Any Hunt. Any Range. Federal’s Terminal Ascent – Outdoor News

Terminal Ascent blends the features of top match-style bullet designs with the industry’s best bonding technology and components to deliver any-range accuracy and reliable expansion even at low velocities. This outstanding bullet design provides high weight retention, deep penetration and lethal terminal performance, both up close and at extreme distances.

Terminal Ascent is simply the best all-range, all-velocity hunting ammunition available. Its design outperforms everything else in the vast Federal catalog of options, plus all the competition’s best loads. 

Innovative Design Elements

Terminal Ascent features several key elements that make up its superior overall design.

First is the solid-shanked and bonded bullet construction. A bonded bullet has a lead core bonded to the copper jacket around that core. A solid shank means the bullet has a thick, solid copper base at the bottom of the bullet to support the lead core.

Terminal Ascent’s solid copper shank and bonded lead core retain weight for deep penetration and energy dump, delivering extremely effective wound channels and terminal performance. A large hollow cavity in the bullet nose, along with exterior jacket skiving, further aid expansion and penetration. Serrations allow petals to peel back on contact at velocities as low as 1,400 fps —speeds typically seen 1,200 yards downrange in the 200-grain 30-caliber loads.

Second is the AccuChannel grooving. Like many of the most versatile bullets, Terminal Ascent features grooving along the shank to improve accuracy across a range of rifles, while decreasing barrel wear and fouling. However, unlike conventional grooving, the AccuChannel’s highly technical shape accomplishes these goals with only a minimal increase in drag. No other bullet has this grooving technology.

Third is the Slipstream heat-resistant polymer tip. The Slipstream Tip features patent-pending hollow-core technology. A small cavity runs the length of the shank all the way up to just below the point itself. That point breaks free upon impact, allowing fluid to enter the hollow core, where it generates pressure and easy expansion, even at low velocities. The Slipstream Tip’s hollow core sets it apart from all other polymer tips on the market—but it’s also unique in its high resistance to the elevated temperatures a bullet experiences during flight. It is superior to all other options.

Finally, Terminal Ascent also features high-end nickel plating that is corrosion-resistant, to give the cartridge an outstanding appearance with smooth operation. This finishing makes Terminal Ascent look like a fine piece of jewelry.

And the use of clean-burning propellant and an ultra-reliable, sealed primer—as well as its neon electric-blue polymer tip—produces a sleek-looking, high-performance cartridge that’s sure to impress.

The result of all these design elements is both close-range (higher velocity) and long-range (lower velocity) terminal performance with both accuracy and reliability, plus great looks. And with the ability to expand at the lowest velocity of 1,400 fps, the bullet is sure to be a hit with shooters using shorter-barrel rifles or hunting handguns. 

Bonded Construction in a Match-Style Hunting Bullet

The Terminal Ascent seamlessly mates a tough, bonded hunting bullet with a match-style accurate bullet without sacrificing any aspect of performance. And, unlike other so-called long-range hunting bullets that can fail to perform on impact at lower velocities, the Terminal Ascent upsets as designed at close, mid and long ranges.

The all-new Terminal Ascent bullet design is based off Federal’s proven Trophy Bonded Tip which originated from the famed Trophy Bonded Bear Claw. While each of these ammo lines differ, they share Federal’s proven history of being some of the most effective bullets on the market for hunters. The Terminal Ascent continues this tradition. Its bullet has a tapered jacket, bonded lead core, and long, solid copper rear shank to give shooters that bone crushing, hard-hitting performance they need for hunting situations. In other words, the bullet retains its weight for consistent, lethal penetration at any range.

Its match-style features include a secant ogive and AccuChannel groove technology for the best possible long-range ballistics. Its boat-tail angle and length are optimized for peak ballistic coefficient and stability.

The match-style hunting bullet also features a small meplat for better aerodynamics. Meplat is the technical term for the flat or open tip on the nose of a bullet. The shape of the meplat is important in determining how the bullet moves through the air. This meplat helps result in its excellent ballistics and accuracy. 

High Ballistic Coefficient

Extreme-range hunting and target shooting is getting more popular every day. Concurrently, shooters are giving more attention to their bullets’ ballistic coefficient (BC) than ever before.

While a lot of people know about ballistic coefficients, there is some common confusion about what it actually means. Simply put, ballistic coefficient is a measurement of how well the bullet cuts through air. The higher the BC, the better the bullet cuts through air. It can also define how well the bullet maintains its velocity downrange. More velocity and energy equates to less wind drift, flatter trajectories and better terminal performance.

Every aspect of the new Terminal Ascent bullet profile has been engineered to maximize ballistic coefficient. For example, high ballistic-coefficient bullet design features include: AccuChannel groove(s) design and placement, secant ogive, maximum boat-tail length, optimized boat-tail angle, heavy-for-caliber bullet weights, and the Slipstream Tip’s extremely small meplat diameter. The shape of the meplat is important in determining how the bullet moves through the air.

Terminal Ascent’s sleek, elongated boat-tail profile and designs are critical parts of the performance package, and like the rest of the bullet’s design, it didn’t happen by accident. Longer boat-tails yield higher BCs. The tradeoff is lengthy tails can reduce stability. To conquer this, Federal engineers determined the optimal boat-tail angle and extend the length as far as possible without taking a bite out of bullet stability.

To further boost BC, engineers selected bullet weights that are as heavy for caliber as possible while still maintaining stability, even in extreme conditions, through the different barrel twist rates common in today’s wide array of hunting rifles.

All this equates to shooters getting the flattest trajectories, the least wind drift and the highest confidence to know they are going to make their shot. For example, the 155-grain 280 Ackley Improved bullet has a .586 G1 BC, and the 130-grain 6.5 Creedmoor bullet has a .532 G1 BC which are two of the best for hunting bullets within the industry. 

High-Velocity, Close-Range Terminal Performance

With the growing popularity of long-range big game hunting, it’s not hard to find ammunition claimed to offer the accuracy and downrange terminal performance to do the job. However, to even come close to filling this tall order, these options are often built like varmint bullets, with thin jackets to encourage expansion at the low velocities experienced at longer ranges.

Unfortunately, when the bull or buck of a lifetime steps out of the brush at 20 yards, such single-purpose projectiles can completely blow apart under the high velocities of close-range impact, resulting in shallow penetration, low weight retention and poor terminal performance.

Terminal Ascent doesn’t make such sacrifices, combining its extreme range expansion capabilities and accuracy with the bonding and heavy-duty construction of the world’s toughest hunting bullets. Its robust bonding and copper shank consistently provide 90 percent weight retention upon high-velocity, close-range impact for deep wound channels. With the Slipstream polymer tip, the design still expands reliably at the longest distances. There’s no other bullet on the market that has this wide of a velocity spectrum.

Low-Velocity, Long-Range Terminal Performance

Deadly terminal performance has to penetrate straight through its target and transfer energy along the way. But, lethal expansion doesn’t always look the same at every range, and a large expanded diameter is not always required for a bullet to make a clean kill. Bullets accomplish terminal performance not through sheer expansion but by opening the nose consistently and creating a uniform frontal surface. Most bullets don’t do this at extreme long range, however. A typical bullet will fail to expand symmetrically, causing it to veer off target within the animal, or tumble. The distance at which it begins to tumble is very unpredictable. Sometimes it will travel a great distance before it does and sometimes it will tumble immediately.

Terminal Ascent is completely different. Engineers designed the Terminal Ascent for flawless expansion at a wide range of velocities, from blistering speeds at the muzzle all the way out to extreme ranges where velocity falls off. At all distances within this vast range of velocities, the round reliably expands within the first couple inches of entering the target and punches deep or straight through, dumping devastating amounts of energy in the process.

The bullet’s ability to open up at lower velocities is also helpful to shooters using short-barrel rifles or handguns which leave the muzzle at lower velocities than normal to begin with.

Its externally skived nose, exclusive hollow point shape and Slipstream polymer tip work together to expand immediately and consistently. From the muzzle velocities all the way out to 1,350 feet per second, Terminal Ascent gives frontal expansion. It’s why this ammunition stands apart from all other bullets, transferring its energy into the animal and carving straight, lethal wound channels that bring down big game at any range.

The Lineup of Loads

In a marketplace filled with competitor loads that make tradeoffs—sacrificing short-range terminal performance for long-range expansion, or toughness for accuracy—Terminal Ascent does it all and stands alone.

The new line of ammunition is available in 12 cartridge options including the 7MM PRC. There’s never been a hunting bullet that compares. In fact, Federal already touts Terminal Ascent as being its best hunting bullet ever made in the 101-year-old history of the company.

The contents of this article were produced by Federal® and are supplied by the company. Permission is granted to copy, reformat and/or publish this article in whole or in part.

Source: https://www.outdoornews.com/2023/09/28/any-hunt-any-range-federals-terminal-ascent/