Barnes New Harvest Ammunition Line Review

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Barnes and Sierra have teamed up and brought to market a line of ammunition loaded with cutting-edge cup-and-lead-core bullets. That’s right, Barnes is loading lead bullets in factory ammunition. Specifically, Sierra’s Tipped GameKing projectile. In my questionably humble opinion, it’s the best cup-and-core bullet currently being made.

I’ll lay out the why behind that enthusiastic statement in a moment. First, in case you’re breaking out the tar and feathers and swearing that Barnes has blasphemed itself by “going lead,” it’s worth noting that the aptly named Barnes Original bullet is a lead-core line of projectiles optimized for use in traditional cartridges like .348 Winchester and .45-70 Gov’t.

Plus, of course, Barnes makes the excellent lead-core Match Burner line of projectiles. Although known for inventing and producing the best all-copper bullet on the market, Barnes has actually been making lead-core bullets longer than all-copper bullets. However, Barnes isn’t actually making the bullets it’s loading in the Harvest collection. That honor goes to sister company Sierra Bullets. Why? Because Sierra is so darned good at making high-end cup-and-core bullets. You know, the sort that are affordable to blue-collar whitetail hunters yet offer up-town terminal performance and Sierra’s legendary accuracy.

Let’s dig into the nitty gritty of this new Harvest ammo line. For starters, it’s assembled using premium primers and premium brass cartridge cases. This is not a small thing. As my old accuracy mentor always told me, the Three Bs of Accuracy are barrel, bullets, and brass. It goes without saying that you must have an accurate rifle barrel and load it with consistent, accurate bullets to achieve great precision…but as he said, brass quality also is essential.

I’ve used Barnes factory ammo that legitimately and consistently produces sub-half-MOA accuracy. Even when tested via three consecutive five-shot groups fired through a lightweight (but super-accurate) hunting rifle. That tells me all I need to know about the quality of brass that Barnes uses.

The quality of your rifle’s barrel is entirely up to you. There’s nothing Barnes can do to ensure that entity of the Three B’s of Accuracy is up to snuff. However, in choosing to load Sierra’s Tipped GameKing (TGK) projectile in the Harvest ammo line, Barnes made the most of that other “B” and optimized accuracy potential. In the lead-core hunting bullet realm, few others are as consistently precise.

Bullet Design and Terminal Performance

Because the TGK is the biggest departure from the Barnes MO here, let’s dig deeper. In essence, the TGK is a copper-jacketed, lead-core bullet with a boattail and a polymer tip. Nothing unusual about that.

What is unusual is that the TGK tends to be a tougher bullet than its competitors. Cup-and-lead-core bullets mushroom massively on impact, which enables them to kill swiftly on deer-size game but can compromise penetration on bigger-bodied game, such as elk, moose, bison, and large bears. If large bones are impacted, massive fragmentation and sometimes complete disintegration can occur, leading to penetration failures. Jacket-core separations are common (and undesirable) when cup-and-core bullets hit heavy muscle and bone. When separation occurs early, the unprotected soft lead core is usually shredded to bits and fails to penetrate deeply.

Bonding the core to the jacket (by soldering or electro-bonding, etc.) cures this malady, but that is expensive and adds a step that—when imperfectly done—can degrade accuracy. To provide a bullet that is both super accurate and affordable, most makers stick with non-bonded cup-and-core designs.

To prevent jacket-core separation many bullet companies employ a mechanical locking device. Although the mechanical lock works well at moderate impact velocities—for example the sort of speeds generated by the .308 Winchester—it usually won’t survive high-speed impacts like those produced by magnum cartridges.

Examples of this type are Remington’s Core-Lokt and Hornady’s InterLock. Sierra does not use a mechanical lock, and the TGK is not bonded like more expensive hunting bullets. So how does the company prevent bullet disintegration on impact?

One method is to use a thick jacket that resists easy deformation. Most companies draw the nose portion of the bullet’s jacket quite thin, to allow mushrooming to initiate and reliably occur. Jackets thicken in a reverse taper toward the shoulder of the bullet to arrest further development of the mushroom. This is a challenging process to achieve consistently, and the thicker the jacket becomes, the more difficult the process is. Many—even most—bullet companies don’t push that envelope hard, preferring to stick with the easy-accuracy characteristic of thin copper jackets.

Sierra does not take the easy road and is a master of producing relatively thick bullet jackets consistently. Whatever process the company uses, it results in superbly precise bullets.

The final step to preventing bullet blowup in a cup-and-core design is to harden the lead core with some sort of alloy. Again, when done improperly, this can lead to less-accurate projectiles. Sierra does nothing improperly, and the Tipped GameKing has become legendary for its accuracy.

Although not mechanically locked together, TGK bullets tend to hold together better than competing designs in my experience. I believe this is due to the TGK’s combination of thick jacket and hardened core. TGKs aren’t as tough as bonded-core bullets, and aren’t nearly as tough as monometal bullets, but they’re tough enough for most game.

I’ve seen this emphasized in heavy-for-caliber versions, such as the 175-grain 0.277-inch-diameter TGK that’s become so popular in the 6.8 Western cartridge. I’ve observed that bullet drive completely through the muscled shoulders of a big zebra stallion before coming to rest against the offside hide. I’ve seen it kill elk with full pass-throughs. In my opinion, it’s a prime example of how a perfectly engineered cup-and-core bullet should perform.

Ballistics

How about ballistics? Are the Sierra Tipped GameKing bullets loaded in the new Barnes Harvest collection aerodynamic enough to satisfy modern precision hunters? The answer is yes, within reason. Most iterations have ballistic coefficients competitive with similar-weight modern hunting bullets from Nosler, Hornady, Swift, and so forth.

That said, Sierra has not attempted to push the BC envelope to the max. The company’s advertised BC numbers are not inflated or even optimistic. They’re accurate, practical, and realistic. You’ll find that when you plug the BC of a TGK into your ballistic app, little truing is needed at the range.

If my eyes do not fool me, Sierra’s heavy-for-caliber TGKs have a hybrid tangent/secant ogive, which refers to the shape of the bullet’s nose. Ballistic testing has shown that while secant ogives tend to have better in-flight aerodynamics, tangent ogives are more forgiving in how they engrave into the rifling leade when the cartridge fires and propels the bullet down the barrel. By incorporating a brief section of tangent profile right at the projectile’s shoulder, where it contacts the rifling, Sierra maintains accuracy. By configuring the rest of the bullet’s nose profile with a secant profile, the company optimizes ballistic coefficient.

One characteristic that advanced shooters may question is the nature of the composite in the Tipped GameKing’s nose. Folks, it’s standard polymer, not a super-composite that’s resistant to heat and air erosion while in flight. And that’s okay, particularly in a hunting bullet that’s meant to be used inside 600 yards. Degraded BC caused by tip erosion is a gradual process and usually only manifests in very high-BC bullets launched at magnum velocities, and even then, only way downrange.

That said, I confess I’d like to see Sierra change to a heat-erosion-resistant composite, such as that used in Hornady’s HeatShield tips, Federal’s SlipStream tips, and some of the more advanced Barnes LRX tips. For now, Sierra makes tips of Delrin polymer. On the plus side, Delrin polymer takes on a rubbery consistency on impact and is one of the best materials available for initiating bullet expansion.

Offerings

Barnes launched the Harvest line with nine different offerings. Seven are popular, time-proven cartridges, including the .223 Remington, .243 Winchester, .270 Winchester, .308 Winchester, .30-06 Springfield, 7mm Remington Magnum, and .300 Winchester Magnum. The other two are newer but are already household names: the 6.5 Creedmoor and the 6.5 PRC.

All but one are loaded with bullets of traditional-for-caliber weight. The single exception is the 6.5 PRC, which features a 145-grain TGK bullet. It has an admirable BC of .597 and is rated to exit the muzzle at 2,910 fps. Barrel length isn’t listed, but presumably that’s out of a 24-inch tube.

Bullet weights and advertised velocities for the Harvest lineup are as follows:

Sierra makes a 180-grain 7mm TGK with a G1 BC of .631, which is the highest BC in the line. The nose of that bullet is too long and sleek to fit in standard 7mm Rem. Mag. magazines, but my hope is that Barnes will soon add a 7mm PRC load featuring that TGK to the Harvest collection.

Range Tests

To prove out the new Barnes Harvest ammo, I selected a handful of favorite rifles I can count on to shoot well. Among them were a Sako Model 90 Peak in 6.5 Creedmoor, my son’s custom 6.5 PRC Proof-barreled NRL Hunter competition rifle, an AllTerra Arms Mountain Shadow in 7mm Rem. Mag., a Remington Model 700P LTR in .308 Win., and a custom Model 70 built by Hill Country Rifles chambered in .30-06.

Benchresting the rifles, I fired a series of three consecutive three-shot groups with each one, aiming at targets on the 100-yard berm. Accuracy ranged from very acceptable to outright great. Three of the five tested averaged less than one MOA. Best of the lot was the 6.5 PRC load, which averaged 0.58-inch groups. Full results are listed in the accompanying chart.

Of the five I tested, only one met the advertised muzzle velocity. That was the 6.5 PRC offering topped with the 145-grain TGK. It is advertised to generate 2,910 fps. Out of my son’s custom NRL Hunter rifle with a 22-inch Proof Research barrel, it actually clocked 2,983 fps. That speed combined with the 0.58-MOA accuracy and the bullet’s BC of .597 makes for an awesome hunting load.

Barnes Harvest ammo loaded with the excellent Sierra Tipped GameKing bullet enables Barnes to play in a hunting-ammo demographic that it’s never competed in. The ammo itself is quite good, in my opinion. I recommend trying it in your favorite rifle, as it just may shoot lights out, and the bullet is one of my favorites in terms of terminal performance.

Whether the move into lead-core hunting ammo is a savvy one for Barnes—a company always considered to be the tip of the spear in homogeneous all-copper bullets—remains to be seen. That, dear reader, is up to you and how enthusiastically you embrace the new Harvest collection. 

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