Bart hunted in Mozambique and collected a number of nice trophies with his 338 Federal and North Fork softs and some custom 200gr North Fork solids. Below are a couple of his trophies, a nice Kudu and Reedbuck.

Just returned from Zimbabwe. Used the 458 Lott on everything. The 500 gr flat point solids were incredible on the elephant. One shot with the 500 gr soft point on the buffalo.

Scott Doxey

My son, Bret and I were shooting on Aboriginal land in the outback of the Northern Territory. Feral buffalo are numerous and they are doing substantial environmental damage. If the buffalo and the other feral introduced species are not removed, Australia will be faced with a highly degraded landscape. Although individual efforts are of minimal significance in the overall effort to extirpate the estimated 500,000 buffalo in the northern territory, we tried to do what we could…

Our rifles we a wildcat .41 caliber bolt action loaded with the 360 gr North Fork Soft Point and a 500/416 Nitro Express Krieghoff double rifle equipped with a Doctor Optik red dot sight loaded with 400 gr North Fork Soft points. We took 40 rounds for each rifle and another 50 rounds of 375 cal. North Fork Soft points for our outfitter’s backup 375 JRS.

In all we killed 40 buffalo…(all meat harvested for consumption). The rifles and bullets performed perfectly…This was our second trip to Australia using North Fork soft points. The bullets perform so consistently, and shoot so accurately in our rifles that I can’t imagine seeking superior performance from any other bullet. I am a believer.

Dave Jensen

Bob F. had a very successful safari with Gavin Rorke in Zimbabwe utilizing a Model 70 375H&H with North Fork 300gr Softs and Solids. Bob was successful with buffalo, elephant, impala and lion. The 375 really can do it all.

Sam Kourdas utilized North Fork cup points in a Butch Searcy 470 Nitro Express for a couple of buffalo and a Chapuis 9.3X74 for a lion and a roan. Nice job and wish I were there!

Dave Jensen and his son experienced a great hunt in Australia culling water buffalo and taking a nice trophy bull in the process with his 500/416!

416 bullets recovered from various buffalo

The Advantages Of Using Super-Heavyweight Bullets On Africa’s Thick-Skinned Dangerous Species.

You can’t kill a large-bodied, thick-skinned and dangerous African game animal with ’shock’ like you can a Whitetail.  Regardless of the amount of kinetic energy a bullet may contain, elephant, buffalo, rhino and hippo are just too darn big and ‘absorbent’ for this ballistic component to have a quick and effective killing effect.  What works best on these species are heavy for caliber bullets which penetrate deep and straight and by so doing, they cause extensive damage to the vital internal organs.  The greater the damage to the heart and lungs in particular, the quicker will be the onset of the inevitable.   With regards to the pachyderms, bullet weight (and therefore sectional density), momentum, KO and permanent wound channel size (PWC) are all more important than muzzle velocity and energy.

An exciting new development on the African big game hunting horizon is the current availability of super-heavyweight expanding type bullets in the calibers best suited for Africa’s thick-skinned and dangerous species.  In addition to the more usual 300 grainers, high sectional density 350 and even 380 grainers are now available in .375 caliber.  For both the .416’s and .404 Jeffery, 430 and 450 grain soft points are now being manufactured and marketed.  550 and even 600 grainers can now he obtained for the popular .458’s.  For the .505 and .510 calibers, 600 grainers can now be used - and they are extremely effective.

The primary advantage of ‘heavy-for-caliber’ expanding type bullets lies in their ability to expand to a larger final diameter than that of normally used weights.  This increases the size of the permanen

Super-heavyweight bullets also have significantly better momentum values which ensure that they still penetrate deeply despite their larger final expanded diameter.  Better KO values are another benefit of the super-heavyweights where the enhanced visual effect of bullet impact is very evident.  Overall, it is the increased size of the PWC which primarily makes these bullets so much more effective than regular weight ones while the additional momentum and KO assist greatly with ‘getting the job done’.

Study the following table closely.  Even though super-heavyweight expanding-type bullets are fired with a lower muzzle velocity, they possess better Momentum and KO values than regular weight ones at their usual velocities.   As already mentioned, such bullets also have the ability to expand to a larger final diameter.  This essentially puts the ‘brakes on’ more effectively so to speak and one could assume that penetration will be affected by this fact.  This is however not the case.  On buffalo for example it will be found that the super-heavyweights penetrate as deeply as regular weight bullets and the reason for this is simply as a result of their better momentum values.

As a bullet’s weight increases, so does its Sectional Density.  Muzzle velocity naturally decreases as bullet weight increases.  For all these .375 bullet weights, notice how the muzzle energy value remains pretty constant at slightly more than 4000 ft lbs.  The most important effect of increasing bullet weight lies in its influence on both Momentum and KO.  Notice how they both increase with each successive bullet weight increment.  This, combined with larger final expanded diameters, and consequently larger permanent wound channels, is the secret to the increase in effectiveness of super-heavyweight pachyderm suitable expanding-type bullets. The same effect can be seen with the .416’s, .458’s and .505’s.

So as to complement these new super-heavyweight expanding type bullets, and shoot to the same point of aim, similar weight solids have also been developed.

With regards to solids, the super-heavyweight advantages of better momentum and KO are also very much applicable with this type of bullet and this will be seen in better and deeper, straight-line penetration.

Full body length penetration on these big-bodied species is now possible and regularly achieved.  The advantage of this is that it makes poorly angled, ‘back-up’ shots a lot more effective.  Such solids will now reliably reach the ‘engine room’ of all these species, from any angle, and what an advantage this is, especially for the Professional Hunter backing up his client or those tasked with problem animal control.

Please feel free to contact Kevin Robertson at doctari@kanana.net if you have any queries about these concepts.

North Fork is now offering 375-350gr, 416-430gr, 423-430gr, 458-550gr and 510-600gr bullets to satisfy your heavy for caliber needs.

I’m including a picture of my 2010 Alaskan Brown Bear, taken in October near Chitina AK. Also included are the 35cal/225 grain textbook mushrooms.

The rifle was a 35 Whelen in 700 KS using the 35 caliber/225 grain bonded core bullets. I chose the Northforks based on the reputation for solid penetration and performance and they worked exactly as advertised.

I shot the bear at 100 yards - the initial shot pinned the front shoulders and dropped the bear in its tracks. The bear simply rolled over onto its side and while there was minimal struggle by the animal to get up, I still used a follow-up shot. The recovered bullets in the photo were both found just beneath the hide on the opposite side of the bullet entry and weighed 214.3 and 213.4 respectively.

My guide remarked he’d never seen that sort of performance/reaction from a bear in any bullet/caliber combination from any of his hunters using 375’s and 416’s!!!

Thank you for making a superior product.

Best regards,

Scott Kane

Green Bay, WI

Devin Rowe of “Devin Rowe’s Bronzes” scored this monster bull in Utah using North Fork 7mm 140gr SS out of his 280 Remington. Way to go Devin!