I have been a die hard Barnes guy for over a decade now. I dont have a a manbun but in .264 I have had awesome performance with the 127LRX in .260 and 6.5G on elk, and I would always steer someone that way. I switched to Barnes after I had two offside elk shoulders spattered with lead and ruined by SST's dissolving. That said when I built the new .260 CDG earlier this year I decided I was going to try the 140TGK and use it as an all around bang steel as well as hunt with it for elk, deer, pigs and speed goats. I had heard good enough things about the bullet being accurate and staying together so I bought 1000 of them and thought it would be nice to have a one load gun for once. I was going to put a thread up at the end of the season on the 140 TGK but since you asked, I'll just put the info I have here.
I got a consistent .6 MOA (off of bipod and bag) load out of the 140 TGK with H-4350, though it is a little slow (16" barrel @ 2650fps). The bullet has killed everything that has been shot with it this year. It's had some pretty good action because a buddy as well as the old lady hunted with the gun this year, which is probably going to cost me another CDG build for her. "This is so much nicer than my Savage" LOL, ya think? Anyway, I killed a buck pronghorn at 120 yds with a quartering frontal and the bullet exited in two places in front of the off side back ham, all I found was the tip and one piece of jacket back by rear flank. It is the first time I have seen dual exit wounds. She killed a doe pronghorn at 440 behind the shoulder, didn't find anything but liquid lungs. Then I killed a cow elk at 380 broadside and found three pieces of jacket in rib meat that weighted 8-12 grains each, no exit wound. I killed a decent 6 point bull at 20 yards and as expected, found nothing, broadside passthrough caught a rib on the way out. Then a buddy killed a small 4 point bull at 180 and I found the base .5" of the jacket splayed out still bonded to some of the core that weighed 70 grains which was up against the offside hide. I headshot a doe at 60 and had explosive results as one could imagine and didn't find any bullet, not that I really did much checking since it was a mess. I'll go back to Bama here in a couple weeks and hopefully see what these do on pigs and maybe another deer, though I'll mostly be trying to buck hunt with my bow.
All in all the bullet has killed well and is definitely accurate at banging steel. Ive shot it out to 800M several times and haven't had a problem banging sub 2 MOA steel shot after shot. I dont love that Im finding so many small pieces of jacket all over the place so I'll probably end up building a load for the CDG with the 127 LRX for next hunting season, especially for elk (though I should draw my bow tag next year). I didn't find any lead paste like with the SST but I was hoping Sierras Gamechanger technology and and "thicker jacket" were going to hold together a little better. The only thing I found resembling a mushroomed jacket/ core was the 70 grain piece, which had lost half its weight. What it does seem to do better than Barnes is dump all of it energy for the most part in the critters, I guess by falling apart. I have only recovered two barnes bullets ever, both of them were beautifully petaled out and weighed within 10-12 grains of the total weight by only losing a piece of petal or 2. One of them I found was on a bull elk frontal and the was in the hip, so what, almost 50 inches of penetration. The other was a big old bull at 400 and it clipped the edge of scapula, broke the humerus on the off side and was up against the hide. Both of those were .30 168 TTSX. All the other Barnes including every 127 LRX have made it into the ether and left two holes.
