I was on my favorite fishing board when the subject of casting came up, and I commented on how much I enjoyed the science, and so on, and I received this interesting matter-of-fact statement from a member there.

I replied as shown below, but I thought it would be fun to get the reaction of some seasoned hunters and shooters on the subject from AccurateReloading.com.

Feel free to chime in...

I wuz reading JP's post about casting bullets (cast a few meself) - everything making perfect sense an all when the last sentence caught me - Cheaper, yup. Fun, yup. Intense, yup. Tailored loads, yup. Superior bullets for hunting - nope! Respectfully disagree with you, JP. Casters work great for speeds less than 3000fps almost anything you could name - 45/70, 45acp, 38s - any slower round that doesn't need anything but hole punching. For hi speed or hunting, howsome ever, jacketed bullets are the norm. Stability, mass retention, wound channel are the considerations an cast won't cut any of it. More polkadotty?


Oh, oh contraire...

You are so grossly miss informed regarding the capabilities of lead, and the cast bullet.

Nothing could be further from the truth- thinking only stability, accuracy, wound channel damage, clean kills, whatever can only happen with jacketed bullets at 3000 fps.

In fact quite the opposite true, and is backed by science, history, and in documented written volumes by legendary hunting/shooting masters such as Elmer Keith, modern experts as Veral Smith and on, and on.

What you say in fact borders on an insult to our past generations.

Sorry, but you need to do your homework on this one, polkadotty.

Tell that to my 35 Rem, 1903 and 30/30. They kill deer easily with cast bullets. Also what about cast bullets out of muzzle loaders. Sounds like somebody has read too much from many "expert" jacketed bullet shooters. I guess them 2 deer musta died from laughing too hard because I was using cast bullets. Good placed shots will kill every time. Mark

Just read an article this morning in the newest edition of Handloader (yea, I have a subscription and I read it). Anyway, forget which writer, but he tells about how he took an elk with a either a 44 Special or 45 Colt in a handgun at, if I premember the article correctly, 100 yards. All done with a cast boolit. Again, I will remind everyone that the great American Bison almost went to extinction at the hands of cast boolits with shots out to 600 yards common. So fer thems what don't believe..., well, they prolly never will. sundog

Warning: I'm about to speak blasphemy. Those who don't want to hear it should skip reading the rest of this post.

Commercial jacketed bullets have better ballistics (interior, exterior, and terminal) than our home-cast boolits. Will cast boolits kill stuff? Of course they will. So will sharp sticks.

I shoot a heckuva lot of cast boolits, and have more money tied up in equipment to make them than I'd ever spend in buying bulk jacketed bullets. Making and shooting them is a hobby in itself, and I enjoy it greatly. But, when it's time to punch holes in elk, mulies, or antelope, I reach for the yellow bullets. If cast boolits really WERE equal to jacketed in performance, the major manufacturers would offer them in high power loadings such as we make for ourselves.

For shooting game the size of big dogs or smaller at ranges of less than 150 yards, I don't suppose it makes a lot of difference what boolit/bullet is used, assuming good shot placement. But once a shot gets close to the margins for accuracy and terminal effectiveness, a decent jacketed bullet will outperform a decent cast boolit. If you're in a position to take only one shot at an animal 250 yards away, using a cast boolit will reduce your chances of success.

For those of you who read this blasphemy despite my warning, my apologies for any offense.

Hmm...CB's not good for high speed? Possibly, but the Cast Bullet Association publishes accuracy and velocity data every year about this, which shows ~2,700 fps (or more, I'm just being conservative) with better than 1 m.o.a. accuracy is likely. As for hunting, weren't all the "buffalo guns" using cast/swaged paper patched bullets to excellent effect. While it's true that velocity wasn't high, ~1,550 fps, the results were impressive. Ditto for those who hunt with traditional BP rifles and smoothbores using home-cast roundballs or even Maxi-balls or Minie's. Btw, Paul Matthews and others have clearly shown that a .45-70 (Marlin #336/1895, Win. 1886, Ruger #'s 1 & 3) can handily take game, albeit not at 3,000 fps, not with brittle bullets, and not at 400 yd. Whoever made the original comment about CB's not being good for hunting should do a bit more reading on the subject (not intended as a flame, but as constructive criticism). ...Maven

Grumble. I can't totally disagree with what you say, but then again, I can't totally agree either. Methinks is more a case of how you hunt rather than what you hunt with.
As an individual who likes to get close to my my game, usually deer, I can only think of maybe two or three times that I couldn't have used the plain old 30-30 with a cast bullet to take my venison. However, I usually had something with a bit more oomph in hand on the hunt. Even using those funny looking reddish colored bullets. I have been fortunate enough that most of my shots have been less than two hundred yards with the majority being 100 yards or less.
FWIW, of the many deer I have taken, twenty-five were taken with the 30-30 and cast bullets. None ran more than about thirty yards after being hit.
Will I hunt deer with cast bullets again? Probably. It would depend on where I was hunting and what the probability of getting to see the whites of it's eyes are.
But other than that, I think you're mostly right.
Paul B.

We're on the same page, Paul. I haven't shot anything except coyotes and antelope at ranges over 100 yds. At ranges of less than 100 (or even 150) yds, I'm sure a cast boolit would do just as well as the FLGCs, especially when I'm typically "overgunned" for the game anyway. Still, I like having that extra margin loaded up, just in case. As they say, "hope for the best, but plan for the worst."

Had a very wise man tell me once that that the only good answer to any question was "It all depends."

For the eastern woods hunter, 200 grains of lead launched at about 2000 fps will kill about anything he wants to kill. Since you can't kill anything deader than dead, the question of whether something else is better is just silly for him.

If the same guy wants to watch the beanfields or powerlines, using a cast bullet to do that with would be just as silly.

"Cast Bullet Association publishes accuracy and velocity data every year about this, which shows ~2,700 fps (or more, I'm just being conservative) with better than 1 m.o.a. accuracy is likely"



Paul the thing I would point out about that reference is the type of gun being used, as in custom barrel, chambering and throating. That kind of consistent accuracy isn't normally possible with 99+ % of factory iron. And then what caliber... a 22/250 doing 2700 isn't gonna kill much worth butchering outside a DOA headshot. And a bullet making those speeds is going to have to be awful hard which necessitates a flat meplat for energy transfer to the game-- which takes the LR otta the equasion.



From my experience there's only two ways to make cast a LR game bullet.



--use a Wilke check driving band which greatly increases potential accuracy at high fps in average barrels.



--then use a softnose caster to make the nose mushroom vs shatter. In combination with the Wilke check this kind of bullet will perform like a Nosler partition.



Few casters will ever employ such a system. But this type of bullet truely compares to jacketed at LR-- given a flight efficent ogive.

A co-worker wounds more deer than most people see in a year.

He looses deer in bow season. in muzzleloader and in centerfire!

WHY? ? ?

Because he is a shooter . . . at game (NOT targets).

When one asks about the shot and the conditions one just starts thinking . . . WHAT A WASTE!

Ethics is something we REALLY push now in Hunter Ed classes as it seems to be the one major missing point . . . OH, I guess woodsmanship is on that list of missing learned abilities also!

I sincerly doubt that I am the JP refered to. There was a time I would not have hunted with cast boolits, not so today. I find them actually quite perfect for the task of my whitetail hunting. I do most of my hunting by stalking in the woods, and shots are generally at 30 yards or. I shot two deer this year with 44 calber 256 grain bullets at a modest 1250 fps. Killed both with one shot each. By the standards of high velocity jacketed bullets, cast boolits are indeed old fashioned. That doesn't mean they won't do the job, they just do it using different parameters. I got a 45-70 so I can throw really heavy bullets of about 350-400 grains (as compared to the average 150-180 grain jacketed hunting bullet)and extend my killing range and effective terminal ballistics. I do agree, cast boolits are good for poking holes...in anything you shoot with them. Now for the ironic part, I have never heard anyone who has killed with cast boolits say they won't do the job. Besides, the American Bison were nearly extinguished with cast boolits. I believe we can produce more evidence to support the use of cast boolits for taking game than cam be produced against them. If you don't believe the full effect of their abilities...go out and try them.

Another side of cast- good practice. here all the deer hunters buy 1 box of shells. "That'll be enough for me!" they say. They are the ones you hear at first light....BOOM,BOOM,BOOM- as fast as they can pull the trigger on their autoloader. (Most could not hit a barn...from the inside!) You can tell the guy who kills deer.... One "Boom"....silence.....one deer for the freezer. Dale

Aladin, you bring up a point I've wondered about for some time. "--then use a softnose caster to make the nose mushroom vs shatter. In combination with the Wilke check this kind of bullet will perform like a Nosler partition".

If a hard bullet's nose does shatter at high velocity, wouldn't the shrapnel be as effective as one that mushrooms? Is the problem that the whole bullet shatters leaving nothing to penetrate? Or is it too much bloodshot meat?

One more time:

Caliber for caliber, weight for weight, velocity for velocity, a "run of the mill" jacketed bullet will outperform all but the most exceptional cast boolit.

A .22 LR will kill anything from rabbits to polar bears, from squirrels to moose, with only a single well-placed shot. Few, however, would advocate using a .22 LR for hunting big game. Just because a cast .458 boolit will make as clean and quick a kill as a jacketed .308 bullet, is no reason to say that one is as good as another. Put similar projectiles to the test at the margins of their performance, and the jacketed bullet will be superior almost every time.

I have no objection to using cast for hunting, because they perform quite well when used within the parameters of their performance. But, so will jacketed bullets, and their performance envelope is larger.

Grumble

Very well put.

After considerable thought, I find I'm coming down on grumble's side of the question.

I actually had to make a decision about this very question a few years back. Living in the Northwest Territories for many years, we'd been able to kill a dozen or so Wood Bison over a period of time when tags were available over-the-counter for residents. In later years, such hunting went to a VERY limited draw basis, like only 15 bison tags available for residents each year. Preparing to leave the Territories for good, I drew a tag in '96 and I knew this would be my absolute last opportunity to hunt bison, and my rifle choices were the .416 Rigby #1, or my much loved and bison-experienced .404, or the classic bison-killer Shiloh .50-2.5" Sharps.

It was quite a problem. However, I finally decided to hunt with the .416 with the .404 along for backup, both with 400-grain X-bullets, because I KNEW in my heart that they were better killers than the .50 Sharps.

There is no question that the cast bullets will kill bison, but let us not forget that in the killing of the herds, the shooters didn't care how long it took for an animal to die. I can make very effective cast bullets, but the good jacketed bullets (or the pure-copper bullets) are better. In hunting Wood Bison, the areas where they live are covered with HEAVY bush, and it's easy for a fatally-wounded critter to escape. I want to break the animal down immediately, and not let it out of my sight. This worked very well with the .404, and although I would have liked to "blood" the .50 on bison, I simply felt better carrying the X bullets.

If all I had was the .50, though, I'd have hunted with it in perfect confidence using a fairly-soft 565-grain RCBS boolit loaded to the max.

Regards from BruceB (aka Bren Mk1)

Grumble sez: "Put similar projectiles to the test at the margins of their performance, and the jacketed bullet will be superior almost every time."
I agree that this would be true most of the time. Going back to the old 30-30 once more, I once ran a test using Federal brand factory 170 gr. bullets against my home cast Lyman #311291 bullets of straight wheel weight alloy shot at full factory velocity, as determined by chronograph. The target was a bundle of very wery wet newspapers at 100 yards. I fired two rounds of each bullet at the newspapers
and then recovered the bullets. Retained weight was just about the same, with the cast bullets running only about five grains lighter than the factory bullets, and the mushrooms were literally the same. I don't believe that a 30 caliber cast bullet would work to very well at higher velocities though. If too hard, they'd shatter, and if too soft, they'd mushroom too much and not properly penetrate. However, I di believe that a bullet of larger diameter could be pushed to somewhat higher speepd and be amply effective, especially on larger game.
It all boils down to this. If you're going to hunt with a cast bullet, make sure you can get close enough to place it properly. For me, the best part of the hunt is seeing how close I can get to my prey. I once shot a deer at six feet, my all time best. My longest shot at deer was 427 paces. Both shots were witnessed by others. Both shots were made with the same rifle, a Remington 660 in .308 Win. with handloaded condom bullets. The first one would have been fine with a cast bullet, but the second one would have to have been passed on.
My hunting dream is to take a decent B&C deer or elk with a single shot rifle and a cast bullet. That may never come about, but it won't be because I haven't tried. FWIW, the rifle will be a .35 Whelen built on a Ruger #1. Bullet will either be the Lyman #3589/358009 or the David Mos copy of the Lyman bullet with the slightly flattened meplat.
Paul B.

I don't see what you are saying as being a nessicary truth. A fine and well made varmit bullet would be of little use on animals of the weight of deer and heavier, yet they meet your criteria of "run of the mill jacketed bullet". As well, a good number of boattail bullets are notorius for shedding their jackets and being poor penetrators. Why would I use a jacketed bullet that is known to be a poor performer when I can can use cast bullets that have done the deed for over 100 years...witness the Lyman .458 330 grain Gould hollow point as an example

Using ANY bullet, cast or jacketed without due consideration of its construction, terminal ballistic qualities and overall suitability to the comprehensive task at hand of cleanly killing the persued game is asking for trouble. And to assume that a jacketed bullet is nessicarily better than a cast bullet because it has a jacket is false and irresponsible. There are a number of cast bullet designs that have been used to cleanly kill game for as many years as most of us have been alive. There are also techniques available to the caster...molds and or dippers that can be used to make soft noses to be backed up by harder shanks and the use of hollow point designs to name two...that when used intelligently have proven to be just as effective on game as jacketed bullets.

I think most of this topic goes back to a prejudice against cast bullets that comes mainly from people who knew/know little of casting and hunting bullet requirements having bad experiences both getting good accuracy and having failures on game...that may in fact be more attributable to poor shooting than to a poor bullet...getting far too much attention in the common gun/hunting publications, consequently jading common perceptions of the use of cast bullets.

If you wish to use your cast bullets for nothing more than punching paper...be my guest. There is nothing compelling you to persue the envelope of your casting/metalurical skill/reloading techniques. Fact of the matter is that for someone who wishes to have the highest level of performance with the least amount of energy, jacket bullets are the way to go. Just remember, that there are as many poor choices available to the hunting reloader using jacketed bullets as there may be to the hunter using cast boolits. I will say this....I will bet that the hunter using cast has more of an honest idea of the capability of their equipment and components than almost any reloader who uses jacketed bullets exclusively and more than any hunter who only shoots less a box of ammo a year...

All of you fellers are talkin apples and oranges here. There is nothing better then a big, heavy cast boolit in a big bore. They will do all that a jacketed bullet will do and many times they do a better job.
However many of you are talking .30 cal and smaller, high velocity, long range rifles where the jacketed bullet is vastly superior. I would never attempt to hunt big game with a cast spitzer. The very nature of the modern small caliber rifle almost dictates the jacketed, expanding bullet.
Now a big cast flat nose 30-30 or .35 boolit is very effective within it's range and would work in a 30-06 as well, but only for shorter ranges. Wouldn't do to try to shoot it 500 yds or more on game.
The whole idea of the jacketed bullet is to go fast, go far and expand to the diameter that a .44 or .45 boolit already is when it leaves the muzzle.
I use a hard cast boolit with a large meplat in my .44 and .45 revolvers and have killed many, many deer with them and almost none has gone over 30 yds. Yes, I have also used bullets like the XTP, but have found the cast boolit vastly superior both in stopping power and penetration.
Now when I hunt with my single shot pistols like the 7R, 7BR or 7mm-08, I switch to a fast expanding jacketed bullet. If I use a muzzle loader, the round ball is even more effective within it's range then a 7mm magnum without blowing the animal to uneatable shreds.
So we have to separate the guns by caliber and use. Apples and oranges! Maybe a better way to compare bullets would be apples and grapes.
Talk about silly uses for bullets is the guy using a nice .50 or .54 muzzle loader and shooting .44 cal pistol bullets out of it. Or the newest one is the .44 cal bullet in a sabot for 12 gauge shotguns. So many guys are getting away from the sport of hunting and getting into just shooting from as far as they can stretch it with guns not originally made for long range. Whats next, a bow and arrow to kill deer at 300 yds?
Let's get back to hunting, up close and personal and take the animal with a heavy slow cast boolit. Very effective!
If you live where a beanfield rifle is needed, use a good jacketed bullet.