Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Are my lead bullets too hard for hunting?

They may well work, but personally I wouldn't trust them. That hard of a bullet is likely to not expand in my experience. "Back in the day" I was obstinate about using a hard bullet like that and the couple deer I shot with it died, but they died hard. (A 180 flat nose cast of type metal and lead - it's been a long time but that was my favorite alloy back then -shot out of a .30-06 at around 1900 fps.) If the bullet hits bone going in it'll do more than "pencil through" but that's chancy. I wised up and switched to much softer alloys and things got better. Just my experience, YMMV. (Heck, a .30 FMJ will kill a deer but you better put it exactly where it needs to hit.)

In my .303 Savages and .30-30's I use a 190 flat nose cast soft-ish (bhn 10-12), sized to fit the throat and driven at a chrono'ed 2030 fps in both 24" barrels (28.0 gr. 3031). Excellent accuracy and zero leading. This one died right there, and the bullet had a MV of 1900fps because of the 20" barrel I used that day.