Not recommending any bullet here but thought I'd share a recent test. Got in a 8mm bullet swap here with a nice guy from WV. We both hunt with 8x57. I mentioned I had a bunch of old Remington Core Lokt 185's. He said he had read they were pretty tough bullets at 8x57 velocities, too tough, maybe designed for the 8 Mag. I had been using them for years, but that got me worried, so I took a handful and fired them into packed heavy wet snow in cardboard boxes stacked end to end (that's been a good test media in the past) at 150 yds. I then fired the test with the 175 Sierra Pro Hunter at nearly same velocity. Surprise, surprise..the 175's looked like a magazine ad mushroom, the Core Lokt's looked like an absolute A bomb, shedded the jackets,BUT left a trail of destruction and twice the size wound channel as the well behaved Sierra. Dug into the snowbank behind the test boxes and discovered roughly the same penetration of both. We all have different preferences of the bullets we use, but for me, I'm going to stick with the CoreLokts, not just because they are cheap and i have a lot of them.
Got a bunch of those Remington 185gr CoreLockts myself. Great utility bullet for my 8mm Mausers as well.
I got the opposite information this bullet than your friend did - I've read they were designed for the Mauser round, and would fragment at magnum velocities, so I've been hesitant to load them up for my 325 WSM. Your account verifies my own experience with them - great bullet for deer at 8x57mm velocities, even if they fragment.
For my 325 WSM, I prefer the 200gr and 220gr bullets. For the 8mm Mausers, I prefer the 180gr to 195gr bullets.
