Re: Recovered bullets (Nosler vs. Hornady) PICS

19 December 2004, 02:45

Johnny Ringo

Quote:

I have been shooting that same 162gr BTSP out of my STW for a while now. Up until this last kill I never really had any concerns about them. All of my previous deer kills with this bullet have been simple broadside shots that resulted in a nice silver dollar sized exit hole followed by the deer dropping in his tracks. The last one was an angled shot in which I finally recovered my first bullet of this load. I was not very impressed with what I found.

Remaining weight is 74gr. I can't say the bullet really failed, after all the deer did die, just not on the spot./quote]

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And they won't always die on the spot. Regardless of bullet.

That's the nature of the game. Judging a bullet on whether the deer falls "in it's tracks or not" is foolishness.

19 December 2004, 02:38

Johnny Ringo

Quote:

How about reducing the load for the Hornady bullet and using it as designed? (less than 3k) Just because you can load a max load, it is not always the best load. If you are hunting where there is only 150 yard shots why have a load for 250 yards? The deer will still die getting hit at 2700 fps, the bullet will retain more weight, penatrate deeper and probably even exit. Leaving you two holes for the blood trail if you do not place it where you really wanted.

I down load my 300Wby to about 30-06 level with 150gr Hornady, for the white tails here in east Texas. I just do not need all of that horse power to kill these deer or even the hogs over 200lbs. This load is accurate and more pleasent to shoot. I am not recoil shy, as I enjoy playing around with my 458 Lott.

Hog Killer

The most intelligent post of 2004.

19 December 2004, 02:35

Johnny Ringo

Quote:

It seems to me that the spine is one of the harder bones on a whitetail. I have seen some pretty impressive bullets do weird things after hitting the spine. My mulie doe this year was shot at a bit over one hundred yards,at an extreme angle, with a 30-06 using 165 gr Hornady Interlock Boattails. Muzzle velocity is est at 2850 fps. The bullet nicked the near side ham, entered the body cavity breaking 2 ribs and passed through paunch, liver, diaphram, lung,off side rib and exited the body only to enter the front leg, breaking it and stopping against the bone.It passed through 24 inches of deer including the hide and thick winter coat a total of four times breaking four bones in the process. Recovered weight is more than 109 gr as that is the max on my small scale.The mushroomed bullet averages 0.48 inches.

Murf,
I always pay attention to your posts, as you are a Sask boy too and your experience is common to mine.

Feels good to feel home.

18 December 2004, 17:41

WestCoaster

Perferator
My own experience with boatails is they fail too often when impacts occur at higher velocities.
However the flat base 165 gr. Horn. interlock is my hunting buddies fave in his Browning A-bolt 30-06. He has taken a number of bull Moose in B.C. with that combo and as close as 30 yds and as far as 275 yds. almost all of them dropped at or very near the point of impact.
Same for Mule deer, it is a very good bullet for a non-premium. In his words "pure poision".
IMHO I never found any really beneficial reason for boattails to exist outside of long range shooting say in excess of 400 yds. Most of us lack the skills to consistently make one shot kills at that range under real world conditions much less 200 yds.
Also for some reason I never had any sucess when testing them in handloads either. In almost all cases I found better accuracy with FB bullets. The one exception being the Nosler Partitions and its really a sort of semi boatail I think.
I think you could do equally as well with the 154 gr. SPFB interlock in 7mm but the Nosler partition is better yet if you think you need the extra penetration/tuffness.