By Terry Houin
It is my humble opinion that we are in the glory days of bullet design and projectile material development. Between the high ballistic coefficient and precision engineering driving the extreme long range [ELR] game out to insane distances, to the monolithic—aka solid copper—bullet materials and designs, we are seeing some next-level innovations offered in the hunting space.
For this review of the Black Hills Ammunition 90gr Dual Performance in 6mm ARC I was going to put on my nerd hat and dive into the weeds but I’m not qualified for that so I reached out to Justin Evans, the brains behind this design. For background, Justin was at Lehigh Defense prior to Black Hills so he’s well-versed in the copper game and it was a natural fit for the two companies to work together on this project.
First, the name Dual Performance simply means the bullet was designed for two objectives which are energy transfer into the vitals of the target—think massive temporary cavity—and penetration. The energy dump into the boiler room is accomplished by rapid expansion and fragmentation of the bullet by design, sending large fragmentation pieces to cut wound channels through the now-stressed tissue creating more damage. Meanwhile, the base of the bullet, which is now free of petals, can penetrate deep, maximizing the terminal effects.
I tend to geek out with terminal ballistics as a hunter because this is where bullet design matters most. We’ve all heard the stories: “I shot that elk at 700 yards and there was nothing but a pencil hole on both sides,” or, “I shot that deer in the shoulder at 80 yards and the bullet just exploded.” There’s a lot to potentially unpack in both of these scenarios but I’ll touch a bit on what’s referred to as “working velocity” for some bullets. If a bullet is designed to have optimized terminal effects at longer ranges, it’s most likely going to have a thinner copper jacket or be engineered to more easily fragment upon impact, thus, the “my bullet exploded” effect. The inverse is what you see with bullets designed to retain mass like some bonded or solid monolithics as the terminal velocity at extended ranges is too slow to allow the bullet to perform hence the pencil hole analogy.
The 90gr Dual Performance is specifically designed to have repeatable consistent expansion and fragmentation from 1500 fps all the way up to 4500 fps. This fact gives the shooter the confidence to know the bullet will perform the same at 25 yards as it will out to whatever distance your projectile’s velocity remains above 1500 fps. For my 16” 6ARC, that’s about 700 yards. No, I’m not going to shoot a deer that far out with this round but coyotes are fair game.
The attached gel photo demonstrates my point. The massive temporary cavity starts within a couple of inches of impact. At three-to-four inches the fragmentation is complete allowing for multiple wound channels. By nine inches the base is now free to continue to penetrate 16-17 inches, maximizing the terminal effects.
In the bullet recovery picture you will see the typical results from the Dual Performance designed to create consistent large fragmentation pieces averaging 60% of weight in the petals and 40% in the base. What this translates to for my hipster readers is that you can confidently shoot the Black Hills 130 gr Dual Performance 6.5 Creedmoor for your deer hunts and not have to worry about getting your skinny jeans dirty tracking your deer because you shot her with target ammo you saw on YouTube.
Pros – Solid copper design for those of you living in communist states; advanced bullet design with consistent repeatable results; great for barrier penetration if your “deer” is hiding in a car
Cons – Only available in limited calibers and weights
