09-19-2019, 03:12 PM
I have killed a good number of deer with the 120 BT out of a 6.5x55 and it has always worked fine but I am running it 3000 fps at muzzle. I have killed a good number of deer between 300 and 500 yards with this bullet where it has slowed down a lot to Grendel velocities. But I am a shoulder/spine shooter. Where I was hunting over bean fields in east NC or logging paths between grown up cutovers you don't want a deer to run off. Even if you had a ball of string tied to it's leg it would sometimes be hard to find it the jungle is so thick and the swamps are deep. From my experience I believe the 120 BT has been toughened up a bit over the years for use in the higher velocity rifles and thus at the velocity that you are running it the bullet does expand and probably is fully expanding allowing the jacket to fold back against the bullet shank thus you are getting what you deem are small exits. You also have to remember that the hide stretches and thus the exit in the hide looks smaller. As to getting blood trail that also has to do with bullet placement. If you shoot a high lung shot you may not get much blood trail because the chest cavity has to fill with blood before it can exit. If you have destroyed the lungs then there is no air to expel the blood. If you have disrupted the heart there is noting to pump the blood out. Where people get the idea that the ballistic tip is a "blow up" bullet is from running it too fast of just repeating what someone else believes or from just one example. Yes Nosler gives a general velocity impact range that is optimal but in my experience with the BT in different calibers and usage of them since their introduction this is a VERY GENERAL impact velocity range. For example when the BT first came out I got some 150s for use in my 30-06. I was running them in the 2900 fps range. They were SUPER ACCURATE but when you shot a deer inside about 250 yards they would not exit and the deer ran off and left little to no blood trail. Their chest cavity was a mess where the bullet did blow up. It was a few years latter Nosler toughened this bullet up and it became much better. At the higher impact velocities of the given impact range you will get more expansion and at these higher velocities if you hit bone then you most often will have "blow up". It has been in my experience that most of the hunting BTs in .257 through .308 work best with impact velocity between 2800 and 2000 fps on deer. If you go to the 100 gr BT and run it 2700 to 2900 fps you may not get an exit but it will dump all it's energy in the deer and the hydro static effect can shock the animal causing it to fall down. In my experience if you can get them off their feet quickly they usually don't get back up or if they do they don't go far because of the time elapse that takes place the brain gets the message YOUR DEAD.