Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why no love for Speer bullets

My Son had great success with 7mm 175 grain Mag-Tips that I loaded for him with a truck load of deer and two Elk.
I'm not sure why I got away from them, but it may have been my love of Noslers.
I can't swear that the Noslers actually perform better.

One of the best I have used for .357 Magnum heavy's, is Speer's 170 Gr Uni-cor Soft Point (not hollow point). Very tough bullet that's will expand just a little and keep on plowing through.

SuperCub,

A plastic tip does two things: increase ballistic coefficient, which means higher retained velocity and energy downrange, and promote expansion, because underneath the plastic tip is a HUGE hollow-point.

I would never have known this if it hadn't been pointed out to me by Shrapnel.

Other missteps that I didn't see mentioned is their Trophy Bonded Bear Claw lines. I would have loaded these as premium rounds when I first started handloading if they were available as components for a reasonable price. I found a single local store that carried the original TBBC as components. They were sold in 25 count boxes for $50! Then they were pulled from the market and no longer offered as components. Later, they introduced the Tipped Trophy Bonded Bear Claw and it was said they planned to offer them as components. But, of course, they never did.

Throw in the Deep Shok intro/disappearance, Grand Slam changes, dropping some of the popular Mag Tip/GDHP lines, the Deep Curl drama... it's just easier to find a bullet supplier who has their act together.

That being said, I had found a very good load with the 140g 6.5mm HotCor and bought 4 boxes (all that was left at Graf & Sons) when they announced they were dropping them in favor of the then upcoming Deep Curl...

As mentioned in this thread, the .257 87 grain Hot-Cor is a good bullet in the 250-3000 and has always been reliable on Whitetails.

For a little fun at the gun club I load the Speer 130 gr Hot-Cor in a 7x57mm and show the chronograph results to the boys shooting their .270 Win's. That Mauser is right on their arse.

Plus that bullet took my first three pronghorns.

My 260 loves the Speer 120. Very accurate and it has killed everything I have run one into. I bought a bunch of the Hot Cores when they were being "discontinued".

The .224 52 grain HP is pure evil on 'yotes.

The shame of their demise (or decline) is that they remove themselves as a viable competitor. This means we end up paying more for components.

This is exacerbated in my country, as this market is nowhere near as competitive as in the USA.

If Speer becomes irrelevant, we are down to the three big bullet companies mostly for our supplies ie Hdy, Nos and Sierra. Yes we can get Bergers, Barnes, Lapua and a handful of others but they are pricey and I regard those as more specialty products.

Speer used to be a real viable alternative but now their range is so narrow and their price so high, I'll only buy them at clearout special prices.

I have had good performance on deer with the Speer 130 Hot Core in the 7x57,the 180 fp in the .35 Rem.,and the 180 Magtip in the .300 savage.One thing that I dont understand is why the 250 HC in .35 cal. is considered a good bullet in the Whelen,while some here claim that the 270 gr. HC in the 9.3x62 is too soft for our larger game.

PS I actually like the Speer boat tail SPs. In many cases I quite like fairly soft bullets. Not mushy, but soft enough to create a large wide wound channel.

I also almost exclusively use bullets fairly heavy for calibre when using soft BTSPs.

Believe it or not I've even had excellent success on hundreds of head of game using the SST keeping impact speeds generally under 2800fps or so.

Ed

Mostly yellow boxes on my reloading bench--revolver and rifle.

They work as intended. Accurate as a Sierra only better constructed for clean kills.

WN

Zombies are scarce as hen's teeth.....



so I don't need them either!!

I for one say KUDOS to MD for telling it like it is.
It's refreshing for someone in 'the biz' to speak up and call a spade a spade.

Over the past 4-5 yrs I've stated my dissatisfaction with Speer bullets and MD has told me they work pretty well at medium-modest velocity. But when you're running 6mm Rem, 270 Win, 7mm RM, 300 WM, etc. 'medium-modest' velocity is second rate.

Rant over.

You can call me, 3100 guy, for obvious reasons.

Also I'm actually surprised that AS many have said in this thread that their results/observations have paralleled mine.

7mm 145 gr BTSP in my 284.

I got a rifle back, My dad bought it new in 1951, a 721 Rem .270. The groove is .2782 and had a hell of a time getting it to shoot (ran about 4" w/most bullets) until I found this out. I loaded 53 gr of I-4895 behind the .2770" 100 gr Speer SP and guess what, 3/4 inch @ 100. I figured the square based soft bullet would "bump" up and fill in the grooves, evidently they do. I have about a dozen different bullets from everybody except Berger and in measuring them the fattest are Winchester orig 130 silvertips and recent 150 gr. power points, they measure an honest .2772. Sierra and Hornady are in the .2765+ range and Nosler recent 160's and old gold 150 PT's are .276' on the nose. Older 100 gr Speer HP's are .277 and new 150 Hot cores are .2768" I have hopes for them. Anyway as to game I have used them all my life and particularly liking the 165 30, 150 30 (in the 308), 160 in the 7x57 and 250's in the 338 dia. I've killed many deer, black bear, an Elk and always thought they were on the "soft" side but I mostly use them in the 2500-2900 fps range, cup and core glory. They are also made within sight of big bull Elk range so what is not to like?-Muddy

So is the hollow-point there only to hold the stem on the plastic tip or is it bigger than that?

It's usually big enough to contain the base of the tip as well. Take a look at the some of the websites showing sectioned bullets, like Nosler's.

Isn't adding a plastic tip to the Nosler Solid Bases what produced the early generation Ballistic Tips that were explosive, even though the Solid Bases weren't?

I purchased 500 90 gr Deep Shocks for my 6mm Rem before Speer quit making them . Glad i did .

mathman,

Yeah, they didn't expect that sort of change in expansion. I suspect the same basic thing happened when Hornady started making SST's.

I think you're right. I loaded some relatively early 165 grain SST's for a friend's 308 and they were on the soft side. We'd find them under the off side hide of bucks shot through the rib cage. They weren't blown up, but they were flattish little domes looking like less than half the original weight.