For those who are into precision shooting, whether you hand load or buy off the shelf, what is your preference between ballistic tip and OTM?
Is there really any difference in performance?
OTM is often a process in the bullet manufacturing, where match bullets are restruck and formed with the jacket. For some reason the open tip is necessary, its not specifically for performance.
I would refer to the “engineered tip” design to be more accurate, but also more money.
Either will give you great accuracy if the bullet themselves are manufactured with tight tolerances.
I shoot OTM because they are cheaper, and usually available is bulk.
Depends on the gun and the load. My .308 eats 168 grain Federal Gold Medal Match with Sierra MatchKing OTM’s. My 6.5 likes 147 grain Hornady Match ELDX with polymer tips.
The polymer tips can do well, but can be deformed fairly easily.
So, the open tip is not for some aerodynamic thing.
I have some Hornady with red tips that are fairly soft. I have to be careful with them. Sierra on the other hand seems to be a harder sleeker tip…
And another thing… Is OTM “hollow point” ammunition or does it just have a hole in the tip?
There isnt anything more “aerodynamic” about the hole vs a tip. It could be considered more aerodynamic when its difficult to get precise nose shapes. But those poly tipped bullets are supposedly more accurate and deal with cross winds better due to their consistent shape.
I never bothered with them because i dont shoot far or well enough.
They ARE hollow point. Atleast the Hornady are sold as BTHP. The military says they are not HP, but i think its just a ploy to use them legally.
That brings up another question. Meplat formers, are the worth the effort?
If you can shoot that well, at distance. Im sure people could justify squeezing that extra bit of accuracy.
You cant even really take a cheap bullet and make it better since the tip is just one area of tolerance. Getting uniform wieghts and ogive are just as important.
It would probably be a waste of time for most people, time better spent in other areas of accuracy.
Precision Rifle Blog covered this in an article.
Top PRS shooters are using Berger OTM’s and Hornady A-Tip or ELD-M… so, pretty much whatever works for you 
I read Hornady’s blurb about their ELD-M bullets. Apparently they did some testing and found that the tip of a regular bullet was deforming in the first few hundred yards of travel due to the heat of air friction. Their ELD-M bullets are have a heat resistant coating to address this.
I would expect a polymer tip to suffer the same effects, but perhaps because the area at the front of an OTM is a little bigger, it can handle the heat better?
I am not a very experienced long range marksman, but I was very impressed with ELD-M bullets out to 1400 yards from my 6.5CM Deltas 5 Pro.
OTMs are O because they’re reverse drawn. A coin of copper is progressively formed into a tall cup, the slug is dropped in and the ogive is formed.
I find that if you’re measuring to the tip for cartridge length the OTM will give a little more variability but if you’re using a comparator it won’t matter
How far will you be shooting?
I rarely shoot past 400 yards, so the difference between the tips wasn’t a factor for me (hand loading 168 grain bullets for my .308).
Currently, 200 yds is the longest range I have access to. But, I’d like them to preform well out to 600.
If they group well at 100 or 200, they should still group well out to 600 since they will still be supersonic.
1 Like