Thread: Sierras new Game changer bullets

Originally Posted by rambo-6mmrem

Asked Reloaders that yesterday haven’t arrived yet on order though a couple of months away apparently
Apparently nz is one of the First
Countries outside the us that will have them landed

They are here in NZ already. The NZ Guns & Hunting magazine got some to try out a few weeks ago.

I think we'll be waiting for the Gamechanger's in the UK for a while yet. I'll try them out in my 6x45 as soon as I can get my hands on some.

Originally Posted by Gillie

They are here in NZ already. The NZ Guns & Hunting magazine got some to try out a few weeks ago.

Cool might just be samples? Hopefully not keen to try some 130’s in 6.5 cm

Holding their weight, expanding at ordinary long rang ranges and punching right through sounds the ticket for me - especially if they are cheaper than Barnes TTSX and not as fiddly to get to shoot.

Originally Posted by Gillie

I hope they stabilise in your 1:10" twist barrel - I have heard mixed reviews...

Yeah, so do I. The Sierra techs say they definitely will, which is bold but probably because they've tested a shit load of them. The stability calcs look good. Important to use the JBM one or another that allows for the length of the plastic tip.

Any updates on how these work on reds? Got a long throated 284 and looking for a bush load. Shoots TMKs nicely, but not sure these will hold up at very close quarters on big stags

My cuz in Colorado said the .30 cal 165gr worked "okay but not great" or words to that effect in their deer season late last year. Also bush stalking, mule deer, which is a pretty good proxy for decent reds. Can't remember the specifics but worked well on the one, and not so well on the other, along the lines of over penetration and not much peripheral wounding. Was a very long runner.

He has dropped it and gone back to the GameKing. assume its also 165gr.

I might be able to get photos, he's up in the oilfields now so won't hear back for a while probably.

The 90 gr in 243 may be the ticket, a bit more penetration could be a good thing so long as it expands ok on the way through.

Sierra recently released a new series of plastic tipped hunting projectiles called the ‘GameChanger’. Sierra has produced some great traditional lead nose hunting bullets over the years with their GameKing and Pro-Hunter lines and I have used them to shoot a lot of animals. The packaging labels them as Tipped GameKings and they are a lead-alloy core projectile with a tapered copper jacket and translucent green polymer tip. I knew that if they performed anything like a traditional GameKing then Sierra would be on to a winner.

I managed to get hold of a small quantity for testing in 6.5mm and 7mm and decided to load them in my Custom 7mm Short Action Ultra Magnum and .264 Winchester Magnum to test in close and at extended ranges to 500m on game. NZ Ammunition Company supplied me with some H1000 powder manufactured by Hodgdons to try which is very close in burn rate to AR2217.
After loading up some ladders starting a few grains under my AR2217 load data I headed to the range with the LabRadar to determine my speeds and see which combinations shot best. The 7 SAUM is built on a Defiance Machine action and has a Proof Research carbon fibre wrapped barrel with a Trigger Tech trigger and AG Composites carbon fibre stock. It is a consistent ¼ MOA shooter and was put together by Mark Macfarlane at Desert Guns in Cromwell. It proved itself again by pushing the 165 grain GameChangers at 3100 fps and producing a 10mm group centre to centre. Happy with that I switched over to my semi-custom .264 Winchester Magnum built by Master Rifle-Smith Robbie Tiffen at Gunworks Canterbury. The Mighty .264 did not disappoint producing a 11mm group pushing the 130 grain GameChangers at 3153 fps.

Since all the hard work was done it was time to test these new projectiles on some game. Heading to my favourite spot in the Wairarapa with my four-year-old daughter Isla, we tried to locate a fallow spiker for some Spring venison. Lady Luck was not on our side and with the Manuka planting about to go ahead the Cocky had asked us to remove as many Goats as we could. I set up on the first two Billy Goats feeding up a native covered face 300m away. With the camera rolling I dispatched the first with a neck shot dropping him instantly. Observing the ‘dead right there’ performance of the 7mm GameChangers when striking bone, I elected for a rear lung shot on the second goat who hadn’t moved thanks to the muffled report of the ASE UTRA suppressor. Aiming for the crease of the shoulder, I gently squeezed of the shot with the camera rolling. The sound of a good hit came back and the goat staggered forward three feet and dropped, never to rise again. Once we recovered the animals it was clear the Tipped GameKings were completely penetrating and leaving 20mm exit wounds. The neck shot offered more resistance and therefore a more emphatic result with a very large exit about the size of my palm.

Happy at close range we elected to try to shoot some at 300m plus, I say we but really, I was keen to keep shooting and Isla was interested in the contents of the packed lunch! With the promise of a boiled sweet we moved to higher ground and settled in behind the .264 Win Mag. There was a consistent 15 mile per hour wind blowing from our four o’clock and it made wind calls challenging but having practiced regularly in these conditions I was confident in stretching out to 450m. There were plenty of goats feeding between 250-450m and I settled on a lone nanny with two juveniles. With a 1.4 mil elevation correction and 1 mil of wind on I sent a 130 grain bullet into the crease of the goat. Jumping at a good hit she ran at a dead run for 30m before piling up out of view of the camera. I manged to shoot another pair of billies in the thick gorse with the .264 at 350m and a mob of nine goats was thinned to two at 400m before we switched back to the 7mm SAUM. With all of the shooting most of the animals had gone to ground for good reason and with Isla’s patience running thin we shot a final nanny at 400m with the SAUM. Facing towards us I aimed right between the shoulder blades and at the shot it dropped instantly.

Once Isla and I had recovered as much meat as possible we hiked up the ridge to the side by side and headed back for a well-earned cuppa. All told we took twenty-five goats and the Sierra GameChangers proved to be a good reliable bullet. There was a marked difference in the stopping power in favour of the 7mm and I would primarily put this down to shot placement on my behalf and bore size. Back at home I sectioned a bullet to reveal a thick jacket and deep hollow point beneath the polymer tip. The ogive starts at .038” and thickens to .044” at the base. This combined with the lead-alloy core produces good terminal performance on light game such as the feral goats I was shooting and will no doubt provide even better results on deer.
Remember if you want to shoot at extended ranges on game then have the respect to go out and practice in those conditions which you want to shoot in. Understand your ballistics, use aids such as rangefinders, ballistic apps to calculate windage and elevation and film your shots so you can learn from them a dog to locate your game. Always use a bullet designed to expand at the distance you intend to shoot and remember, perfect practice makes perfect.

Sierra have designed another great product and I’m looking forward to trying out the .277 140 grain in the 270 Winchester on Thar later in the year.
Warm barrels and stay safe out there!

literally say's tipped gamekings on the box...

Originally Posted by Flyblown

That’s not the case mate. I read a lot about these new Sierras a few weeks and concluded that they are designed to be a much tougher bullet than the GameKing. Then I emailed Philip Mahin at Sierra and asked him straight up. Correct, much thicker jacket, tougher alloy core. Not a GameKing at all. A very specific 1800fps limit on expansion, which no doubt some long range shooters will find out about the hard way.

This is a deep penetrating, tough, heavy game bullet. It will blow straight through most of our game species in NZ. The only applications I might consider using it would be heavy pigs or maybe the largest sambar / red / wapiti stags in the 200-400m range.

I am hoping my cuz in the US will have a detailed report for me after deer season there in the next few weeks as he wants to try them, but has similar reservations.

The GameKing / ProHunter design is ideal for our deer species. They are the same partially fragmenting design, bar the obvious boat tail / flat base. The limitation is their low BC. In the drop tests I’ve done with five common hunting bullets in 6mm, 7mm and .308 the GameKings always came last for accuracy at 400m. But as an effective killer, their track record is right up there obviously.

I think its fair to say that many hunters on this forum would be a bit wary of runners from over penetration and limited or no fragmentation, which has been my experience of using bullets designed for tough game on red skins and fallow.

Based on my experience (have yet to shoot a deer) I concur with what @Flyblown is saying.

Will publish the footage for all to see this evening and you can make your own mind up.

Good report @300blk, I have read mixed reports about these bullet some saying they are to hard and don't expand well but your results tell a different story. Can't beat first hand experience.

Good video, most those goats went down very quickly, performance appears to be as good as any plastic tip type bullet.

Its interesting @Mooseman, I'm seeing a little bit of reluctance in the last couple of statements in the text to give them a wholehearted thumbs up?

Most of our game animals here are pretty thin skinned and light bodied compared to elk or bear for example. I am 90% sure from my conversations with the bloke at Sierra that it is the North American proper big game that they have targeted these bullets at. Likewise I am seeing more and more very ordinary reviews coming in from the US after the deer season, last quarter of last year...

In higher SD calibres like 6.5, hard bullets are a worry on light bodies game.

Gut feel is that compared to a fragmenting bullet design a lot of guys are going to find out the hard way that deer can run a very long way if their locomotion isn't immediately disabled by a GameChanger. Narrow wound channels is a concern for me. If I compare some of the neat pics of mushrooms in the marketing material, to the wide open petals and fragmented lead and bits of jacket I get from an ELD-X, I know which one I would rather have doing the work at the business end.