Certainly no hate here. I spent a lot of my first 20 years of whitetail hunting lobbing 180 grain spcl at whitetail. If you like how they perform at 100 yards, you should see them at 10. Yikes.
I bought 500 bulk 150 grain PSPCL's back in 2006 for my son's deer rifles. In those days Mooseboy was shooting a Garand. Since then the kids have taken 1 or two deer each without a hitch. I've been mostly using Hornady Interlock SP in 150 and 165 grain. My plan was to eventually convert everything to the 150 grain PSPCL, but the Obama Presidency has caused me to alter my plans. I cannot find the bulk Remmies and when I can the Hornadys are cheaper.
The perception of bullet failure and the use of premium bullets has always fascinated me. I can remember my first reloading project in the early 80's, done with my long-dead best friend. Jerry and I went to the store. We looked over the selection of bullets.
"These here, " he said, pointing to Noslers, " Are what you'd use if you were going someplace special, like Alaska or something. They have a partition in them so they hold together better."
"Why don't we use those?" I asked.
"Because the ones here in the red box are cheaper and they get the job done." he replied, reaching for the Hornady.
I had grown up reading Outdoor Life, and although I was not hunting until I was an adult, I can remember a time when Remington Core-Lokt WAS a premium bullet. I can also remember that back in my formative years in the barber shop, most of the writing was about hunting out West, up North and in Africa. What I never could understand was why the stuff around me could be shot with . . . well, whatever, but west of the Mississippi, above the 45th parallel and across the ocean regular bullets failed to make an impression on game.
I HAVE come to understand one process of bullet failure, however. You see, the first thing any hunter learns is that any time the game does not keel over dead at the first shot, something is to blame. Shot placement is never the first thing to be considered. If the game is not recovered, it is the fault of the bullet. If the primer does not pop, it is the fault of the rifle, not the reloader. As a result, my shelves are filled with half-boxes of bullets left over from trying to fix bullet-failure issues and some of my best deer rifles have stayed in "Time-Out" in the back of the safe for years while they pondered their sins.
Back in 2009, I explored this concept:
In the shamanic Reloading Cave The point of "Plausible Reliability Dead" as it relates to this discussion is that I believe that the CoreLokt has achieved such a high PRD-Index rating that hunters just started to believe it.
