I just did some testing using water jugs comparing the 60 gr. Hornady HP, the 60 Hornady SP and the 55 gr. Ballistic Tip out of my 223. They were loaded max with Winchester's 748 powder out of my TC contender. I have used both Hornady's on deer with good success. Oddly the Ballistic Tip created more damage on the jugs and penetrated just as deep (2 jugs) as the others. Any shot I will take would be on does at less than 100 yards directly into the chest behind the shoulder or in the neck in front of it. Comments?

None of the bullets you mentioned would be anywhere near my top choices for deer with a .223. I am not an advocate of premium bullets for hunting rifles and deer with the exception of .224 bullets and deer. First choice Barnes 53 gr TSX then Nosler Partition 60 grain and I believe Speer makes a bonded .224 bullet. After that the choices all start to look the same as far as performance goes. Yes the varmint bullets will work and give some dramatic kills I know from first hand experience, but a "harder" bullet will give a better margin for error in case an animal in your culling operation makes a move at trigger time and blows that perfect shot for you then you have a mess my friend.

The Ballistic Tip has a solid base that provides greater penetration than most people realize. For chest shots on Texas whitetails, it will drop them faster than most larger calibers. Even if you purposefully tried to hit the shoulder directly in the femur (sorry, make that humerus, sp?), I doubt that the bullet would fail to make it to the vital organs once in a hundred tries.

No, they are not my first pick for whitetails, nor would I recommend them to another hunter as a good first choice. But you're about as likely to bring your deer home using them as any other centerfire caliber/bullet.

Ditto to Stonecreek's comments.

The trigger won't be pulled unless placement is perfect. Kind of odd how a bullet decried for blowing up out penetrates it's counterparts.

snellstrom
you nailed it cold
regards

Well I say this with my flame retardent suit all zipped up and helmet on....

however, even a 22 caliber ballistic tip, is still a ballistic tip....

and that means, if you throttle it down to an MV of 2700 fps or lower, go out and try that into your milk jug test or just into some tree saplings that may be 5 to 8 inches in diameter....

and then see the penetration you get, and on the trees, take a look at the exit hole produced when the ballistic tip comes out the back of the tree... equate that to hydrostatic shock...

I let your test results dictate an opinion here...

I've done it and what I found surprised the crappola out of me!!!!....

Rick, yes it is wonderful that the Nosler ballistic tip out penetrated its "counterparts" they are also varmint bullets.
Do the same test with a Barnes triple shock and you will need more milk jugs.
I'm not trying to start a fight I'm just stating the facts, these are not opinions but observations of .224 caliber bullets used in the taking of deer. You can compare all the varmint bullets you want but you are splitting hairs, you can even go to the heavies like the 70 grain Speer I've shot all those at one time or another trying to find "the " deer bullet for .224's and all of them had let me down in performance at one time or another, I was lucky and never lost a deer and never made a bad hit but the performance of all these was dramatic at times and lackluster at other times. Worst hit I had was on a small buck I was about to head shoot, I had an absolutely steady rest and the deer was stock still and unaware of me, at the shot he dropped his head presumeably to feed and I smoked a hole through his ear, as soon as he was done shaking his head I shot him at the base of the skull dropping him in a blink. I can only imagine the a deer lurching as you touch off a Ballistic tip and blowing the bullet up on an unforeseen shoulder blade or any other number of potential mishaps that can arise, a harder bullet gives you a slight edge. In my experience the Barnes Triple Shock takes the .224's to another level of performance and reliability not seen with all of the aforementioned varmint bullets no matter how deep the cup penetrates.
Your opinions may differ.

Snell,,

I am not going to dispute you there Brother!

I do find it hard to see a failure on the 63 grain Sierra and 70 grain Speer... but then again I have experienced failures with a 180 grian Corelokt out of an 06 and a 200 grain Sierra SP out of a 300 Win Mag.... doesn't mean they are bad for the application.. just failures, along with Shit happens...

however no arguement whatsoever, on the TSXs...

I am not necessarily a Barnes fan... but those darn TSXs are about the best overall hunting bullet made....

It will definitely pump up the potential for a smaller bore to be able to tackle some good sized game....

the point I was making above.. if you want to use a ballistic tip for deer, if you slow down the MV, you will actually get better performance on deer sized game out of the 22 caliber bores than sending them speeding away at your prey at 3300 fps or better....those are blowing up varmint speeds....

however throttled down, the bullet will not be overcome by resistance and just explode like it will at high velocity....

in fact how much a low speed ballistic tip will penetrate is pretty surprising if one uses some restraint on the MV....whether it be a 22 caliber or a 30 caliber....

just trying to point out the best parameters if one wants to use that bullet...

however the TSX.. shoot'em slow or send them down range at warp speed... they will certainly do the job...

Well I think I will stick with my 6MM shoting the 95 gr. Ballistic tips at around 3000fps. The rifle is ready to go and deer season is open. Wish it would get cold enough to hang a deer outside for a day or so then I could get this meat hunting out of the way.

quote:

Originally posted by rickt300:
Well I think I will stick with my 6MM shoting the 95 gr. Ballistic tips at around 3000fps. ...

Excellent decision!

Seafire I agree with you that if a given bullet were slowed down to a velocity that would enable the bullet to "hold together" bullet failures would be a moot point, however I think that trend is not a popular one and its application is doubtful for most shooters.
The failures I spoke of with the 70 grain Speer was from a 22/250 and at standard velocities the 3 shots I put into the bucks lungs were recovered in bits and fragments from a 130 yard application although the deer went down and also would have after the first shot, I considered bullets fragmenting into chunks the size of broken bits of pencil lead to be a failure. I killed other deer with that bullet with lightning results but same fragmentation, same results for the 60 grain Hornadys, Sierra's, and Speers. Granted the 22/250 is operating at a higher velocity than the .223 but many of my "test subjects" were shot at 100 to 200 yards with 22/250 and I'm sure a comparison can be had by shots on deer at 25 to 100 yards with the .223 again at expected standard velocities.
Once again you are right if it all were slowed down a bit we would not have these dramatic bullet fragmentations and would have some pretty nice kills but I doubt most folks will use that kind of restraint with their loading of the fast and flat varmint rifles.
When I was using the small rifle on deer I was in the habit of testing all manner of bullets that I could on various test media like squash and pumkins stacked in a line, milk jugs with water etc. and only the ones that showed any promise were tried on deer. I was much younger then and was living in a situation where deer were plentiful, and we or the neighbors could eat as many as I could shoot in the fall and I had a reloading room and range right outside the barn ( R&D and testing facility!). Test subjects were Blacktails from 60 to 135 pounds.
No I did not test Nosler Ballistic tips or the Barnes X or triples at that time the Barnes came out after so those deer I shot with the Barnes bullets were Texas whitetails of a similar size and construction, with the same dramatic kills but one extra advantage I got an exit every time and no more bullet explosions.
Sorry for being long winded but I have cut this story way short as it is I don't have the typing skills to describe the 30 some odd deer shot with various varmint bullets but in retrospect I dropped every one of them within feet of the shot, only a couple required a second shot, only one required a third shot and all were hit with patient well placed shots of my choosing, a couple head shots, several neck shots and the vast majority were chest cavity placements from various angles but mostly broadside.
Yes the varmint bullet works on deer but its performance and reliability is marginal, from my experience if using a .224 you need an additional advantage like a good bullet for starters as well as being very picky about your shots.
Once again not an opinion but a culmination of real experiences on my part, observations if you will.

Over 40 years ago, while living in GJ., CO., testing the effect of different .224 bullets with the 22 Varminter on mule deer I reached the conclusion that this was pushing the envelope too far. To me it became obvious and made more sense to use a More adequate cartridge and bullet.

The same conclusions were reached regarding FAST 6MMs and Elk.

IMHO This is not new, is not wonderful, and proves nothing meaningfull. If you ,however, think it's the next best thing to toilet paper by all means use it. roger

Snell, I took a blacktail about 8 to 10 yrs ago with a 70 grain Speer out of a 22.250....

The shot was at about 150 yds or so... he came out of a thicket, way back on a logging road from me....

He immediately turned and headed in the other direction towards the next side of the opening...

all I had presented was a "Texas heart shot".. which I don't do... so I usually aim over the tail and below the antlers and pull the trigger...

he hit the ground with a cartwheel nose first....

I got up to him and the bullet had hit half way between the neck/body junction and the antlers...so of course it hit the spin.. making an instant kill.....

however, the bullet hitting the spin.. it all came out of his throat as can only be described, opening it like a book, about the size of a book!

The rack wasnt' worth mounting anyway.. it was not a bad sized blacktail... and it didn't harm any of the edible meat...

but an exit hole that huge.. all I could say was "damn!!!"

I have taken 5 or 6 deer with the 22-250 and both Hornady 60 grain bullets, the HP and the SP. I always shot far enough behind the shoulder to miss any part of it and just about in the middle of the chest. I pushed these bullets to 3300 fps and they worked perfectly up to as far as I tried them which was 250 yards. Perfectly meaning I got exits of around an inch on all deer shot. None were shot closer than 100 yards though.

I just got my first AR15 .223 kill using a winchester 64gr power point bullet with 24gr of 2015.Shot the deer in the neck at 10yds.

Heck!! At 10yards you could have hit it with the butt of the rifle!

In fairness, at that range any rifle no matter how small will kill a deer if you neck shoot 'em.

One thing to note with the AR (and I use one often enough you could say), is that because the sights are normally about 3" above the bore line some people tend to shoot low at close ranges. I have pegged the odd deer or goat thru the air-pipe. They sort of stand there breathing like Darth Vadar until you hit them again.

The Nosler 55gns. Awesome pill for deer if you have to. Too expensive however to use for serious culling. I have a mate who used them exclusively in his 22/250 for years. Never had a problem, chests shots dropped them no probs.

I'm sold on winchester 64gr power point bullets after this kill.I was very leary of using the .223 for deer but now i know different.

Hey RiflemanZ

Do you have any trouble seeing past the front sight with that scope? I would like to put a scope on my bushmaster and not go to the expense of a new upper, but was leary of the front site being in the way.

quote:

Originally posted by RiflemanZ:
I'm sold on winchester 64gr power point bullets after this kill.I was very leary of using the .223 for deer but now i know different.

Beware!!!! and put on your fire proof underwear.!!!

There will be a few zealots on this board who will call you out as a "recoil pussy" and using "Inadequate Calibers" for taking deer with a .223. They are self appointed to impose their opinions upon you and are ever willing to tell you what they think you should be doing.

I've had great luck with a 22-250 on deer and personnally would not hesitate to use my .223 with the loads I've developed for deer also.

My advise is to blow them off and continue to use what you have found from your own experience to work for you. Carry on and good luck.

Either way you look at it,varmint guns and bullets are best suited for varmints.There is no doubt that they will kill deer, but I prefer not to risk a wounding shot.

quote:

Hey RiflemanZ

Do you have any trouble seeing past the front sight with that scope? I would like to put a scope on my bushmaster and not go to the expense of a new upper, but was leary of the front site being in the way.

I have a RRA AR15 with a RRA Hi-Riser scope mount that holds my Nikon Buckmasters 3x9 scope.I have no problems seeing over the front sight with this set-up.I really love the clarity of this nikon scope for deer hunting.
http://www.rockriverarms.com/item-detail.cfm?ID=AR3629&...650&CFTOKEN=54210011

quote:

Either way you look at it,varmint guns and bullets are best suited for varmints.There is no doubt that they will kill deer, but I prefer not to risk a wounding shot.

This is why i practice shooting all year and load my own ammo like the win 64gr pp bullet.I also will only take close in shots on deer that are standing still and not running.

quote:

Originally posted by RiflemanZ:
I just got my first AR15 .223 kill using a winchester 64gr power point bullet with 24gr of 2015.Shot the deer in the neck at 10yds.

OMG.....is that a deer or a sage rat????? LOL