot to cover and you could spend I mean we definitely did a deep dive and I hope that this you know for people that maybe aren’t I hate to say fanboys, right? But like super fans of the Barnes name. Um they were able to learn a lot more. I I think that again, like I said, we went pretty dang deep on copper bullets and and how they work and why they work. Um, so I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think that we can definitely touch on some other bullets as we kind of move through um our podcast, but I think that was pretty dang good. Yeah, I think I felt like I learned a lot. And I mean, you know, I already felt like I knew a pretty good amount, but I was still able to learn more, which is always nice. Yeah. The only thing I think I missed, I might not have mentioned with the LRX, is I did say yardage, but I didn’t put a velocity to it. Um, and that’s I’m going to say again, there’s exceptions to the rule, right? But I’m going to put it more in that 1,700 ft per second. Okay. Um, maybe even a little bit below, but I think the difference even more is at 1700 feet per second versus a TTSX. It’s kind of what I already said with a TTSX versus a TSX, right? You’re going to see a bigger expanded diameter. Y at the lower velocity, right? So, I probably failed to mention that earlier. Well, and I mean, I think Allan gets a lot of those calls, right, that he that people want to know the I mean, I I know that I’ve seen it a lot on our social asking for, you know, minimum velocities on certain bullets. And I know that we really don’t want to, you know, it’s it’s hard to say that we’re building a quote LRX long range bullet but not promoting long range hunting, right? Because I think that that’s it kind of comes back to ethics and all that. Obviously, this can be a very deep dive there. But, you know, we try not to give out specific absolute numbers because I think one it it always comes down to conditions, shooters, everything. Right. There’s other variables. There’s so many variables in we have every bullet we build has a unique test criteria. Right. Right. And specifications. And we test in a water tank for function. We have a good correlation to the gel and into the field. Um, but what we tested at in the water in our minds and to our experience ensures that it’s going to work in the field, right? But my number in the water isn’t an exact read across to your number in the field, right? Does that make sense? On game and so that’s a piece of it too, you know, but we are going to do more to better educate and inform, get more data out there. But kind of from a top level, I think you can say TSX 2000 and above, right? TTSX 18 and above, LRX 16 and above, right? You know, that’s probably fair enough. There’s always going to be a little bit of And I think for a lot of these calibers that these are built for, right? Like again, we kind of we kind of touched on a little bit earlier, but you know, saying the TSX is that 0 to 300. Yep. TTSX is that 0 to 5 and then you say LRX is 0 to 7, right? So again, that that kind of I think helps people as well, right? With the, you know, kind of that disclaimer or caveat of cartridge dependent, right? Absolutely. Carter dependent and I mean truthfully, it should be shooter dependent more than even cartridge dependent, I think, personally. Yeah. Anything else, Mitchell? Um, I felt like you were just daydreaming about Mexico over there most of the time. Yeah, that was most of the podcast. Yeah, I think we I think we covered it. You can always call in or email uh our customer service. Allan will get back with you if you have a a deep question on expansion velocities or something. He can help you out. But like Greg said, it is kind of tricky. Um we might have the same velocity threshold for two different bullets, but they’re different expansion diameters, so they mean completely different things. So that’s why it’s kind of hard to to publish a lot of that. It’s hard to convey it and it’s into water. It’s not gel. you want to give yourself a little bit of buffer. So, absolutely. Um, if you do have questions, just reach out and we can help you out and kind of understand what you’re shooting, how fast, how far, you know, and make recommendations. Yeah, you’re available what, like 247. Did Did you give your cell phone number yet? Greg Greg gave his on episode one, so you have to give yours on episode two. People can call you. I’ll give you Allen cell number. All right. Perfect. Better. Yeah. If you have bullet design ideas, send them Mitchell’s way. Yeah. few the past couple weeks. Always appreciate them. Well, thanks guys. I appreciate your time this morning and uh hopefully everybody enjoyed this episode two of the Barnes Bullet points podcast.