My family members are 7 Mag freeks. We shoot all kinds of bullet brands and weights.

Some of us hunted clear cuts with the 120g Nosler Ballistic Tips and they are NOT a varmint bullet. Our loads in the 700's with Rem brass ran from 70.0-72.0g of R#22 with a CCI 250 Primer in ?Rem brass. Barrels can be fast or slow; some barrels were 3350 fps while others were 3550 fps.

The 120g Nosler turns the insides of a deer into complete mush. We never had a deer travel over 50 yards, but the bullet does not exit.

You never hear anyone talk about them, but the 130g Speer BT is really an awesome deer bullet with almost the same load of R#22 listed above; bullet does exit.

We found that the 160g Sierra BTSP was much softer than it's 160g BTHP counter part. The family has killed 100+ deer with a max load of IMR 4350 or IMR 4831 with the 160g Sierra BTSP.

Personally, I have killed more deer with the 140g NOsler Ballistic tips loaded with 64.5-65.5g of IMR 4350 in a Rem case with 9 1/2 primers than any other load(no particular good reason). In fact, I killed two bull elk with the same load. Both bulls were running when I shot them and both folded up like a dead duck when the bullet hit them dead center of the body.

We shot a load on antelope of 59.0g of IMR 4350 with the 120g Sierra at 3000 fps that was very mild and did not blow the antelope up.

We elected to shoot the Hornady 154's and the 150g Sierra BTSP instead of the 139g Horn...no particular good reason. A normal load in the 3100-3150 fps with either of these bullets all a guy would ever need for any White tails; the Hornady 154 is a tougher bullet than the Sierra in this weight range. Using R#25 with a Win Mag primer with the 154g Hornady SP really makes the 7 Mag come alive, and will shoot a hole through both shoulders of a large Boar and an excellent elk killer.

I have a muzzle break on my 7 mag and hunt using the Peltor Tac 6 Ear muffs. The electonic ear muffs add anothe dimension to hunting that a guy would never expect...you just have to get over the thought of wearing ear muffs, but you can hear 3X as good as you normally can. The 7 Mag with a muzzle break kicks like a 243 that most children could shoot with ear muffs.