L to R:
260 gr. Freedom Arms soft nose from FA .454 Casull; 5x6 Bull, 100 yards, quartering to me, entrance point of front shoulder, bullet recovered under hide after breaking opposite shoulder.

260 gr. Freedom Arms soft nose from FA .454 Casull; mature 6X6 bull, bull down with broken back, finisher shot in neck at 10 yards, broke the neck, recovered under hide.

320 gr. T/C Maxiball from 50 cal. T/C Encore ML Pistol, 6X6 bull, 75 yards, through front shoulder, recovered under hide. (Not technically a handgun bullet???)

400 gr. Hornady XTP from Custom Ruger .475 Linebaugh, mature 5X5 bull, bull down with broken back, finisher shot in neck at 15 yards, broke the neck, recovered under hide.

These are the few I have recovered; others have passed all the way through.

Looks like they all did well but that XTP is a tough bullet and I'm guessing since it was recovered that you hit the spine. You ought to weigh each one on your reloading scale to see what the retained weight was. The other fact though is besides being lighter the 454 bullets were moving faster. They all performed well and bottom line is they each added up to a dead elk.

yup, they'll all work, and do so well.

Gregg, Did you weigh the recovered bullets??? I had used the original Freedom Arms 260gr JFP ammo in my 454 to take a Shiraas
moose and weight lose was minimal....

That original FA 260 gr. bullet was a tough, hard rascal.

Lots of linotype!

My gun loves them so I have a BUNCH of them stashed away. I even stashed a good number of the 300s away just in case

I'm about to do some testing w/ the 400 gr. XTP out of my wildcat 475/350 Mag. I'll be pushing it at roughly 1800 fps. We'll see if it's tough enough. I'm betting it should handle anything in NA.

I have some boxes of factory Winchester ammo with that 300gr bullet. I shot at part of an old gate that was 1/4 inch plate from about 25yds. I used a 300gr XTP, 300gr CP, both handloaded to max and the factory ammo. The XTP put a large dimple in the steel the CP dimled it but not as much as the xtp and you could see the splatter marks, the FA bullet in the Win ammo made a large dimple with a clean hole in the middle. It blew straight through like it was butter. I'm holding on to the two boxes of factory ammo I have left in case I ever go after something really big like brownies or maybe moose.

great looking bullets Gregg, Its neat to see the terminal performance.

I think Freedom Arms still has some of the 260's on their website that you can buy. at least the last I checked.

I had kind of an interesting thing just happen,I was walking in to call coyotes and came up on this big slough that 4 beavers in it and they were standing with just their haeds above the water,had one that looked alittle over 50 yds so I plopped down and shoy him square in the head,475L and a 325 gr xtp,his head just vaporized everything above the water was gone.Guess the lesson was dont shoot anything with as hard a head as a beaver with one.

They do, but there is a finite supply of them now. It's too bad. I wish they still produced the 300s.......

Its really interesting to see how those bullets performed on large game,didnt mean to hijack the thread with my other post tho looking at it this morning it certainly appears to be so.

Greg,

Thank you for posting this (and congrats on your elk). I was toting this exact bullet (260 FA JFP) that they do still do sell (FA). I loaded up a bunch for my FA to practice and hunt. No luck on the hunt, but I had a suspicion that they would have worked had I needed them for my cow tag. I did not get a chance to test them this year, as I tend to do with all new bullets (in medium), and I actually could find no web info on their performance before the hunt. It looks like you have more experience with them fully penetrating, and these that were stopped hit major "stuff". Cool.

For a chuckle, I intend on testing these in my 460 Rowland this winter/spring. I was guessing the lead core is pretty dang hard, and my thoughts are that it might behave like a LBT style lead bullet at the lower 460 Rowland velocities. I am thinking a general safety bullet for black bears, and possibly mule deer, depending upon my test results.

Craig

How did the bull react to the hit, did he go far?

Gregg, This is a recovered FA`s 260grJFP bullet that took a Shiras moose in 1999. 60yd shot with bullet entering back of left rib cage, through heart and stopping under the hide near right shoulder. As you can see the lead core is very hard with little deformation. This ammo was original FA`s.... Recovered bullet weighed 258.7grs losing 1.3grs. That bullet sure as heck had a tough lead core...

anybody have any idea how tough the 300 gr buffalo bore 454 jacketed soft point round is? is it the same as the original FA bullet.

I don't think any of them are that tough that's almost like a hardcast which if that's what you want the Punch is the top of the line and much better than the hard cast for reliability and penetration. I know Grizzly uses Hawk bullets as well as the Punch and CP's as they are all owned by the same company. I was just looking at the 454 ammo on BB and there soft points look like Hawks so I checked out the 500 Linebaugh ammo and sure enough the same looking bullet for the SP load which is made by Hawk. Hawk makes the only JFP in .510 cal so I'd say it's safe to say the softpoints they are listing are Hawk bullets.

so they should open up a touch more than that 260 above. that's a tough bullet.

You know, looking at Gregg's and James's bullets it makes me wonder how many times FA has changed there design or distributor? They are both FA bullets but they dont exactly look the same. It makes you wonder what FA changed?

I can say for certain that what you get now when you buy them is what James posted. A JFP with a flat tipped lead core that appears to be very hard. Not sure if they are as hard as his appears, but I will find out. I noted that Gregg said JSP and was kinda wondering if we are indeed talking the same bullet. I knew when I was out hunting with my load a few weeks ago, in my mind I had that the bullet would behave like a hard cast lead bullet, and I was mentally preparing as such for any shooting.

I tend to agree with Rod that perhaps the Punch might be a better solution for "jacketed" that behaves like a lead hard cast, but the upside to the FA bullet is that price wise I can afford to actually shoot the heck out of these. Well, relatively speaking, compared to the Punch. I did not get to chrono them from my Puma in 454, but my load in my 4 3/4 FA is running 1600 fps at the muzzle, so I know from my other 260's (Partitions) that at this level, the rifle will be well into 45-70 territory. I want a HARD core for this dual application.

Craig

FA made that bullet in house. I've seen the jackets in the shop when I was there at one point. They sold all the equipment to another outfit a few years ago but they never have set it up for selling bullets. All of the bullets that I've ever bought from FA look just like James' bullet. FA sold those bullets to Winchester at one point to put in some of their ammo which is why they looked really familiar when you saw them at the store. I have some recovered bullets. Some look just like James' picture and then a couple of the other look more like Gregg's. Each impact is a little different and take a different toll on the bullet.

Some of you know this story:
In 1994, Jannie Otto and I belly crawled to within revolver shooting distance of a herd of blue wildebeest in the Transvaal. At about 75 yds., I rose to my knees after picking out the largest bull and fired. The bull bucked, his knee hit the ground, and he ran to the right.
We rose and moved forward to pick up a blood trail when a cloud of dust appeared at the sight of the hit. When we got there we found a second somewhat smaller dead bull that had been unseen, behind the largest. That 260 gr. FA bullet at a MV of 1750 fps penetrated through TWO broadside blue wildebeest. That's a tough bullet.

Weighing the others wouldn 't work as I drilled a hole in them to hang on a chain along with each bull's ivories:



But the 400 gr. XTP that I just killed the 5X5 with weighed 356 grains.

Wildshot, That bull hunched up and stumbled at the shot, then walked downhill about 40 yards and lay down in a clump of aspen trees. As I reloaded the muzzle loader pistol, I would periodically glass him; suddenly he gave a big kick with his hind legs and lay his head down, and was out for good.

They all did their job.

That is a cool comparison, thanks for posting it!