THE EVOLUTION OF SILVERTIPS

From its pre-World War II intro to today’s many offerings, Winchester bullet line has seen a lot of changes.

“These are Remington CoreLokt bullets, a regular softpoint which are perfect for deer. But these are Winchester Silvertips; save these for when we go to the Catskills to hunt bears.”

It was my 15th birthday, and my father had just given me one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received: a Winchester Model 94AE XTR leveraction rifle, chambered in the classic .30-30 Winchester. To a young man who’d never aimed a rifle at a big game animal, it was the gateway to a lifelong passion for pursuing big slabs of meat, and the accompanying gift of two varying types of projectiles was the impetus for a career as a bullet hound.

That was over 35 years ago, and that Winchester 94 and I made all sorts of memories. If you were to discuss Winchester Silvertips with a young hunter of today, the conversation would be completely different compared to that of my youth; you see, the Silvertip has been on quite a journey throughout its life, and it looks nothing like it did when it originated. Let’s take a look at the many faces of the Winchester Silvertip, and how things have changed over the years.

ALL SIGNS POINT to 1939 as the year the original Silvertip was released, and I’ve seen adverts dating back to 1940 to corroborate that date. Even before the now-famous Nosler Partition, both Winchester and Western were offering the controlled-expansion Silvertip in their loaded ammunition lines, and would eventually offer them in component form for those who handloaded their ammunition. The design of the Silvertip was an effort to combat premature expansion, a phenomenon common to the cupand-core bullets of the first half of the 20th century, where the bullet would either expand too quickly – resulting in jacket/core separation – or would fail to penetrate deep enough to reach the vital organs of the game animal.

Where the jacketed lead bullets would have some amount of exposed lead at the nose in order to initiate expansion, the Silvertip would cover that exposed lead with a thin cap made of what Winchester called “nickel silver” – a blend of copper, nickel and zinc. As this alloy was harder than lead, the bullet would not deform as quickly when hide, muscle and bone were hit, and because it would maintain its conformation longer, the Silvertip would penetrate deeper than would a standard jacketed bullet of similar weight and caliber.

The original factory offerings included .250 Savage and .257 Roberts with a 100-grain Silvertip; .270 Winchester with a 130-grain bullet; .30-30 Winchester and .30 Remington with a 170-grain bullet; .300 Savage with a 180-grain bullet; .3006 Springfield, .30-40 Krag and .300 H&H Magnum with 180- and 220-grain bullets; .303 Savage with a 190-grain bullet; .32 Winchester Special and .32 Remington with a 170-grain bullet; .348 Winchester with a 250-grain bullet; .35 Remington with a 200-grain bullet; and .375 H&H Magnum with a 300-grain bullet. Note that of the .30 Remington, .32 Remington and .35 Remington – all developed for the John Browning-designed Remington Model 8 autoloading rifle – only the .35 Remington survives, and that cartridge thrived in the Marlin lever-action rifles. It is also noteworthy that Winchester/ Western embraced both the .300 and .375 Holland & Holland Magnum cartridges; both would be counted among the first offerings in the new Winchester Model 70 bolt-action rifle. Reviews of the Silvertip were – over the decades – mixed, to say the least. Some folks found that the Silvertip was too hard; there were complaints that the bullet would poke a caliber-sized hole through the animal, indicating that the bullet hadn’t expanded much at all. Others found the bullet too frangible, breaking up on shoulder bones and making a considerable mess. My own experiences with the bullet – mainly a PREMIUM QUALITY a FULLY FUNCTIONAL a LIFETIME WARRANTY a CUSTOM BUILDS a BUILT FOR EXTREME USE a MADE IN AMERICA a BUILT WITH AMERICAN MATERIALS AND PARTS a MADE BY AMERICANS AND VETERANS

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due to limited availability – align with the former opinion more than the latter. I’ve only used it on whitetail deer, and it has proven to be a stiff bullet that gives excellent penetration.

In Peter Hathaway Capstick’s Death in the Long Grass, he mentions the Winchester Silvertip as he is guiding a client for a leopard hunt. Because of the hardness of the bullet, Capstick alluded to the fact that he would pry the nickel-silver tips off the 300-grain .375 H&H Magnum slugs for leopard, as the thin-skinned lightweight cat didn’t offer enough resistance to have the bullet open and expand reliably. Should you choose to hunt with the older style of Silvertip bullet, I wouldn’t personally recommend this practice, no matter what Mr. Capstick had to say.

BY THE END of the 20th century, the Silvertip was being phased out, first as a component bullet, and ultimately in Winchester’s loaded ammunition. In 1997, a new configuration of the Silvertip was introduced: the Combined Technology Ballistic

Silvertip. This bullet, the result of a joint effort with Nosler, is highly reminiscent of Nosler’s Ballistic Tip bullet. In fact, I’d venture so far as to say that this bullet is exactly like a Nosler Ballistic Tip, with the Winchester black Lubalox coating on the exterior of the bullet, and a signature gray polymer tip.

For those unfamiliar with the design, we are looking at a polymertipped spitzer boattail of cup-and-core construction. The polymer tip serves a few purposes: It helps maintain a consistent ballistic coefficient, prevents the bullet’s meplat from being distorted under recoil in the rifle’s magazine and acts as a wedge to consistently force expansion upon impact with the game animal. The Lubalox coating is employed to reduce friction between bullet and bore, as well as to reduce fouling and pressures alike. The jacket is tapered in thickness, growing thicker as you approach the base. Much like the principle used for the Nosler Ballistic Tip, the Combined Technology Ballistic Silvertip is a hunting bullet with the potential of match-grade accuracy. But where the original iteration of the Silvertip bullet was designed to slow expansion, the Ballistic Silvertip is designed for a more immediate energy transfer through immediate expansion, without being overly frangible. And, like the Nosler Ballistic Tip, the Ballistic Silvertip makes a great bullet for antelope- and deer-sized game, though you may want a stiffer bullet for larger species.

Winchester lists the Ballistic Silvertip in many popular calibers, from .223 Remington and .22-250 Remington, up through the WSSM family (though I haven’t seen those in years), through the .270s, 7mms and .30s – including the speedy .270 WSM, 6.8 Western, 7mm Remington Magnum and .300 Winchester Magnum – and they even list a 300-grain .45-70 Government load. Whereas the original Silvertip leaned toward heavy-forcaliber bullets, the Ballistic Silvertip line offers many more common bullet weights. For example, the .30-06

Springfield is offered in 150-, 168- and 180-grain weights. The lighter calibers are loaded with what Winchester calls the “fragmenting polymer tip,” while the larger calibers are loaded with the “rapid controlled expansion polymer tip”; this is on par with the Nosler Ballistic Tip Varmint and Ballistic Tip Hunting. I have seen Winchester’s Ballistic Silvertip ammunition print very respectable groups; my Browning X-Bolt in 6.8 Western really likes the 170-grain load. And if you’re a deer hunter, these projectiles can deliver a healthy dose of “dead-right-there.”

Winchester has also loaned the Silvertip name to a line of defensive handgun ammunition, featuring a jacketed hollowpoint bullet, in most of the common pistol and revolver cartridges. The majority of the Winchester Silvertip handgun line will see light-for-caliber bullets – for example, the 110-grain .38 Special, the 155-grain 10mm Auto, the 185-grain .45 ACP, and the 115-grain 9mm Luger. There are more common weights available, like the 147-grain 9mm Luger and 175-grain 10mm Auto, but none of the heavier bullet weights are present in this line. There are also a pair of Silvertip rimfire loads – a 37-grain segmented plated hollowpoint .22 Long Rifle, and a 40-grain jacketed hollowpoint for the .22 Magnum –designed to bump up the performance of rimfire handguns.

If you have a supply of the original Silvertip ammunition, I’d recommend you keep it in your collection, as these bullets are certainly an interesting conversation piece when it comes to the history of bullet development. Those metal-capped slugs aren’t a bad design – I still have a handful of those .30-30 cartridges from Dad, and might like to take a bear with them one day – but the last two decades have seen a tidal wave of excellent premium bullets. However, if you’re aiming to fill your freezer with venison, taking the Combined Technology Ballistic Silvertip along to the deer woods isn’t a bad idea in the least. 