Barnes Bullets

Triple-Shocked Stag

SHOOTING ILLUSTRATED - NOVEMBER 2003

THE TRIPLE-SHOCKED STAG
By Jon R. Sundra

It was one of those rare hunts where everything goes exactly as planned. My guide, Eugenio Lutz, and I had gotten up extra early that morning so we could be out in the field well before dawn. It was the fourth day of my 5-day Red stag hunt in Argentina’s La Pampa region, so the pressure was starting to mount.

My outfitter, Luis Sier, recommended I come the opening week of the two-month season because the stags were usually in rut by then. Of course we all know what kind of mental picture that’s supposed to conjure up - love-sick bulls who in pursuit of passion, abandon all caution and thus become easy prey for us hunters. Yeah, sure. I can’t tell you how many elk and stag hunts I’ve been on that were supposed to coincide with the rut…but didn’t. Invariably, the explanation is always the same: “Too early, too warm.”

Actually, this hunt started out no differently. Not only was it unseasonably warm when we arrived…no, make that hot, but we learned that the region was suffering from the worst drought in memory. Nevertheless, according to the guides who’d been scouting the 30,000-acre estancia, the stags were actually starting to bugle, albeit infrequently and only in the dark. Of course in Argentina they refer to it as “roaring” rather than bugling, as they do throughout Europe.

Without the decided advantage of having stags actively roaring at dawn and dusk, Eugenio and I spend the first three days doing a lot of walking. It was, however, easy walking, as the terrain was relatively flat and there was nothing but grass underfoot. Indeed, the only thing that grew besides grass was thorn trees that were virtually identical to the acacias of southern Africa. They grew in thick stands that provided plenty of cover for the deer, but also dotted large open areas where it was possible to glass for 200-300 yards on average. Bottom line: if you didn’t know where you were, you’d swear you were in the lowvelt of Zimbabwe.

Anyway, while walking and glassing those first three days we saw maybe 20 or so deer, mostly skinheads, but a couple of young stags, too, one of which was the kind one might have considered taking on the last day of a hunt. Though it was easy walking, it was hard hunting, for we walked 6-7 hours each day. There were no high fences anywhere on this estancia, either around the perimeter or inside; these were free-ranging animals and that fact was one of the main reasons I wanted to hunt here.

As we drove out into the pre-dawn darkness on that fourth day, the plan was that we’d stop every half-mile or so, cut the engine, then listen for at least five minutes. Hopefully, if we heard a stag roaring close by, we’d be able to get a fix on his location and possibly stalk up on him at first light. And with the best of luck, we’d locate one that would continue to roar frequently enough, and long enough after daybreak that we’d be able to home right in on him.

The rifle that occupied the space between Eugenio and I on the front seat of the vintage Chevy pickup was a custom Model 70 in 7mm Win. Short Magnum that Mark Bansner had put together for me. It was fitted with a Lilja stainless barrel, fluted, and set into a laid-up fiberglass stock of Mark’s own making.

Work on the gun actually started just after Winchester announced the .300 WSM in September of 2000. Being a 7mm geek, it didn’t take a lot of prescience on my part to assume that Winchester would surely get around to necking their new offspring down to my beloved .284, so as soon as guns and ammo in .300 WSM became available, I was discussing the project with Mark.

We both agreed the short Model 70 Winchester action was the best platform for the rifle because its 3.1″ magazine is considerably longer than the 2-3/4″ to 2-7/8″ boxes that were the norm for all other short actions like the Remington, Ruger, Howa, Savage, etc. That would allow handloading all but the heaviest 7mm bullets out to where their bases wouldn’t be much below the neck/shoulder juncture of the case, thus effectively increasing the combustion chamber by as much as 7-8 percent. The result would be a more efficient cartridge and one that should be capable of besting factory ballistics by enough to make it worthwhile. I was figuring on an extra 75 fps or so.

Obviously, to take advantage of the longer magazine of the Model 70, the chamber throat has to be lengthened accordingly. So, after acquiring a set of custom Hornady dies for what was then a wildcat “7mm/300 WSM,” I sent Mark a dummy round with a 154 gr. Hornady Spire Point seated to where it was just shy of the maximum length the box would accommodate, and told him to throat it with a .025″ leade.

Sure enough, shortly after I took delivery of my new wildcat, Winchester announced not only the 7mm WSM, but the .270 version as well. As expected, both were simply the .300 WSM necked down to .284″ and .277″, respectively, with no other changes. My wildcat was now legit, which meant no more necking down .300 WSM cases; I’d soon have brass with the proper headstamp and everything!

Not so fast. Within five weeks of receiving the Winchester press release announcing the .270 and 7mm WSM in September of 2001, a second release arrived stating that the case specs for the 7mm were being revised and its introduction would be delayed several months. Most of you probably know the rest of the story.

As it turned out, under circumstances where cartridge specs were on the small end of tolerance parameters and the chamber specs at the other end, it was possible to cram…I say cram, a 7mm WSM cartridge into the chamber of a .270 WSM rifle. To make a long story short, Winchester decided to try to make the 7mm WSM idiot proof by lengthening the body (headspace) by .035″ so that even the most determined troglodyte to whom barrel markings and cartridge headstamps are inane, could not accomplish the aforementioned feat.

Having just completed load development work with my on-again, off-again, on-again wildcat, I had to decide whether I should send it back to Bansner’s Ultimate Rifles to have the chambered brought up to factory cartridge specs. It was an easy decision, but in the process, it put the gun out of my hands for several weeks and I missed an opportunity to hunt with it.

So there I was in Argentina with a rifle that was more than two years old that I was hunting with for the first time.

Because the chamber had been lengthened by .035″, there was no problem using any of the loads I had developed previously. Obviously, with a larger combustion chamber (I calculated it to be about 2 percent larger than the .270/.300 WSM case), pressures would, if anything, be lower. And they were. I was able to increase my maximum loads by about one grain on average which produced another 40 fps or so.

My original loads were developed with four different bullets: the 140 gr. Nosler Ballistic Tip, the 150 Nosler Partition and Swift Scirocco, and the 154 gr. Hornady Spire Point. The powders I worked with primarily were Reloder 19 and 22. The former seemed best suited to the 140 gr. bullets; the latter for the 150s and 154. Because reloading data for the 7mm WSM does not appear in any of the current reloading manuals, and the NRA’s policy of not listing specific handloads unless they are published in a bona-fide reloading source, I’ll not do it here. Besides, all loads that will eventually appear in the various sources will be based on SAAMI chamber specs, so my rifle is not representative of what can be achieved in a factory rifle. All I’ll say is that the velocities I’m getting in this rifle are so close to 7mm STW factory specs that the differences are meaningless. And I’m doing it with a helluva lot less powder and in a short action!

Just as I had settled on the load I was going to use on this Argentina hunt, the SHOT Show came up and there I saw a new bullet by Barnes that changed my mind. I’m talking about their Triple Shock, which is really nothing more than an X-Bullet with three pressure-relieving bands cut into its bearing surface. The advantages of these bands are twofold: the combined width of the bands amount to approximately 30 percent of the total length of the bearing surface, which means a commensurate decrease of surface contact with the bore. The result is less pressure (all other things equal), and less copper fouling. With Barnes also claiming better accuracy for these new bullets as well, I wanted to be first to try `em in the field.

Unfortunately, production of the 7mm/140 Triple Shock bullet wasn’t scheduled for another couple of months, so the examples they sent me were individually machined one-at-a-time and as such, they could spare only 60 of them. It was good luck though that the first powder I tried showed enough promise that by the time I expended 40 of them in load development, I arrived at the one I brought with me to Argentina - one that produced 3-shot groups that averaged 7/8″.

Normally I use a fixed 6x scope, but all of mine were sitting on other rifles, so I mounted the next closest thing I had in terms of size and magnification: a Leupold 2.5-8x in a Leupold mount. So-equipped the gun weighed in at just under 8 lbs., which for me is on the light side.

Anyway, by the end of our third stop that morning we had heard four stags, but none that Eugenio considered close enough to go after. It was dead calm and you could hear forever. “A mile or more,” he said, shaking his head each time. I didn’t dispute him; not only was he a superb guide and hunter himself, he was also the manager of the 30,000-acre cattle ranch we were hunting and knew it and the game intimately.

On our fourth stop we heard four different stags roaring, two of which Eugenio figured were 600-800 yards away. “This one,” he whispered, pointing off into what was now the not-so-dark darkness, as if the critter could hear us from half-a-mile away.

As good luck would have it, this stag continued to roar every few minutes, each time allowing us to more accurately close the distance between us.

“There…” hissed Eugenio, as he pointed ahead, just in time for me to see an animal move off to the right and out of sight. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I assumed it was a female, because he followed with a “…he’s coming.”

Taking him at his word, I instantly assumed a sitting position, and then asked Eugenio to hand me his rifle, a beat-up ol’ Marlin lever action in .45-70 that he’d been carrying every day. Why? Because at that moment in time there was nothing handy — not a tree, rock, or log — that could help steady my rifle, and the grass was too high for the prone position. If a shot presented itself, I figured it was going to be around 200 yards, and that’s further than I can hold steady without some sort of rest.

Using Eugenio’s rifle as a monopod, I put the narrow shooting lane the doe had just crossed in the center of the scope and waited. Within a few seconds another shape emerged from behind the trees to my left. “It’s him, gushed Eugenio, peering through his binocular “…and he’s a good one.”

The shooting lane was only a few yards wide, and the stag would be across it in a couple of seconds. As I tried to center the reticle on the stag’s moving chest, I suddenly heard a grunt emanate from the call Eugenio had been wearing around his neck every day of our hunt. It worked! The stag stopped and turned to face us, his body oriented about 5 o’clock. The moment the reticle settled just inside his right shoulder, I touched off.

We found him lying about 40 yards from where he stood, dead as a stone. The Barnes Triple Shock had clipped some of the heavy shoulder bone, and continued on to shred the heart, along with some of the lungs and liver. The bullet never exited, but we couldn’t find it. Still, it was evident that it had penetrated at least 30″ and obviously expanded properly as well. You can’t ask any more of a bullet.

And that’s how a rifle that started out as a wildcat turned legit…then became a wildcat again…only to become legit again. In that respect, this gun enjoys a unique status among my battery of rifles.

As for Argentina as a hunting destination, I think it’s a great one. This was my sixth trip down there, though my first after big game. Previous hunts were for waterfowl, doves and pigeons. Luis has three big game areas under exclusive lease totaling just under 100,000 acres. Besides Red stag, there’s wild boar, puma, and bear. Like I said, these are fair chase hunts for free-ranging animals and, like here in the States, the hunts have a fixed price; there’s no premiums to be paid if you shoot an unusually good trophy, as is the case in Europe. I like that.

I booked my hunt through Adventure Safaris, Phone 800-883-4868. You can find out more about Bansner’s Ultimate Rifles by checking out their website at www.bansnersrifle.com.