Last August, 10 of us sat in the international departures terminal at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport waiting to leave for Africa as Kevin Howard, PR man for Winchester Ammo, unveiled his company's latest incarnation, a bullet dubbed the EX2006.

"We haven't named it yet," Howard said after his presentation.

"How 'bout the Smackdown," I wisecracked to everyone's amusement. "You gotta admit it's catchy."
To my delight it seemed everyone liked the name. Perhaps it would be considered by the Winchester brain trust back in the States. Or not. To my chagrin it was named the XP3. To create it, Winchester married some of the best designs among premium hunting bullets today. That's important to note, because its introduction in Africa was not without debate.

One of the most important factors in any killing shot is terminal performance. In a perfect world, a bullet expands on impact, creates a wide wound channel and retains enough weight to penetrate to vital areas on the toughest game. Ideally, it does this across the spectrum of impact velocities produced by today's uber magnums. Of course, all this is moot if the bullet isn't placed right (that being the other important factor in killing shots).
Manufacturers can control only one of these variables. So since they have yet to come up with a way to keep us calm in the moment of truth, they are relegated to producing better projectiles.

For years, the Nosler Partition (introduced in 1948) was the benchmark against which all other hunting bullets were measured. But it's only one of three types of premium bonded projectiles available today. It accomplishes its task with a design that smashes together upon impact, thus mechanically locking the core and jacket together to prevent separation-the Swift A-Frame also does this.

Bonded bullets, the most prevalent design today, fuse the core and jacket together (heat or chemical processes are used) to prevent separation-the Swift Scirocco, Federal/Speer Trophy Bonded Bear Claw, Hornady InterBond, Remington Core-Lokt Ultra Bonded, Nosler AccuBond, Federal Fusion and Barnes MRX are bonded. Lastly, a combination of the two bonds the core and jacket and locks the two together upon impact-the Winchester Fail Safe does this and now, as you'll see, so does the XP3....

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