The reason I am asking is that I already have some experience with them in the smaller calibers and was wondering if they would work similarly in bigger bores.

About two years ago, one of my customers sent me an article from the "Journal of the Texas Trophy Hunters" - Horace Gore - talking about the use of the .224 TTH on Whitetail deer. The .224 TTH is a 6MM Remington necked down to .22, and has some pretty impressive ballistics. Those folks were playing with shooting deer with .224 bullets - tried a bunch of them, including the 50 grain Barnes X, along with some of the heavier VLD type bullets. Through the 8 inch twist barrel, they used the 75 A-Max, 77 Sierra HPBT Match, and a number of other long range target bullets. The article indicated that, although most all of the bullets tested would kill deer, some were better than others and some were more consistent than others. The best of the lot appeared to be the 75 grain A-Max at about 3700 fps. Shot in the ribs, deer hit with this bullet were a 100% "lights out" kill - could not take even a single step. The bullets appeared to penetrate several inches without any expansion, and then explode - sending lots of shrapnel through the vitals.

Well, .224 calibers are not legal for big game here in Colorado - but I began to wonder what this bullet's big brother - the 105 grain 6MM A-Max - would do on big game. I had a 6MM-284 with a 10" twist - it wouldn't stabilize that bullet - but I shot it into some expansion medium, and it performed similarly to what the article described for the 75 grain .224 A-Max - penetrated about four inches and then cam apart, creating a huge wound channel in the medium. The biggest piece of the bullet I could find weighed only 7 grains.

Shortly thereafter, I ordered a Jeff Lawrence .243 SS blank with a 9" twist. Finally got it about a year later (these barrels are worth the wait) - chambered it for the 6MM-284 - it shot the 105 grain A-Max into .3" at 3443 fps. In a late season elk hunt back in January, I shot a mature cow elk in the ribs broadside at about 250 yards. Elk went down "lights out". And a field "autopsy" indicated the same basic expansion as the earlier tests - penetration through the ribs with almost no expansion, and then an area of shrapnelled organs about the size of a volley ball - right in the middle of the chest. I know this is only one animal . . . . but elk are hard to kill, and almost never go down DRT from a rib shot. Plus we had shot another cow out of this herd only about ten seconds before this one was shot, so you can guarantee they were up on their toes full of adrenlin. Now I am kinda wondering about some of the other bullets in this A-Max line up . . . . . And I'm planning on some additional tesing on this one. Roscoe