Hornady A-Tip

New Bullets for Long Shooting

- John Barsness

It is always nice when the first 100-yard group with a new rifle bullet is one ragged hole. Handloading, however, is usually more complicated than a single group, especially when testing 6mm, 6.5mm and .30-caliber bullets in multiple rifles.

Hornady’s new A-TIP match bullet has an aluminum tip rather than the polymer tips shooters have grown accustomed to over the past few decades. This may seem revolutionary, but Handloader No. 198 (April 1999) includes an article mentioning Hornady’s 1994 introduction of its aluminum-tipped A-MAX 750-grain bullet for the .50 BMG. In the article Dave Emary, Hornady’s Chief Ballistician then, states: “We tried the aluminum tip 162-grain 7mm bullets as well. They worked but proved too costly.”

Today long-range shooting is so popular shooters are evidently willing to pay more for accurate bullets with very high ballistic coefficients (BC). While Hornady sent along 6.5mm and .30-bullets, it did not have any 6mms on hand, and neither did any websites, apparently due to already high demand – despite A-TIPs costing considerably more than most other match bullets.

However, I really wanted to try some of the 6mms due to owning a pair of accurate fast twist 6mm rifles. Luckily a local Montana store had one 100-bullet box of 110-grain 6mm A-TIPs priced at $74.99 – the going rate for the “out of stock” bullets on the Internet.

Some of the price involves the packaging, the most expensive encountered in my half-century of handloading. Once upon a time, jacketed bullets were simply dumped in thin cardboard boxes, but eventually it was discovered that bullets rattling around against each other did not enhance accuracy, both to slightly dented jackets and sometimes the core actually loosening inside the jacket. Most bullet companies have now added extra protection inside the box, and some even switched to sturdier plastic boxes.