First deer with 300 Whisper (new Whisper owner)

[Riverguide]

I've been hunting for years with my sporter-rized Springfield 30.06 and been very happy with the results. A good friend started touting the 300 whisper as being a better cartridge for me considering I never take a shot further then 200 yards and much of the power of the 30.06 is wasted on Virginia White tails. Here are the details:

CZ-527 (originally a 223) rebarreled to 300 whisper; 1:11 twist.
Nosler Ballistic Tip 125 grain being pushed by H110 at 18.5 grains. A simple Nikon Buckmaster 4 x 32 fixed scope for the sight. These were loaded for me by my good buddy that got me into this round.

Results - This was about a 60 yard shot from 16" in a deer stand taken right at sunset. The shot entered at the base on the right rib cage (she was quartering away from me) and exited just behind the left shoulder.

The good - There was NOTHING but bone fragments and jello-ed tissue in the lung cavity. The bullet did its job very well. She made it about 30 yards.

The challenge - There was NO blood trail to follow. A bullet fragment made it thru the hide but was small enough that all the blood stayed contained in the lung cavity. There was a nice beginnings of an exit wound in the rib cage but it stopped at the inside if the skin. Very little blood came thru her mouth as well. It was completely dark by the time I climed out of my stand and it was very hard to find her.

I love the idea of the cartidge and have SSK building me another CZ-527 with a 1:8 twist (paying top $$ but hope its worth it!) and should be at my FFL dealer the second week in December. I seem to have a challenge though shooting like I did my 30.06. I can't depend on a blood trail with that load. As I gain confidence, maybe I will do more head shots.

I have a picture of the inside of the hide with the exit wound if anyone cares to see.

-Riverguide

[martineta]

Pictures please. There is a manage attachments button at the bottom of this screen. You will have to resize the picture before you can put it up on Quarterbore.

Here is a little buck I did a double lung shot on at 180 yards. Ran 150 yards before it bled out. You can see the exit hole. This was shot with 150 Nosler Ballistic Tip pushed by 17.5 gr of H 110 powder. Here's the blood trail picture. Pretty easy to follow.

[martineta]

Here's a doe I shot the same day. Again 150 gr Nosler Ballistic Tip and 17.5 gr, H 110.

Notice plenty of blood laying around and no exit wound on her. She was only 15 yards away and literally ran about three steps and fell over dead. Heart shot.

Anyway,,,,,,,Love the whispers.

Welcome to the World of Whispers Riverguide.

[SgtCottle]

To the OP:

Use a Nosler Partition if you want to guarantee an exit wound so that there will be a good blood trail to follow. With the soft front partition - it expands fairly rapidly at low velocities, and the back half of the bullet is basically a full metal jacket. It will hold up and penetrate through even if it hits bone.

I have them loaded up for my Whisper in my AR-15. There is a lot of flavors to choose from as well. I have lots of 150g and 168g for my supersonic loads and some 220g semi-spritzers for my subsonic loads.

I was worried that the semi-spritzers might have issues feeding since they are cross between a spritzer and a round nose, but they worked great. They clock out at 1020fps using 8.4g of Lil'Gun, and cycle my 16" carbine with the gas block in the pistol position. Even at the lower velocities - the partition is capable of punching through a 4" thick branch on a mesquite tree that I was using as a back stop (on my ranch - in a safe area). The 220g SMK that I had loaded up were sticking in the same 4" branch. Excellent bullets for the Whisper line IMO.

Sarg

Here is the terminal effects of a supersonic .338" 250g partition that I used on this piggy. Most effective bullet I have used yet.

[jacack]

oh my, that looks like it worked, i might have to find some partitions

[Crawdaddy]

Wow. I had not anticipated such performance from the partition. Makes perfect sense, but I had mistakely assumed that the front end would be tougher than it appears to be in real life. Sarge, how fast were you pushing the bullet on that hog?

Does anyone have any experience with the heavy partitions subsonic, particularly their performance on game/piggies?

Crawdaddy

[L1A1Rocker]

Looks like my hunting load is going to be the 220 gr partition bullets. GREAT info. Thank you.

[alorton]

According to Nosler the Partition only expands reliably down to 2000fps. Since the smallest .308" partition is 150gr I would think that would preclude it from use in the 300 Whisper as an effective deer round. Admittedly I have no personal experience with it though. What velocities are you Partition users getting from the Whisper?

The Nosler BT expands down to 1800 and you can get it in 125gr so you can push it faster as well. This would seem like a better fit to me.

If you want something that will hold together look at the new Barnes TSX SBR 110gr bullet. It is designed to expand in the velocity range of the Whisper. According to Barnes it is good from 1500fps to 2300fps. I bought a few hundred but haven't shot anything but paper with them yet (just working up loads).

[Alleycat]

Originally Posted by martineta

Pictures please. There is a manage attachments button at the bottom of this screen. You will have to resize the picture before you can put it up on Quarterbore.

.

Use Photobucket. It's free and you can put huge pic up.

[Rikky Lee]

Also - do not discount the Barnes 130 grainer if you want a tougher bullet than the Nosler BT...