Hornady has been an innovator in polymer tip bullet design and has adapted it to some special uses. Hornady's LEVERevolution loads for lever guns have increased the useful range of a number of classic favorites. Here the polymer tip contributes even less direct influence on the Ballistic Coefficients of the bullets.

Due to the light weight of the bullet and rapid expansion, I do not feel Hornady's polymer tip .460 S&W Magnum load is the best choice for tough, dangerous game, but it does deliver excellent long range performance on deer size animals.

Bullets for lever guns must be short for caliber in order to feed through the action so even LEVERevolution bullets are not streamlined. A sharp spitzer softpoint would be just as aerodynamic but, of course, would not be safe to use in a tubular magazine. The flexible polymer tip makes the pointed bullets safe to use in lever action rifles and ensures expansion at the longer ranges made possible by the flatter trajectory.

Another Hornady brainstorm was the development of polymer tip magnum revolver ammo. In Hornady's .460 and .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum loads the polymer tip clearly serves only one real purpose. A spitzer softpoint could be designed that would deliver nearly as flat a trajectory but in order to have it expand reliably at the longer ranges the jacket would have to be very thin and the core soft. Such a bullet would blow apart on close shots. The polymer tip bullet can be made tough enough to hold together on close shots yet the tip and hollow point design delivers excellent expansion on the low end of the velocity range.

As an avid handgun hunter who enjoys using bottleneck cartridges in Thompson Center single shot handguns, I have learned both by taking game and by ballistic testing just how effective the polymer tip is in ensuring expansion at lower downrange velocities. Many of the softpoint designs intended for rifle velocities will not expand at all below 2000 feet per second.

This presents a serious range limitation when you are launching a bullet at 2500 fps or sometimes less from a short handgun barrel. Polymer tip designs like the Ballistic Tip, Hornady SST, and even the bonded designs like the Accubond expand beautifully at 1800-fps and in some cases even slower. That is why I shoot only polymer tip bullets in my single-shot handguns chambered for bottleneck cartridges.

Due to the excellent expansion of polymer tip bullets at lower velocities, I use them exclusively in my Thompson Center handguns chambered for bottleneck cartridges. Shown here is the 130-grain Accubond in a 6.5 Mini-Dreadnought developed by J.D. Jones of SSK Industries.

Does this mean I think everyone needs a plastic tip on their big game bullets? No. Conventional spitzer softpoints like the Remington Core-Lokt, Winchester Power Point, and many other game bullets I could name have been killing game quite well for a long time and still do. If you are shooting one of the popular bolt gun cartridges and 300-yards is a long shot for you, these time honored softpoints are all you really need for most big game.

Likewise, if you are in pursuit of very large and dangerous game stick with a softpoint properly constructed for the task. On the other hand, if you plan to hunt deer across a large southern bean field, elk across a canyon, or otherwise feel the need to increase the dead right there range of your favorite firearm, polymer tip bullets have a lot to offer.