Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Why so much hate for Corelokts?

I have shot a number of deer,bear & moose with corlocs.
I found them to be very accurate & not a single failure.
I do however tend to run heavier bullets per caliber, & no magnums.
It has been a sorry day now that I can't find any more bulk packs of corelocs!
On the other hand Horn SP flat base have proven to be a very good alternative.

No doubt, rough country. The power lines prove that.

Who said rough? You said "miles from timber" which is BS. When you kill one as big as these 12 yr old kids did send me a pic.

One 180gr Core-Lokt (.30-06), DRT at 200+ yards. (the M94 was for "just in case")



One 140gr Core-Lokt (.260Rem - bad cellphone pic), DRT.



Of course, they ain't deer.

I have had Hornady, speer and sierra bullets fail on various types of game but never a corelokt. That being said I handload more Nosler bullets than any other kind. Honestly, in the last couple of years, I have used what I can find or backorder.

Those are only there so the illegals have something to follow.



Travis

A buddy of mine runs 180gr corelokts in his 30-06, he does not reload either, he has not lost an Elk with that bullet.

ive used them for elk in the old 30-40.my grandfather killed ALOT of elk wth them in the 30-40,you just gotta hit them in the right place.problem s folks dont want to have to work to get a good shot anymore so they take shots the corlokt wasnt designed to do like a flank shot.corelokts work great if you know how to pick your shots.

In our family, over 20 elk and dozens of deer have fallen from core-locks. Shot out of a 30-30 or a 300 win mag and calibers in between.

No failures, just meat in the freezer...

I reload, not with core-locks, but I do have a box of them as back-ups.

Before I started reloading, 43 years ago I bought a bunch of cheap Remington Corelokts to get some brass but during this phase I killed plenty of deer and a few big feral hogs using the 150 gr. 30-30 load and the 100 gr. in a 6MM Remington. When I started making my own rounds I was hoping to match the performance of these factory rounds. I have bought thousands of bulk corelokts to shoot for practice and still use the 165gr. in my 308 for some hunting. This said bullets like the Nosler Partition are worth the extra cost if you are pushing them faster than 2800 fps and Elk are your target. Failures not exactly but I have recovered many over expanded corelokts and I did not shoot at shoulders either. The last deer I shot with a corelokt was a 150gr. from my 30-06 which did not exit but dropped the deer.

The only "problem" with the Corelokt is that they are designed to perform best at "standard" velosity of 2500-2900 fps. Magnum rifles can get out of the comfort window easily at close range.

When I was younger and did not reload, I used 150 grain Corelokts exclusively in my .30-06. Performance and penetration was great. Then I took up reloading.

I was young and dumb and sort of "pushed" things a bit (actually pushed things a LOT). I'll not list the loads (out of fear that my computor would explode), but I was pushing 150 grain bullets out the muzzle at 3100+ fps in a .30-06. That's when the "problem" with Corelokts appeared.

Most of my shots were at under 100 yards and suddenly the bullets were failing to hold together and penetrate like I was used to. Instead of backing off on my loads (like I should have), I went to a heavier 165 grain bullet and everything settled down.

It wasn't the heavier bullet that did the trick, but rather that I could "only" push them to about 3000 fps as opposed to the 3100+ with the lighter slug. This put the Corelokt right in the "sweet spot" as far as velosity is concerned at 100 yards or so. This is true of most cup-and-core bullets. They simply weren't designed to perform best at 3000+ fps striking velosities.

I have since gained a bit of experience and knowlege and now load those 165 grain bullets to a more "reasonable" 2900 fps and couldn't ask for better performance except against the heaviest of game. Nothing "wrong" with the Corelokt......just miss used by some with Magnum rifles.

Having actually seen the CoreLokt bullet in the 375 in use on bigger stuff I can absolutely guarantee several things: they do not penetrate worth a damn, The notion of "eating right up to the bullet hole" is ridiculous, and they are prone to weird and unusual behaviors as a result of separations at even modest velocity.

I used CoreLokts for quite some time before getting to smell the coffee... I believed the advertising and thought that was how all bullets worked.

Popular as a function of price does not equate to quality...

Mass market American beer is a testament to that.

And lots of other stuff now that you mention it...

CL's are OK in the M1. If Remington would polish them a little more I'd use them at the range too.

No hate for the Core-Lokts but I don't use them, either.

I'll agree with what Sitka said. I had the opportunity a few years ago to take a nice bull moose at about 20 yds with a 225 corelokt in my 338. I never found the bullet to confirm, but I highly suspect it came apart near the surface. I did find the bull, it took me more than a month though. That was the last corelokt that will exit one of my rifles in the field. YMMV of course.

I have more than a few hundred of them but I only use them for squib loads to get newbies comfortable with shooting in field positions...

I did kill a bunch of deer with them in a previous life...and they did alright out of the -06 on whitetails.

Certainly no hate here. I spent a lot of my first 20 years of whitetail hunting lobbing 180 grain spcl at whitetail. If you like how they perform at 100 yards, you should see them at 10. Yikes.

I bought 500 bulk 150 grain PSPCL's back in 2006 for my son's deer rifles. In those days Mooseboy was shooting a Garand. Since then the kids have taken 1 or two deer each without a hitch. I've been mostly using Hornady Interlock SP in 150 and 165 grain. My plan was to eventually convert everything to the 150 grain PSPCL, but the Obama Presidency has caused me to alter my plans. I cannot find the bulk Remmies and when I can the Hornadys are cheaper.

The perception of bullet failure and the use of premium bullets has always fascinated me. I can remember my first reloading project in the early 80's, done with my long-dead best friend. Jerry and I went to the store. We looked over the selection of bullets.

"These here, " he said, pointing to Noslers, " Are what you'd use if you were going someplace special, like Alaska or something. They have a partition in them so they hold together better."

"Why don't we use those?" I asked.

"Because the ones here in the red box are cheaper and they get the job done." he replied, reaching for the Hornady.

I had grown up reading Outdoor Life, and although I was not hunting until I was an adult, I can remember a time when Remington Core-Lokt WAS a premium bullet. I can also remember that back in my formative years in the barber shop, most of the writing was about hunting out West, up North and in Africa. What I never could understand was why the stuff around me could be shot with . . . well, whatever, but west of the Mississippi, above the 45th parallel and across the ocean regular bullets failed to make an impression on game.

I HAVE come to understand one process of bullet failure, however. You see, the first thing any hunter learns is that any time the game does not keel over dead at the first shot, something is to blame. Shot placement is never the first thing to be considered. If the game is not recovered, it is the fault of the bullet. If the primer does not pop, it is the fault of the rifle, not the reloader. As a result, my shelves are filled with half-boxes of bullets left over from trying to fix bullet-failure issues and some of my best deer rifles have stayed in "Time-Out" in the back of the safe for years while they pondered their sins.

Back in 2009, I explored this concept:

In the shamanic Reloading Cave

The point of "Plausible Reliability Dead" as it relates to this discussion is that I believe that the CoreLokt has achieved such a high PRD-Index rating that hunters just started to believe it.