A long time ago, a friend and my brother and I headed north to Alaska and a big Ford diesel pickup truck.

Because I was really into historic firearms even back then, I packed a model 1874 reproduction, sharp

single-shot rifle loaded with heavy home-cast lead bullets over a healthy

charge of black powder. My brother packed his Browning made model 1886

lever action rifle loaded with zesty 400 grain jacketed bullet hand loads. The only practical member of our group took his

preschool model 70 in 30-06, stoked with hand-loaded 180 grains X bullets.

This was my first experience with X bullets.

Now I helped my friend work up his handloads,

and we encountered all the usual issues associated with those early all copper bullets.

Lots of copper fouling in the boar. Early pressure signs, elusive accuracy, and so forth. However, we ended up with a good load that we believed

would perform well on moose and bear and, in a pinch, would penetrate well enough to be effective on a grumpy grisly that needed to be shot

nose to tail.

Now our plan was to hunt moose and caribou and black bears and we tried, but we were pretty inexperienced and although we spent six weeks all in

round trip including a week driving going and a week driving coming home we ended ended up with just one Black Bear. Did I shot with that?

Sharp's rifle. My friend never got a shot, so I didn't get to see those loads at work in the field.

But over the years as Barnes developed the extraordinary

triple shock bullet and then the MRX and the TTSX and finally the cutting edge LRX that is, in my opinion at least, the company's

flagship bullet. Well I followed along using them whenever I got the chance.

Now I was always very opposed, morally opposed to being forced to use non-led bullets, and I still

am.

However, I recognized early on that the advantages of

monom metal bullets actually can be a benefit in certain situations and I've seen

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