I am not an expert in ammo. In fact, I pretty much have my ammo purchases down to either Socially Select Situation or target ammo.

However back in the 90's, I bought a lot of Black Talon ammo in 9mm, .40S&W, .45ACP and a few boxes in .44mag. I shot some, sold some and still have some.

Now I am paying more attention to my ammo purchases, well other than the target .45acp.

Was Black Talon ammo any better than the other ammo on the market at the time? Is the original BT any better than what followed it such as the SXT or Ranger T?

Is there a better bullet on the market today or does it really make a difference?

The shooting victims I have dealt with, if they survived, were more concerned about being shot than what they were shot with. Those that did not survive had nothing to say about the ammo that hit them but the coroners did a little more carving on them to remove the projectiles.

I suppose it all boils down to which ammo you would buy today for the best performance available. The group here appears to really know their stuff about ammo

Black Talon is still being sold, just with a friendlier name and friendlier packaging. Winchester might have made some slight improvements, and there is a Bonded version available as well, but for the most part SXT and T Series loads are Black Talons.

The debate over which SD ammo is best has been done too many times to count. To this ammunition in particular though, take a look at this video. Would you want that bullet cutting through your body? I certainly wouldn't...

.40 S&W Winchester Ranger T-Series 165 gr Ammo Test - YouTube

I think it's mostly hype. The greatest value is probably with the collectors. But there is still a lot of misinformation floating around. Some people who should know better still insist that it will penetrate body armor. One of my co-workers claims it will shoot through his body armor "like it isn't even there." I'll take a bonded core bullet like a Gold Dot or something all copper like an XPB over anything Black Talon. The only problem I have with the modern ammo is the velocity tends to be watered down. The Black Talons I have in 9mm and .357 Magnum are loaded with bullets that are heavy for caliber. I think that's good, but I have never shot any over the chrono to see just how fast they go.

Occasionally Black Talon ammo shows up on the street but I doubt that the thugs are deliberately seeking it out or even know what it is. To my knowledge none of our shooting or homicide victims has been shot with it. As I see it, bullet placement and penetration are the two most important aspects of handgun stopping power. Nice sharp petals on expanded bullets are always nice and desirable, but if the added frontal area compromises penetration due to a soft shooting loading that lacks velocity, then I wouldn't be interested.

Dave Sinko

I think that bullet placement and what works in you gun is more important. I keep just plain old Federal 185 grain hollow points in my Kimber compact. as long as I watch the front sight I will be fine. hopefully that day doesn't come.

i have all ways told the young guys there is no magic bullet, the secret is in shot placement, one of our officers shot a suspect twice with black talon 9mm and neither bullet expanded, however the suspect crossed the river jordan anyway.

Haven't shot any, but the tests I have seen, show it to be a late expander.

There are better loads around.

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NRA Instructor

Its mostly hype, IMO. BT were good rounds back in their day, however. It is my understanding that Winchester's current line of T-series JHP's are the modern day descendants of the BT.

In the grand scheme of things, shot placement is number one, followed by a bullet that will penetrate adequately through intermeadiate barriers like a forearm, glass, etc and still reach the vitals of an attacker to stop him. Expansion and other factors are quite secondary, IMO, to the first two which are nearly of equal importance. (I do love a big expanding JHP, but I don't believe in sacrificing penetration to achieve it.) You've got to put the bullet where it needs to be and once there, the bullet needs to penetrate enough to stop the threat. Everything else is icing on the cake.

The method used to pierce the jacket and form the hollow point left little 'claw-like' points which looked cool when a fired and expanded bullet was recovered from ballistic gel , and gave the image of razor sharp points cutting thru flesh and causing horrible wound channels.

The advertising department got the hype they wanted , from the news media after a few shootings.

Be careful what ya wish for.

I have a unique view on many things. Bullets is one one of them. I do not care to be hit by any bullet of any caliber or in any location of my old, fat body.

Since I believe in and carry a 1911 in .45acp, I shoot a lot of FMJ 230 grain shells on range. It is my belief that a person shot with such a round is not going to care what type bullet hit it's mark or how fast it was going but only if they will survive.

Sure, I have the BT rounds here and I have some in magazines but as has been mentioned, there may be more hype in their ability than factual data. I know one man that staggers his mag loading with a BT, a FMJ, a BT and a FMJ and so on. In reality, it make make his supply of BT last longer that way, assuming he gets to shoot someone with them.

I have also read some data that suggests there was an edge given to the BT over current production bullets. If I have seen someone that has been shot with BT, I am unaware of it.

My personal experience with the original "Black Talon" 200 grain from S&W1006 10mm to finish off a wounded deer showed the classic opened expansion...however the shot placement was to the base of the skull & neck, the bullet entered on the right side point of aim, when weht thru between the vetabrae, turned down the neck, it spiraled down the neck muscle showing the spiral cuts in a massive wound channel and I recovered the bullet in the top of the left shoulder.

With those the jacket started to seperate some and it did shed off pieces...

Black Talon ammo is SXT ammo and is marked as such on the boxes. It was the first release of Winchesters new reverse taper jacketed hollow points with the thickness at the front hollow edge being thicker and tapering towards the base.

It ran into a lot of negative press after a highly publicized shooting and mass murder on a public transportation train. So Winchester got rid of the black bullet coating and the Black Talon name and rounded the talons a bit for public relations and continued to sell them as SXT personal defense ammo to the public. For a long time the LEO ammo still had the black coating but their ammo was always branded as Ranger SXT's. All of which never changed the ammo's effectiveness.

There has been some modifications to the SXT line over the years but its essentially the same stuff as the Black Talon just new product branding.

The latest Winchester changes is the bonded Ranger SXT for LEO's and the most recent PDX1 which is currently sold to both law enforcement and the general public.

Like said above, BT ammo is still being sold and the newer ammo is better than the older version which you would expect after 20+ years more of development. BT ammo at the time was a better bullet than most other available. It expanded well and produced sharp pedals that did a lot of damage to tissue. However, they were not "COP Killers" like the anti-gun media proclaimed. The were no better at penetrating vests than any other ammo available at the time.

Given the choice I would shoot the new over the old because it's better...

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Freedom is never free!!
SWCA #3437

The most recent update of the Black Talon seems to be the PDX-1 stuff currently sold by Winchester/Olin. I've done some testing with it in wetpack, water jugs, and duxseal, and it's been consistently good. It's what I now carry in my 5-inch 45's, though I'm not convinced it does as well in shorter barrels.

Martin Fackler, a well-respected wound ballistics expert, said that the beautiful temporary wound cavities you see in the pictures result in little permanent damage. Sharp edges do, however, create damage that lasts beyond the cavity. Thus was born the Black Talon. The round was effective, but got a lot of bad press from emergency room surgeons who complained that the points penetrated surgical gloves (as well as the fact that it was black). If you look iinside the nose cavity of SXT bullets you will usually see blunted points. The "Law Enforcement Only" SXT's, much of which was sold on the civilian market, did have the sharp points, as the PDX1 appears to also have.

Bob

I haven't done any experimentations on the old BT vs the Ranger T but did an unscientific experiment back in the mid 90's with several common brand at the time...the 45 ACP 230 gr BT and Corbon's version of the Flying Ashtray, which was Speer's 200 gr mammoth hollow point at 1050 fps. This is what they looked like after penetrating wet phone books at 15 feet.

I can vouch to the fact the old BT had pedals extremely sharp. I had put one in my pocket to show one of the LEO's at work, reached in to show him and got cut to the point of blood from one of the pedals.

I did an article a while back on ammo like that, mostly about the Black Talons.

The Myth of the Cop Killer Bullet - Guns News and Guns Reviews at Guns.com

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Vaya con Dios

That Congress"woman" McCarthy just goes to show what most women know about arms and ammo...zero. It's all hype to get an office and pray on the public's sentiment. McCarthy’s ignorant and had no knowledge about ballistics whatsoever. This sort of thing just hacks me off. Know what you're talking about and back it up by evidence before trying to get the uneducated to believe your story. I wonder what she would have said about the European BAT round?

From all I've read, as for the BT, it was only working well in 45 ACP caliber, which is what it was initially designed for from all I understand.

Having removed a hundred or more of these bas+++ds from people unfortunate enough to have been shot by one, I can tell you that the "nice sharp petals" are NOT very nice if you are fishing them out. That is why I always trained my resident physician's to X-ray the corpse before wading in so that they would know what they were looking for.

They do a lot of damage! As for their piercing ability, a good friend of mine, a major in a local PD, was shot some years ago by one of his own men in a Chinese Fire Drill household shoot out. Fortunately, he had on a vest. The round did not penetrate the vest, BUT gave him a deep bruise, the size of a dinner plate and broke two ribs.

I believe that the newer rounds do just as much damage, but are friendlier to remove.

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Doc Garrett
Dead Man's Doctor

In late 93 or early 94 (I believe) I personally fired two 357 Black Talons through the front panel of one of our concealed body armor vests, the round was fired from a 4 inch Model 19 at about 3 feet from the panel...
I tried other BT rounds, and none of them penetrated the armor....but the 357 did.
However, I suspected then, as I do now, that for the most part, the BT drama was 90% talk and 10 % walk....

With all that has been said, sell the Black Talon rounds. Collectors are paying stupid money for them. Then take your profits and buy more of what you really want.

Excellent article, David. I'd never understood what Teflon had to do with anything..........but it sounded plausible!

Several years ago I did a little back yard testing of ammunition using a Fackler Water Box. My box was designed to hold Quart zip loc bags of water.
Their is a conversion table to compair the water penetration to ballistic jell.

What I found with the original Black Tallon load was, that it penetrated way to deep. When it did come to a stop it did look impressive however. Very sharp petals.

I am very surprised that the DOC recovered any in bodies. From my testing I figured you would have probably 95% pass throughs on front to back shots with them. I think I was testing 10mm and 45 acp only. I would need to inventory my envelopes with recovered bullets to see for sure.

Bob

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ICORE MO2908

I shot a yote with one. he did dot think it was a target friendly round. enterance was itty bitty, blew out the other side. I have some win JHP that do not do the same job. they do look like BT though.

We discuss the penetration or over penetration thing all the time. Problem is, we don't get to pick our attacker, they pick us. Black Talon is a line (or was a line) of products. 357s, 9mm. and 44 Mag are the ones I think I still have around. Those cover a wide range of penetration characteristics. You can have an attacker that weighs 110# and any thing will probably shoot front to back. Or one that weighs 275 and your shot isn't head on, its side to side. And of them will do an admirable job. Or maybe its a mean old black bear. I'd like the additional penetration in that scenario. In fact, I'd like the 44 to open up to 75 caliber and spin like a propeller as it chews its way along.

As others always inject, there are newer bullet designs that purportedly perform better. Maybe. It might not be the best design this year, but it still a darn good one. Anybody who takes one or more is a hurtin' fool.

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Dick Burg

I've used both the teflon coated round as well as the new gliding jacket'd bullet...I guess I prefer the newer Winchester Ranger.

This is a .45 ACP Ranger bullet retrieved from 16" of water.
When you think about it, what with a 1 in 16 or so of twist it could make about a full revaluation.

45 ACP 230 gr. Winchester Ranger


Su Amigo,
Dave

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"IN GOD WE TRUST"

In the hysterical media reports, it was claimed to go through a person's body "spinning like a propeller". In reality, it makes less than one turn in a foot. Not that I would want it to go through me, whether the petals were spinning or not.

Regarding the 110 lb vs the 275 lb attacker:
Don't forget that in addition to the attacker being huge and sideways, he could be crouching, have on a thick winter coat, etc, etc.

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You're shy a few manners.

Yup,
Need to think 'bout sum hardball for that winter time garb

Su Amigo,
Dave

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"IN GOD WE TRUST"

I figure if the hollow point gets plugged and doesn't expand.........it IS Hardball!

I believe your right.

Su Amigo,
Dave

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"IN GOD WE TRUST"