Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters In defense of soft hunting bullets

To your real point, I have not tried an Accubond in my 308 deer loads. The regular Ballistic Tips are working too well. In fact, I dropped from the 165 to the 150 since they stiffened them up.

For a good while my main deer hunting buddy was using 308 cartridges I assembled with softer 165's from the old 100 count boxes. They were great in that application. When they dried up he went to 168 grain Bergers.

Like Mule Deer says, there's too many bullet styles to paint with a broad brush. What's "soft" at high velocity may not be where velocity has fallen off.

What I don't want in a hunting bullet is what the SST did to that antelope posted by JGRaider on the SST thread;I can do without the mutilation... I'll take what the Partition did in the photo below.

Last couple of bucks shot with Partitions were instantly dead. Who says they don't kill fast?

Anytime you drive a bullet into bone at extremely high speed, you can get the kind of destruction shown in the photo of the antelope which is caused by the bone fragments creating secondary projectiles. The bullet is not capable of creating this kind of destruction on its own.

I saw a 75 lb whitetail doe about 15 years ago that a guy brought in to a processor with the whole front blown up.....looked much like the antelope. I asked what the hell he shot it with and the answer was a 300 Winchester magnum with a 165 grain partition......at a distance of 40 yards. Same shot placement, similar cartridge, similar impact velocity, not so similar bullet construction. Hmmmmm?

SST's are still getting bad press here on the Fire but as I've posted several times before I emailed Hornady last year the response was in fact the bullet has undergone a total redesign with a much heavier jacket.

I load the new SST's for two of my hunting pards both Mules they killed last year were DRT with no massive wound channels. I've shot Partitions for over 35 yrs and couldn't see any difference in the new SST performance.

A 165 Partition from a 300 Win Mag is a destructive force....I have used them on deer and elk and seen them used on other animals shot by friends,started at over 3200 fps..yes started at 3200 fps they can make a mess at close range, but I have not seen anything quite that bad....partition or not.Besides the fact that a 300 magnum more resembles a 338 caliber than it does a 7mm in terms of inflicting trauma.

Would beg to differ,however, that a 7mm or 270 Partition which land on shoulders always do the kind of damage illustrated there...since i've also shot a great many deer/antelope/black bear sized game with them from the 7 Rem Mag(3200fps+),the 270 and 280(3050-3100fps) and the 7/08 and 7x57.(2800 fps +-)....and at all kinds of distance from off muzzle to 500 yards or so.Never seen them behave like that.



In each case the wound channels/exits more resembled what we see from the 150 Partition in the picture below that....it's far more typical Partition behavior even from magnum chamberings. Even when placed through shoulders.So I would say "no" Partitions don't generally do that to deer sized game.

What you have with that antelope is excessive velocity and rotational forces from a 7 mag,high velocity and explosive disintegration from a thin jacketed bullet of "light" or "soft" construction,with massive trauma. Not my cup of tea and not what I'd call "good".

That bullet may do just fine from a cartridge giving less velocity and rotation,but isn't built for stout and is a poor match to a high velocity 7mm unless distances are longish.

I have a box of those on the bench.....might stick them in a 7/08 but would not bother with them in a 7 RM.In fact,I'd be more likely to just ignore them altogether and shoot them at paper or varmints.

I had not heard about a redesign. I may have to email them and see if that applies to the 200gn .338 SST. They shoot great, but when I tested them they basically turned to dust when they hit anything. I cut one open and it had a very thin jacket and the "Interlock ring" they refer to was barely visible. Having said that, I did see two 180gn from a 30-06 that performed well on a nice bull elk.

Here ya go...

Thanks

The reply was May 2014?

10-4

I don't think you can use the word "always" ever when it comes to gun shot wounds...they are all different. I don't think any of the hunting bullets will always create the kind of damage we are talking about, otherwise very few if any people would ever buy or use them more than once.....and as far as I know, Hornady sells a lot of SSTs and Nosler sells a lot of Partitions. I know that bone fragments that become secondary projectiles can create massive destruction......they don't always do it and I don't really understand why....likely more than one set of factors have to line up to make it happen.

There are always atypical results and the internet being what at it is, they get presented as the norm. My reaction to seeing the deer get blown up was not that Partitions suck and I would never use them....more like I will never hunt deer in a thicket that I can't see for 50 yards with a 300 magnum.

Best expansion I ever saw was a goat I literally cut in half with a bucket of refuse scattered around the trees behind the kill.

I was testing the then new, 340gn Spire Point Woodleigh Weldcores loaded to 2950fps in one of my .416 Weatherby's.

When I reported it to Geoff McDonald, he told me it was designed for about 2500fps.

Maybe an "oops" moment but it killed the goat.

ANY bullet can sometimes chew up a bunch of meat (and other tissue) at relatively close range when started fast. My wife shot a medium-sized mule deer buck last fall (he would have had about a 24" spread if the right antler hadn't been an 8" stub) with her .257 Roberts at a little less than 100 yards. The bullet was a 100-grain Tipped TSX at about 3150 fps, and Eileen made a perfect just-behind-the-shoulders meat shot. Or so she thought. When we butchered the buck the meat destruction was massive; we've never seen anything like it before with ANY 100-grain bullet from a .257, and in particular from a 100-grain TSX, which we've both used considerably in various .25-caliber cartridges, including the .25-06 and .257 Weatherby.

Which also illustrates that an example of one doesn't prove much, though people always use them on threads like this.

I have only used soft core (cup and core) on deer with excellent results. I reload for 5 different calibers and have not seen any evidence that would change me away from good old standard bullets.

It's all academic if you hunt in California, likely will be the same for some Yankee states soon too.

Most welcome...The new bullet kills were via the .284 154gr SST out of a Ruger 7x57 and Savage 7RM. The results IMO tend to substantiate Hornady's RE with the velocity variations of the two cartridges.. I worked up both loads, the redesign seemed to have no affect on accuracy and may start loading these in my 280 again as the old SST was one of the most accurate bullets I tested.

Years ago I took a statistics class and we were told that to provide a valid sample requires 100.
If that is impossible then 40 at minimum.
So when we say a certain thing happened
with a certain bullet.
We really need 99 more examples before it is statistically valid.

And you'd have to keep all other conditions equal. Same weight of animal, same presentation, same condition of lungs - breathing in or out, same state - relaxed or alarmed, same range, same velocity, same twist.


My sig line pretty well represents my take on the matter. People somehow manage to kill game every year with all kinds of bullets. The commonality I can see is that if the bullet hits the right place, it works. if it doesn't, it doesn't work. Within reason, obviously. Don't go shooting an elk in the scapula with a 40 gr. V-Max. But slip it between the ribs and it might work.

I've wounded a 125 pound impala with a .375 H&H Magnum shooting a 270 gr. Swift A-Frame. I have failed to kill a ground squirrel at a measured 100 yards with a 225 grain Hornady Interlock from a .338 Win. Mag. - it tore away half his lower abdomen but did not damage the lungs or heart. I've killed two ground squirrels with a .375 H&H and 270 gr. Hornady Interlocks at 200 yards - both hit the little critter where he or she lived. I've seen a 180 gr. Nosler Partition from a .30-06 zip through a blesbok with such little reaction that three professional hunters told me I missed, only to find the dead animal 5 minutes later. The next 180 gr. Partition in the lower neck dropped the next blesbok in its tracks - instant DRT. I've seen a 180 gr. Hornady Interlock from a .30-06 drop a 700 pound elk in its tracks with a chest hit, no bone or CNS hit, another instant DRT. I saw a kid shoot a deer with a FMJ bullet from an old Springfield '03 and kill the deer. The thing I take away from all this is the same as the title of an old JOC article in a Gun Digest - "where you hit'em is more important that what you hit'em with."

Hit the target, just hit the target. After that you can discuss the minutiae.

I generally agree, IF the point is to prove something. I guess I just view the comments on the web as merely observations and data points (seldom directly comparable to other data points). In the end if the preponderance of observations point in a direction I feel somewhat more inclined to lean in that direction.

Which is why we wade through all this.
We won't live long enough to shoot 100 moose for example or 100 bears.
I have a pretty good idea that a 250 gr bullet properly steered into the vitals from my 35 Whelen has a good chance of being effective.
whelennut