Sam H "hit the nail on the head" - most recent bullets use 1800 fps as the MINIMUM impact velocity for terminal (killing) performance. Everything these days seem to revolve around long distance accuracy; however, if you are shooting for distance - even medium distances - check your ballistic charts to see what your residual velocity is at that range. I feel there are many great shooters these days but I feel many think only as shooters and not as hunters - the point being that just because a bullet is ballistically 'viable' (super-sonic or approximately 1300fps) does not mean that it will still kill effectively versus simply wounding the animal. Not only do I want to recover the animal, but neither do I want it suffer needlessly.
Another point to consider in terminal ballistics is impact resistance. For instance, most think that shooting a smaller deer with a high velocity round will do much more damage compared to a much larger deer shot with the same round. Much of the time the larger animal having much more mass - and resistance - is dropped on the spot with a perfectly performing bullet while the same projectile going through the small deer results only in small entry and exit wounds, and it runs off to bleed out. Sure you'll have a blood trail, but any velocity passed through the animal - versus spent in the animal - can be looked at as wasted.
So my take-away impression from this is that compared to Sierra, the Speer will probably perform terminally better at longer distances but less so at short distances involving higher velocities.
PS. I also check out a bullet's given MAXIMUM velocity - many modern bullets are limited to 3200 fps or less.
Maybe these thoughts help - if not just ignore the Old Fart rambling . . .
Last edited by Offshoreman; 06/19/20.
