RIFLES
The Latest Hot Tip
Controlled-expansion evolution: Winchester's no-lead E-Tip bullet combines environmental friendliness with smashing performance on tough game.
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Winchester's name on ammunition carries the same cachet as it does on firearms. Back in the days of milk deliveries, surplus Jeeps and 35-cent movie matinees with Andy Devine, hunters could choose the Power-Point or, for tough animals, the Silvertip. A change in the Silvertip's nose during the 1960s diminished that missile's reputation for deep wound channels. Meanwhile, the Power-Point vied with Remington's Core-Lokt and Bronze Point at market. I killed my first deer and several thereafter with Power-Points.
By that time Nosler had established its Partition as the premier bullet for game with substantial bone and muscle. As Barnes turned from traditional lead-core bullets to hollowpoints of solid copper and Texan Jack Carter promoted his new Trophy Bonded Bear Claw, a Kansas farm boy named Lee Reed took the Partition design a big step further with a bonded dual-core bullet. He called it the Swift A-Frame. About then, Winchester hawked its Fail Safe, which combined (essentially) the nose of a Barnes X and the encapsulated lead heel of a Partition, with other refinements.
Suddenly, the world was awash in bullets that would punch through a column of grizzly bears, a Caterpillar engine block and a pair of Douglas firs stout enough for a spotted owl commune. Such bullets, recovered, would weigh about the same as they had in the seating die. Upset characteristics varied, but animals obligingly succumbed when shot through the forward ribs with one of these so-called "controlled expansion" bullets.
Actually, the CE label is a misnomer because all hunting bullets are designed to open in a manner dictated by their design. But the moniker stuck, shorthand for bullets that penetrated beefy animals without fragmenting. Of course, most animals shot by hunters are not beefy at all. Whitetail account for an overwhelming slice of the big-game-harvest pie each fall. The quickest kills on creatures of that build come with bullets that upset easily and expand fully--even fragment.
Sierra, Hornady and Speer had plenty of missiles answering to that description. Most were less costly than any CE bullet. Loaded by Winchester and its competition, .30-06 cartridges with ordinary softpoint bullets retailed for about five bucks a box. Handloaders spent about half that. Yes, this, too, was back when postage stamps cost four cents and pop-music artists wore suits and ties.
But beginning in the late 1950s, high-velocity impact from magnum cartridges on burly animals challenged ordinary softpoints. Jackets ruptured; cores disintegrated. Even deer hunters began to choose CE bullets. Traditional roundnose missiles from Barnes and Bitterroot lacked profiles for flat flight. Newer CE spitzers, however, combined long reach with the toughness to handle up-close collisions with elk.
