Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Winchester Deer Season XP ammo

So this ammo has been out a couple years now and is sold at most of the big-box retailers. What kind of results are users seeing on deer?

I generally shoot handloads but a buddy wanted to buy me a few boxes of ammo after I did some work on his rifle, so I wound up with 3 boxes of the 150's in .308win and am shooting them in a 20" AR10 GII. Accuracy is good (MOA or better) and the price is right ($19/box). They are marketed as being suited for deer-sized animals and are designed for a massive energy dump to shorten tracking jobs. The polymer tip is huge. I've shot two animals with it so far and it appears to be much like the old 100ct Nosler Ballistic Tips and early Hornady SST bullets. I figured a lightly-constructed bullet might be suitable for a short barreled .308win that's probably only pushing a bit over 2,700fps from the muzzle. The 150's are advertised at 2,820fps and I believe that's from a 24" barrel.

First animal was a 140lb sow at 200yds, standing in a shallow hole. Shot her just behind the shoulder and the exit was just above the offside shoulder. She didn't go anywhere, but commenced to flopping. Exit wound was a nearly golf ball sized and is pictured below. As she flounced, I put another angling shot in at the back of the lungs since she was quartering away. It didn't exit and I didn't go hunting for it in the body cavity. Pig was bound for the processor 5 miles down the road, as a family member asked me to get them a sow for sausage.



Second animal was a whitetail doe I shot recently at 60 yards, broadside. I was hunting a lane cut through some fairly open woods and heard her crash a couple seconds after the shot. There was no blood at the shot site, but I found her about 20 yards away, piled up. The hit was middle of the lungs and there was a very small exit hole visible. Inspection showed it was the bullet core that had separated and punched through. The remaining bit of jacket was hung in the hide just behind the exit hole and was blocking most of the leakage. Still, 20 yards is a fairly short run for open woods and just a lung hit.



All in all, it looks to be a pretty harsh bullet on medium game, and not much of a penetrator, which are pretty much the characteristics Winchester claims for the product line. Cheap and accurate don't hurt either. I'm not sure if the 150gr 30-06 and .300 magnum loads use this same bullet, but if they do, I'd wager they are fairly bomb-ish at those higher speeds.

I've wondered about those myself as I see them deeply discounted. Our deer run big here and while a softer bullet results in more expansion faster, those Deer Season XP's might be too much of a good thing. My 7mm-08 wasn't expanding the Barnes TSX bullets enough to suit me, so I'm in the softer cup & core Interlock and SST camp these days. I don't need a DRT, but I sure want a big leaky exit wound to help find them by.

Looks way too soft for brush hunting.

DOn't like them or the Browning BXR . Both Deer I shot with them both dropped at the shot , one had minimal damage the other had extensive damage. They have redone them this year and they are all copper , hollowpoint and have an acetal resin tip. They shoot well out of my Sako 75

Yeeeesh, why do they keep trying to reinvent the wheel. Super X power points have been killing stuff for decades.

Power Points do kill well, but nothing ever advances without trying new variants. We had the Barnes X and Nosler Ballistic Tip decades ago, and now we have the TTSX and the Accubond also.

I did find it funny that the local Academy Sports had two different slots for .308 150gr W-W Power Points on the ammo shelf, although they were not stacked closely together. Packaging was very similar, although the standard box said something about medium game or big game and had a deer-shaped logo on the box, while the other variant said it was for hog hunting and had a hog logo (Hog Special). It looked to be exactly the same ammo and carried the same listed specs, with just an "H" added to the end of the product number. Oh, and another dollar added to the price tag. Smooth one Academy......

^^^^^^^^ as has federal blue box and corelockt etc etc etc

I'll take a shot at it. Because people on sites like this go on and on about the premium bullets being the "best" killers. Winchester and Remington have been slow to change anything, unlike Federal who produces their "Premium" line with bullets produced by others such as Nosler. I suspect the original big 2 don't want to do the same thing Federal has already done so, at least, Winchester develops their own bullet...thus reinventing the wheel and trying to get noticed in a crowded market. Not sure how that will work for them.

I like the Winchester/Olin Deer Season XP in 243, 6.5 Creedmoor, 270, 30-30, 308, and 30-06. They are very accurate and kill quickly with behind the shoulder lung shots.

All of the whitetails that I shot with them have been 1 shot kills with through-through penetration on behind the shoulder lung shots. My Son and his friend each shot 2 deer with the 125 grain Deer Season XPs from their 6.5 Creedmoors.

EDIT: The 150 grain DS-XP 30-30 load is one of the most accurate factory load that I've tried in my Mossberg 479 and Savage 170.

I picked some of these up for my PA10 18”. Shoot just under 1”. I didn’t want to reload like I’m doing for my MI 18” large frame. I figured they’d expand a lot and probably not penetrate both sides.

When were the DS-XPs all copper?

There is a new line of ammo, Deer Season XP Copper Impact. Red tips. I have not seen them on the shelf though, locally. About $5-7 more a box.

The size/design of the poly tips they are putting on these bullets undoubtedly has a lot to do with their expansion characteristics. Accubonds shown for comparison.

I just bought a few boxes for 21 a box. SO far they shoot exactly like the older Deer Season since I had both boxes and a very accurate Sako 75 to compare them. The red Acetal tip is real cool looking too

I didn’t have time to work up a load for a 7600 in .270 that I bought this year, so I grabbed a couple boxes of these to try. They shot very well in the gun but being new to me, I don’t know how it shoots with other loads (I’ll find out this winter). I’ve only taken one deer with that rifle so far this year but performance was as I suspected- pretty traumatic. Large exit and plenty of leakage. If I didn’t like using my own handlods so much, I would probably use these a good bit. Now if Winchester would start selling them as a component bullet...I’d do more experimentation with them!

I found that Winchester/Olin 130 grain Power Max Bonded ammo shoots good groups from my 760 and CLR, good enough to keep me from going to the effort of handloading for them.

There are situations where "good enough" really is "good enough", or at least "good enough" for the guy making that judgement call.

I haven't bought store bought ammo for a while, so I decided to buy a couple boxes of the .308 Winchester deer Season XP bullets to try in my Mauser M12. For the price point, I am blown away with the 100-yard accuracy of this bullet (I don't think I could reload better), and it definitely feels softer on the shoulder than other ammo I tried, which is always nice. Excited to try it out next week in Michigan UP.

glad I bought it.

A few years ago when ammo was hard to get, I bought a couple boxes for my daughter’s 243 as it was all I could get. She shot a doe behind the shoulder at 80 yards. No exit and little to no blood. The doe ran 100 yards before crashing in the woods. I wasn’t impressed. The next year she was lined up on her first buck. She apparently made a bad shot, don’t know where it hit. I found just a few drops where he jumped a fence 100 yards from getting shot. I bumped him alive several hours later in the dark, about 600 yards from where she shot him. We went back next morning and couldn’t find any blood around where he laid down, never found him.

Last year I found a deal on DS XP in 6.8spc. I had always kind of wanted one. I bought the ammo (10 boxes for $112 shipped) and then bought a Stag Super Varminter. Heart punched a buck at 65 yards. He made it about 60-70 yards before piling up. No exit but lots of blood.

I’ll stick with it in the 6.8 because I’ve got a lot of it. In the 243, she heart punched one with ttsx last year and the exit was same size as the entry, which might have been expected. I’m trying tipped core-lokt this year.

They are very accurate in my 6.5CM and 270WSM. Haven't shot a deer with the 270WSM, but the 125 in the CM worked very well on a young buck and a mature doe. The buck thru the shoulders dropped. The doe (lung shot) ran about 50 yards.

I'm leery as to how well they will perform at 270WSM speeds, but they were fine in the CM.

FIL shot some a few yrs ago he wasn’t too impressed zero blood trails

Interesting comments on the lack of blood

The reviews are quite good on other sites

We’re still shooting them in that 20” AR10. Winchester’s intent of creating a rapid expansion bullet holds true. Some exit, some don’t, but it wrecks stuff.

Didn’t have very good accuracy in 06 Venture and Ruger compact 308 , around 2-2.5” groups .
300 Win. And 300 Blackout [bleep] well with them
300 Win was Remington 783 and Black out was Ruger Ranch bolt
Shot a good sized spike with the 300 Win. And it demolished the out going side
Kenneth

They shoot very well in my .308 Win, CA Mesa. I shot a doe with them a few years back. Dropped at the shot, legs in the air. It tried to get back up and I shot it in the neck.

When I got up the deer I though I had made a bad shot, as I could see blood along the spine, mid-deer. When I gutted it it certainly wasn't gut-shot so I was confused. We hung the deer and skinned it on the pole, due to temps. I hit it where I was aiming, high shoulder. Bullet penetrated the shoulder, hit the spine, and traveled back along the spine, exiting. The deer nearly fell in 1/2 when I skinned past the exit.

Lack of penetration was not at all a problem. Wrecking 1/2 a backstrap was though!

Have only used them in the .350 Legend. We have taken about 8 deer with them in the last 3 years. None went more than 40 yards and recovered no bullets.