Nosler Ammunition & Components

Founded in 1948 by John Amos Nosler. While hunting moose in British Columbia in 1946, the bullets he was using failed to penetrate deeply enough to reach vital organs and kill the animal quickly. At the time, most jacketed bullets employed a single copper alloy envelope (the jacket) around a single lead alloy core. The jacket on most military bullets was closed in front and opened at the base. These full metal jacket bullets offered good penetration, but often failed to expand and passed completely through an animal leaving a comparatively small wound. Soft-point hunting bullets like Nosler was using had the jacket applied in the opposite direction to completely cover the base, but open at the nose. These bullets would expand to leave a large wound channel, but sometimes broke into small pieces with inadequate momentum to overcome resistance of moving through bone or muscle tissue.

The experience inspired Nosler to develop a new bullet design, intended to expand readily at low impact velocities yet maintain integrity at high impact velocities. The Bullets he developed were originally manufactured for personal use, using hand made, lathe turned jackets. In 1948 Nosler began to sell the partition bullets commercially, forming Nosler, Inc a family-owned company located in Bend, Oregon. Nosler is best known for revolutionizing big game hunting with its world famous Partition and Ballistic Tip bullets. With the company motto “Quality First,” Nosler manufactures premium component bullets, brass, ammunition, and semi-custom rifles for domestic and international customers.