Well I did a bunch of research yesterday and settled on the Lyman 429640 250gr HP “devastator”
It looks really aggressive, but after finding some great penetration/weight retention testing with different alloys at different velocities, and several testaments to its accuracy and performance on game I’m sold.
I’ll post some pictures when I get some made up!
I hope it works out for you. A few drawbacks with the "Devastator." Single cavity mould for one. Heat the HP pin and mould separately initially, to get the pin good and hot, then cast hot. Use a softer alloy, hardened with tin, if you want the HP to actually expand, as opposed to just breaking petals off. If you want petals to break off, run an antimony-bearing alloy.
I opted to get the NOE version of the 429640 that casts about .433" with my alloy and comes with flat nose, cup point, and hollow point pins. The hollow points are 285 grains with check. I found better accuracy shooting the powder-coated version out of both a 44 Marlin and a 444 Marlin, sized at .4325" at 1700 fps and 2100 fps, respectively. The alloy contains enough antimony that the front end fragments on game, and creates 3-4 secondary wound channels that have quite a bit of power on their own. Have tried to use them on elk, but the elk haven't cooperated. Have shot a couple deer that have been "lights out" with huge wound channels. Like a damn grenade. I'm guessing I lose about 1/3 the bullet weight in fragmentation. Funny, I didn't see either deer drop. They were down before I came out of recoil, and didn't twitch.
