Barnes Bullets

Shooting Illustrated 10-2004

Shooting Illustrated - October Issue 2004

The Bullet Company That Changed Our Thinking
By: Bryce M. Towsley

When I was doing the development work on my wildcat .358 UMT I knew that it would require a premium bullet, but I didn’t realize how great the demands would be. The problem is that most of the .35 caliber bullets were designed for cartridges like the .358 Winchester and .35 Whelen. They were never meant to be pushed to 3,200 feet per second. Many of them were accurate, but few held up when I shot them into expansion media. Some that I knew were fine game bullets in my .35 Whelen acted like varmint bullets at this velocity and simply blew up. One bonded bullet held together well, but expanded so big and so fast that it didn’t penetrate enough for really big game. Only one bullet was good enough to stand up to this cartridge and perform on game like I wanted, the Barnes X-Bullet. I tested several bullet weights before settling on the 225-grain X-bullet. I asked Randy Brooks to coat some of them with their XLC coating and found they would shoot into one ragged hole at 100 yards. (I later wrote about these coated bullets in the American Rifleman, stating that they were done as a favor and were not part of the product line. Barnes got so many requests for the bullet that they added it to the catalog.) With a 225-grain XLC Coated X-bullet, I found that 98-grains of IMR-7828 produced 3,125 feet per second and sub-inch groups. I experimented further and found that I could easily take this bullet up past 3,200 f.p.s. without pressure going too high, but when I did accuracy deteriorated slightly, so I settled on the first load. Later on, I shipped the gun to Barnes and had their lab rats run it through a series of tests and without knowing what I had discovered they picked exactly the same load as the best hunting load.

I took the gun to Africa in 2000 and shot springbok, kudu, gemsbok, red hartebeest and zebra. Out of a dozen or more X-Bullets shot into big game, only one failed to exit and that was a finishing shot on a gemsbok. It hit a lot of bone and was pretty beat up, but still weighed 170.5 grains. The X-Bullets always killed effectively and clearly expanded on shots as long as 450 yards, and on game as small as an 80-pound springbok. But they still penetrated enough to exit on a big zebra hit in the shoulder from 30 yards.

When I took the rifle to Alaska in 2001 to hunt brown bear, there was never any question which bullet would be in the gun. The one I could trust in this cartridge, the bullet that revolutionized they way we think about big game bullets, the Barnes X-Bullet.

Barnes bullets was started in 1932 in Bayfield, Colorado by Fred Barnes. The company soon made a reputation for deep penetrating bullets that were heavy for caliber. Fred Barnes ran the company for more than thirty years before Charles Burford (the man who invented the twist ties for bread bags) bought it in the mid sixties. Then in 1968 Barnes Bullets was sold to Russ Cook and Rich Hoch from Montrose, Colorado. They moved the company there and changed the name to Colorado Custom Bullets.

In July 1974 Randy and Coni Brooks bought the company and moved it to American Fork, Utah. “We packed it all in a 16-foot horse trailer and a pickup truck and moved it into the basement of our little 580 square foot house, where we also lived with our two daughters,” Randy told me. “We grossed $12,000.00 that first year. It was tough, but we were young and full of energy.”

By 1980 Barnes was making a homogenous brass solid bullet that was getting noticed with the African hunters and it inspired Randy. “In 1985 I got thinking that I had taken the lead out of the solid, so why not take it out of an expanding bullet?” Randy said. “So I developed an all copper bullet for the .375. I took it to Alaska, where I shot a 9-1/2 foot brown bear with the bullet, using a .375 H&H. That was the first game ever taken with the X-Bullet. It’s been refined over the years, but that was how it got started. I didn’t know what to call it then, but later I named it the X-Bullet because of the X shape the petals make after it has expanded.”

Getting acceptance for the bullet was tough. It was just too radical a design and frankly there were some early problems. But the technological evolutionary process eliminated or vastly reduced those problems over the years and the X-Bullet grew to be accepted as one of the finest big game bullets on the market. Now with the next generation of X-Bullet, the Triple Shock, most of the critics have been silenced.

As a solid copper bullet the X-bullet has always been a “hard” bullet. It would sometimes foul bores and it was sensitive to bore diameter tolerances. While most rifles liked the X-bullets just fine, some simply would not shoot them well and others would foul badly. The most noticeable change with the Triple Shock X-Bullet has been the addition of three or four grooves in the shank of the bullet. These act to reduce friction and fouling and provide a relief area for the displaced copper to move to when the bullet engraves the rifling. The Triple Shock also features a few refinements to the nose area to aid in easier expansion. This boattail bullet effectively eliminates many of the criticisms of the original X-Bullet. They are accurate, fouling is minimal and they help to reduce pressure. They are not as sensitive to bore diameter tolerance and will shoot accurately across much wider spectrum of barrel quality. Because of the reduced contact area and lower friction, they can be driven faster than the standard X-Bullets with a given chamber pressure level. The field reports that I have heard about performance on game have all been outstanding. But, then I would expect that, it’s an X-Bullet after all.

While Barnes manufactures bullets primarily for handloaders, Barnes X-Bullets and new Triple Shock X-Bullets are also available in factory-loaded ammunition from Federal and PMC.

A few years back, Barnes entered the varmint bullet market with their VLC coated Barnes Burner and recently they added non-coated VarminATor bullets. These conventional cup and core bullets are accurate, explosive on the target and less expensive than most of the competition. Last summer I shot prairie dogs in Montana with the VarminATor bullets pushed by Ramshot powder. With an accurate Cooper rifle, I was able to make my longest shot ever. Also my second longest, and third. All three witnessed and confirmed hits were past 800 yards; one was a measured 900 yards. You can’t do that with anything but the best bullets.

I am a bullet junkie, addicted to learning more about bullet performance. The bullet is the only physical connection we have with the game we hunt and I think it’s the most important selection a serious hunter can make. I trusted my first elk to Barnes, as well as my first African safari and a lot of other important hunts. That ought to tell you something.

*This article was used with the permission of Shooting Illustrated.