Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles What's up with Speer?

Same foul up occurred with the Grand Slam. Started out to be a great bullet. Speer is the best in the industry at pooping in their own cage.

Surprised Mule Deer does not provide some insight.

Same here. The 87 grain bullet is the only Speer bullet I use and it has done very well in my .250 model 99. I bought a bunch of them back when I heard they were being discontinued.

If someone else would start making a good 87 grain deer bullet in .257 I'd try 'em in a minute though.

I've never hunted w/Speer bullets. Always Nosler, Hornady, and Sierra...once. They don't really have what I consider a stand out bullet like the 139 7mm Hornady or the 210gr Nosler 338. Their 87gr .257 is a good bullet but not any better than the 87gr Hornady. Even though Hornady calls it a varmit bullet it has killed many deer sized critters. powdr

powdr, I've eyed the Hornaday bullet but the Varmint classification has kept me from trying them so far.

I'll have to try them out some day.

I like the Speer 165 gr. .308" Hot core for my Ruger M77 RSI. In fact, it's the only bullet that rifle seems to like. Scatters anything like a shotgun. My other Speer bullet is the 200 gr. Hot Core for my .300 Win. mag. Good enough to drop a cow elk at 530 yards. laser measured. I have a bunch of 160 gr. old style Grand Slams .284" I'm going to try in a 7x57 and .280 Remington later next week. Big problem is working around what seems like a jillion doctor's appointments. I also haave a good supply of .358" 250 gr. Hot Core Spire Points for my .35 Whelens. I have no problem with the Speer bullets I've used. They've always brought my game to bag so definitely no complaints coming from me.
Paul B.

YES, Alliant Techsystems Inc.(ATK) is the company and they are dividing the military and sporting aspects of the company.....

7mm 145 BTSP are fantastic in my .284 Savage 99.

Just got back last night from several days of deer hunting and am still getting caught up here. Some of this was hashed over in a thread last year, but what I do know is this:

A few years ago Speer invited a bunch of gun writers to tour the plant in Idaho, and a friend of mine and I drove over from Montana. That's when they announced the dropping of the Hot-Cors to us, which was going to take place over a year or two as DeepCurls came on-line.

But not everybody there was enthused about the DeepCurl name. In fact several Speer people talked to us privately, saying the bullets were essentially Fusions, which were already getting a lot of positive feedback from customers using Federal factory ammo. So why not piggyback on that good feeling and just sell "Fusions"? That made sense to me, and they urged me to say so to the marketing guy, who'd thought up the DeepCurl name. So I did. He rejected the idea, very abruptly, probably because he'd already heard it enough from several Speer employees.

The plan was also to sell DeepCurls at HotCor prices, which probably would have helped, but apparently they weren't able to do that. (They'd had the same plan for the DeepShoks, but that didn't work out either.) And availability wasn't great. Even gun writers never got very many DeepCurl samples, which is kind of par for the course with Speer, no doubt because ATK has essentially ONE guy to help out writers for not only Speer but Federal, Alliant, Weaver, etc. etc. etc. I've requested samples of Speer bullets for a number of articles, months before the deadline, and probably 3/4 of the time they don't show up until well after the article deadline has passed.

I like a lot of Speer products, and stuff from the other ATK owned lines as well. But when writers can't get many samples to test, and stores can't get many products for their shelves, then handloaders aren't going to want to commit themselves to a new product. Especially when so many hunters really liked Hot-Cors and now were being suddenly told they weren't going to be able to buy any more.

So MD, are the DeepCurls dead? The 90 gr. 243 DeepCurl was great. I never was able to get any .284 DeepCurls. Just wondering........

Not MD. But I was told in response to an email question almost a year ago, that the Deep Curls were dead. It's only recently that their website has been changed to reflect the fact that they are no longer offered. pretty sorry way to rn a business, IMO!

I love the 120gr 257 DCs. Fortunately I was able to stock up while they were available.

Speer has brought several bullets to the market that I've not ever been able to get my hands on. These bullets keep going away, too! Frustrating. I ended up with some Grand Slams that are poor for me in the accuracy department when I bought a new scale last year. I really wanted to try 22 cal TBBC, and I believe they were available from a place that breaks down military stuff and sells the components. I'd planned to try the DeepCurl/Fusions on timber animals at modest speed eventually, likely out of a 30-30 with 1 in chamber, 1 in mag.

Another great example of a manufacturer responding to demand from the market place when determining what product to offer.

When Speer was first sold out years ago, it went straight to hell. The old Speer Hot Core was as good a bullet as you could buy. Their customer relation's went straight out the door. Every now and then I look to see what Hot Core's are around but don't find them around here. Those old hot Core's didn't shoot loose in the jacket and retained a lot of their weight.

I've no doubt the Deep Curl will return. It will have a different name and a premium price tag.

That's already true. It's called the Fusion, and the premium price is due to being loaded in Federal ammo.

Though handloaders can pull the bullets and then reload them, if that's what they want.

I started out with Speer bullets when I began reloading in 1978; eventually switched to Hornady due to local gunshop availability. The Speer Hot Cor 130/.277 bullets I used back then were accurate and performed well, just got to the point no one stocked them. I've never switched back to Speer.

Funny. I started buying Hot Cor cause I can't find Hornady 100 IL.

More than likly sales are down and instead of keeping up with the compitision by offering a new generation of bullets for long range or a premium bullet for the ultra craze they think they can rebrand and old product and fool us...
Definatly a play by cooperate trying to squeez every oz of profit without investing in any new product research....sad thing....

I've got some deepcurls on hand. Here's what I think also was part of the problem. In general deepcurls are. 0005-.001 oversized per caliber. I have seen posts where people have called speer for more data than they list for deepcurls. Posters have claimed they were told by technicians they talked to that they should never deviate from speers published data and powders listed because of potential pressure spikes. I'm only repeating what I've seen posted...but I do know from measuring mine they are slightly oversized...which may have been a contributor to the fact that many people found them to be really accurate.