Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Greatest Cup and Core?

Suppose all the premium bullets became unavailable (imagine that!). All we had to choose from were Interlocks, Core-lokts, Hot-cores, GameKing/ProHunter. .270 130gr, .284 140 gr, .308 150 gr. Velocities 2800-3100 fps. Deer hunting from in close to way out there. What are you reloading?

Matchkings. Heavy per caliber. Been doing this for over 30 years.

Berger got their idea from me. Marketed their match bullets as hunting bullets.

Have to be Heavy per caliber because of the low retained weight.

I love a 165gr corelokt.

All have stood the test of time. I have used more corelokt than anything due to their bulk availability in the past at lower cost. Second in line are the Hornady. Both have done a very fine job for me.as far a Speer and Sierra I used a lot of their varmint bullets in the past but just not much of their larger heavier bullets on bigger game. More circumstance as anything. Lately I have used some power points out of my 308 that I bought here on the fire. The small sample I have with them was fine. As I said all have been around for a long time which is a good sign of meeting the need

Favorites are: .270 130 gr ProHunter. .308 150 gr Interlock. I also like Hot Core and Core Lokt. My favorites are so because they shoot a little better from the bench in my rifles. BUT, all shoot far better than I can hold in an actual hunting situation. On deer, all kill about equally well.

Hot Cores or Ballistic Tips.

Jack

Hornady Interlocks. Barely held together (78/180gr) on an impala's shoulder at 80 yards (recovered in offside ham), but it got the job done albeit marginally. Second choice would be the NBTs.

Core Lokt in factory ammo or Hornady interlocks for a component would be my choices.

Truth be told I have never had really any bad luck with Interlocks, Core Lokts, Win Power points, GK/PH or Hot Cores. Probably because I mostly shot appropriately weighted bullets at reasonable speeds from 2200 FPS to 2850 FPS. Sure I have had a couple lost jackets, but its hard to call a jacket against the hide on the far side of a DRT animal a failure.

Cheap and readily available corelokt's.

Since I have never fired a premium bullet at a game animal, I suppose any of the above has provided good service for more yrs than me.
Personally the bullets I have used the most have been Cor'locs & Interlocks, mostly because of availability.

Hornady 30 caliber 165 grain Spire points. They worked on so many elk, I lost count, but somewhere around 40. They also killed plenty deer and antelope between elk hunts...

I have 300 100gr interlocks for my 243, 300 150gr producers for my 30-06, and 250 180gr power points for my 300 Weatherby. What premium bullets?

Wish Winchester was still making their bonded power max. Noticeably better than a plain cup and core but also noticeably cheaper than a true premium bullet

I'm with Shrapnel on the 165 grain Interlocks in .308 and have had equally good performance from the 139 and 154 in 7mm and 140 in 6.5mm.

they still make the powermax dont they? i bought a box at walmart the other day for my 270

Core-Lokt 1st and Hornady 2nd

They all work, but Sierras are the ones all the others are compared to. If you rifle won't shoot a Game King or Match King, there is usually something wrong with the gun.

Interlocks....

For the bullet diameters and weights that you listed I would probably go with Interlocks, but really for deer at the velocities that you mentioned, I don't think it really matters. If I could raise the bullet weight to 150 for .277, 160 for .284 & 180 for .308 and drop the velocity to 2700 to 2900 fps, I would probably go with GameKings.

Hornady Interlock

Ballistic Tip