The sun was already down, with the last minutes of deer season quickly ticking away. I had a doe tag in pocket, and just needed a doe to cooperate. As if scripted, a lone, mature doe nosed her way out of the thicket, pausing just long enough to give me the opportunity to break the trigger on my 6.5-284 Norma. Going into recoil, I could see the doe shudder as she took the 140-grain North Fork semi-spitzer just behind the shoulder; she didn’t go ten steps before piling up. But that wasn't my first experience with North Fork bullets, nor would it be my last.
North Fork bullets began in Glenrock, Wyoming back in 1996, founded by Mike Brady. Using the Trophy Bonded Bear Claw as a design basis, North Fork was most definitely focused on making serious hunting bullets. Using a pure copper jacket bonded to a pure lead core—which only occupies the front half of the bullet—the North Fork signature was a series of small grooves cut in the bullet’s shank, North Fork calls this the Smart Band Technology. With successes in a saturated market over their first decade, the end of the teens saw North Fork taking a short hiatus, only to resurface and switch their manufacturing to Sweden, under new management. That brief period of uncertainty had more than a few hunters—especially those who regularly pursue large, dangerous game—in quite a tizzy, as they’d come to rely on North Fork bullets in the field.
I am happy to announce that after taking a bit to get the brand off the ground again, the North Fork projectiles we know and love are once again available, and in a wide variety of calibers and bullet weights. The flagship of the fleet—in the opinion of this author—is the Semi-Spitzer. This bullet has a thick jacket and long copper shank chemically bonded to the lead core. The beauty of the Semi-Spitzer is that it will handle thin-skinned game animals but are optimized for the thick-skinned game normally pursued with an expanding bullet. The Semi-Spitzer is offered in conventional bullet weights, as well as some of the heavy-for-caliber choices, like a 270-grain .358-inch-diameter bullet, a 350-grain in .375-inch, a 430-grain in both .416- and .423-inch (for the 404 Jeffery), and a 550-grain for the .458s. These bullets are renowned for their reliable expansion and deep penetration, as well as their high weight retention. Very similar to the Semi-Spitzer is the Percussion Point, sharing the same profile, but with a skived nose for more rapid expansion, making the bullet a perfect choice for the thin-skinned cats of Africa, as well as the smaller African antelope, and for deer and bear here in the States. North Fork also offers a Flat Point bullet in this same vein, engineered for the cartridges commonly used in the tubular-magazine lever guns like the .30-30 Winchester, .348 Winchester and .45-70 Government. These bullets feed properly from the tubular mags, and will expand reliably at the velocities common to those cartridges. Expansion is at roughly 2x bullet diameter for all three of these designs. You’ll find the Semi-Spitzer available in bullet diameters from .257- up to .474-inch, the Percussion Point in diameters from .375 up to .458, and the Flat Point is offered in .308, .348, .458 and .500. With the lead core located at the front end of the bullet, this trio offers the straight-line penetration hunters have come to appreciate.
My experiences with these expanding bullets have been nothing but fantastic, having used them in 6.5mm and 7mm to cleanly take whitetail deer, and in others at the bench; I came away happy from each endeavor. Those Smart Bands keep fouling to a minimum, as well as reducing pressures.
North Fork now offers a lead-free expanding bullet—the Cup Point Expanding or CPX—giving copper monometal performance in calibers ranging from .224 up to .375. Featuring a deep hollowpoint for reliable expansion across a wide velocity range, this new bullet is going to grab the attention of hunters, especially in those areas where lead-free ammunition is mandated. Like the lead-core ammunition, the CPX offers the same Smart Band Technology along the shaft of the projectile.
In the solid, or non-expanding, bullet department, North Fork still offers their pair of winners that have been long proven in the game fields. The Flat Point Solid is designed for extreme penetration, in those situations where thick hide and heavy bone would stop a softpoint expanding bullet. Elephants are usually taken with solids only, and hippos are also—especially when out of the water. Some of the smallest antelope in Africa are taken with solids, as a softpoint from even one of the smaller big-game guns can make quite the mess on a 10 to 15 pound animal, but a solid will whistle through while still making a clean, efficient kill. The Flat Point Solid has a truncated nose, resulting in a flat meplat, which has been proven to result in deep, straight-line penetration, even on those going-away follow-up shots on Cape buffalo and elephant. North Fork is offering this copper monometal bullet in calibers from 7mm up to .510 for the 500 Jeffery and 500 Nitro Express. The sister bullet—the Cup Point Solid—is of similar makeup, but with a slightly different conformation at the nose. The slight cup at the nose gives just the slightest bit of expansion, for a larger wound channel than the standard solid offers (usually just caliber diameter), while giving almost the same level of penetration as the Flat Point Solid. I took these Cup Point Solids to Australia, to pursue those huge Asiatic water buffalo in the northern part of the continent. The Heym .470 NE double rifle absolutely loved these bullets, putting a ‘left and right’ within 1 ½ inches at 100 yards. Professional Hunter Graham Williams and I got within 20 yards of a brute of a bull, and the Heym went to work. Those Cup Point Solids gave amazing penetration on a bull that Graham estimated to weigh about 2,100 pounds, with three of the four shots exiting the animal. Heym’s Chris Sells would use that same bullet to neatly take a good bull at 125 yards with that double rifle, making an impressive one-shot kill with the Cup Point Solid. North Fork offers these bullets in calibers from .338 up through .510, including .348 and .358, as well as some of the more obscure diameters like .468 and .488 for those old double rifles. And speaking of the double guns, both of these solids are perfectly safe for use in the vintage double rifles, with no worries about the older metallurgy; the same cannot be said for other monometal solids. And North Fork has worked to ensure that their solids print to the same point of impact as their softpoints, an important feature for those which use both types of projectiles.
North Fork’s new Vice President of Marketing is none other than my pal John McAdams, who also happens to be the host of the Big Game Hunting Podcast (if you don’t currently tune in, you really should). He and I had a lengthy discussion about the new developments at North Fork, and the efforts to make their projectiles available once again to the U.S. market. “We’re working to improve availability of our bullets across the world; for the U.S. we’re focused on producing .308, .358, .366, .375, .416, .458 and .474 for the 2026 hunting seasons,” McAdams related. When I asked him about the new products coming on line soon, he told me about the new SSBT bullet in the works. “Well, we’re working to bring out the new SSBT bullet, which will deliver the same great terminal performance of the legacy Semi-Spitzer but will have a much higher Ballistic Coefficient , that makes it suitable for use at longer ranges,” McAdams said.
So with Jörgen Boström at the helm, and an experienced team behind him, North Fork is back, offering the bullets we came to love, as well as driving the brand into the future with new developments which will be sure to please. As of this writing, the North Fork bullets are available in component form only, unless you contact one of the boutique ammunition companies like Superior Ammunition or Hendershot’s; if you are a handloader the world is your oyster. I know that I’ve have great success with North Fork bullets up and down the caliber scale, and look forward to continuing to do so. northforkbullets.com
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