Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Speer or Gameking.

I'm sure either will kill deer. I've found it tough to find bullets in any caliber from .22 on up that won't. We even used 55 grain "accelerators" out of a .30-06 on a couple back in the 80's. Killed them dead as a stone.

Hey Keith , right on. 6.5 with the Barnes 100gr TTSX, 270 110gr. 7mm 120gr & 30 cal 130gr. They all work

I wouldn't touch another Gameking when it comes to hunting bullets. Sierra's .224 63 grain SMP is the only Sierra I consider "good" for critters....Gamekings may as well be varmint bullets: what a mess they make at normal ranges and velocities.....

The Speer 105 grain .243 BTSP has been a good deer/antelope/elk bullet for me but that's my only experience with that bullet.

I'd seriously take the advice from others on this thread and find other options. Do you not like the .277" 150 grain hot-cor? That's been a damn good hunting bullet for me, out of my .270 Win.

Didn't know Speer offered a 105 BTSP. Their website apparently doesn't either. Do you mean the old 105 Hot-Cor?

I apologize....I meant the 100 BTSP.



I think I had the 105 Hornady BTHP on my brain...

No Hot Cor prejudice here. Some of my first bullet boxes were yellow. Just looking for the local consensus of the two bullets listed. There is a partial box of 150 grain 277 Hot Cor on the bench at present. This Tikka seems to have a thing for boat tails.

I regularly hunt with Game kings. 225 gn 35 cal. I caught one a couple of years ago from a buck I shot in the chest.it was in the back edge of the ham and was a perfect mushroom..
The biggest deer I ever killed was with a 180 gn 30 cal GK in a 300 Weatherby Federal factory load. Shot the deer in the shoulder bullet hung just under the hide in the offside ham. Core was loose in the cup but they had stayed together. Range was 35 yards. I was watching a long field and the deer came out right behind the stand.That bullet held together well for the bones it broke and speed it started. I trust them on deer.

130 gr Federal trophy bonded tip bullets.

Otter6,

As I stated in my first post on this thread, the Speer BTSP rifle bullets are NOT Hot-Cors. Instead they're swaged, like most other bullets, and have softer lead cores than many other cup-and-core bullets. The 150 Speer .270 bullets on your bench are either flat-base Hot-Cors or boattail swaged bullets. They can't be both.

Will also note that I've had both Sierra GameKings and Speer Hot-Cors leave their jackets at the ENTRANCE hole on deer.

"Will also note that I've had both Sierra GameKings and Speer Hot-Cors leave their jackets at the ENTRANCE hole on deer."

Yup, I have seen the same.

Boat tails have a tendency to do it more then flat bases bullets, but I have seen this several times from both flat base and boat tail bullets. A thicker jacket helps more on the flat base then the Boat Tail.

Boat tail bonded bullets do not shed their jackets any more then bonded core flat bases bullets, and of course, solid expanding bullet have no problems with boat tail design at all.

About 30 years ago I did a lot of experimenting with bullet design and I feel I came up with a simple formula that fits the bill for hunting bullets of the cup and core type that worked quite well no mater what the bullet weight or diameter is.

The formula is as follows.

(#1
At any given diameter the ratio of jacket to core should be 50% of the diameter of the bullet. In other words a 30 caliber bullet should have 15 caliber worth of jacket and 15 caliber worth of lead. The jacket used as the cup when starting out is .075" thick strip. Therefore .075" X2 for the total of .150". (+ or - about 2% is fine) That means you have a .075 jacket formed into a cup.

That's far too thick to expand much. Yup....it is! That's the idea in fact.

So, step #2 is to measure the length of the ogive. Any Ogive. Now taper that from it's base thickness , (in this case .075") to .006" at the nose.

The taper is done with a swedging punch from the inside so the outside sill looks like a cylindrical cup, but the mouth is thin. A male/female die set is used for this, so the outside cannot become any larger. The taper is made from the point on the inside of the jacket that is even with where the shank and the ogive of the bullet depart. Next a core is swedged in, and the ogive formed. Putting a cannelure into the jacket at 33% from the base and another at 66% from the base makes "waists" inside the jacket that help hold the core, just like the old Remington Core-Lokts did, but 2 instead of one. There are not made for crimping the brass case, but only as locks for the core.

The thin nose will expand at fairly low impact velocities, down to about 1650 FPS but the heavy jacket keeps the bullet from breaking up even if heavy bone is hit, or impact velocities are high. This is not fool proof, but it works in the large majority of cases, If the bullet turns sideways and bends a bit it can still "squirt out" he core, but it does so on thinner jackets too, so that is not an argument against the design.

Bullets generally mushroom at the nose to about 50% larger then unfired size, so a 30 stops expanding at about 45 cal, a 22 expands to about 31 cal, a .375 stops at about 56 cal, and so on.

I did this with hand made bullets from 22 cal to 45 cal and found it was pretty universal no mater what diameter they bullets were and no mater what weight (length) I made them.

I believe this is the best formula to follow for cup and core bullets. But I can't seem to get any of the big boys to listen. Some of the older Remington Core-Lokts and a few of the WW Power Points were close however. So did some of the old Kynoch bullets from the 20s.

Production with factory available strip sold by Kennecott and Anaconda seems to be the factor.
The machines are all set to use it, so changing over to other thicknesses will cause problems (I am guessing anyway) plus the factories would have to make their own rolling mills to form the jacket strip for each caliber.

Anyway, just information from 30-35 years ago.
Interesting to some, but perhaps not relevant. I seriously doubt any bullet manufacturer is going to take it to heart.

Otter 6, I have fed my .270 a steady diet of Sierra 140 gr. HPBT since I got it 7 or so years ago.. Coyotes, deer, antelope,& hogs have all been killed with this bullet.. The one elk was with a 140 SST, but I have shot many elk with 165 HPBT 30 cal. and 160 HPBT in 7mm,, I have had those shoot though the lungs, but it is not something to break shoulders with.. Both the .30 and 7mm have also killed moose for me.. When I still traveled to the east to hunt whitetails, I took a big doe at 400 yards with the .270 and 140 Sierra... For deer size game, I have had great success with these bullets.. That is what you ask about..

Yes,I've known that for years. They are 150 grain Hot Core flat base.

my favorite deer bullets are either Barnes bullets or Swift bullets both are better big deer bullets ,in the old days Nosler partition was a great bullet and still are good

I'm with Pete on this, but it has nothing to do at all with the question.

I have killed a pile of critters with the Game kings. The reason I went with them is because almost every rifle I tried them in grouped better with the Sierra. I have been using the 165 gr. HPBT in my 30-06 and it does perform better on game and it shoots like a match grade bullet as well. I have never lost an animal with the Game kings but have had several jacket-core separations happen. I think that is to be expected with cup and core at the top speeds they are now being used at.

I don't shoot any version of Sierra bullets at game animals any longer, four bullet failures will do that to you, and there are only a couple of Speer bullets that I use, mostly the 87 grain .257" Hotcores in 1-14" ROT 250-3000s.

After shooting a lot of different 130, 140, and 150 grain .277" bullets from a few different 270s, I've settled on the 140 grain AB as my preferred deer and elk bullet in that caliber.

The Gameking will most likely be more accurate. Deer aren't hard to kill but limited to just Speer or Sierra, I'd take the Hot Cor or Pro Hunter over either .

For 20+ years a Speer 160g Grand Slam was my choice in my 7mm RM, deer and elk. Worked near and far. Stopped using them around 2004 when I went to true bonded bullets. Took my last elk with one three years ago, at 411 yards, quartering away.

Not the sleekest bullet, but out to 400 yards that isn't a problem. No problem in my experience getting MOA accuracy in a rifle capable of such.

That said, I now use and recommend Barnes TTSX and AccuBond to my family and extended family members for big game.

I've had a couple of failures with 130gr Sierra SBT on deer where the bullet came apart on the shoulder and failed to penetrate all the way through in one piece, but only within 100 yards where velocity was still very high. (I've not had that problem with Speer, or Hornady in that weight and caliber and believe their jackets either stay together better with their "flat bases" or their jackets are a bit thicker.) I've not had the same trouble with 150SBT or 150Spt (Speer) but always considered them for larger game than deer in that caliber whether "boat-tail" or flat base. (My "go-to-around-bullet" that seems to always work, "long or short", is the 150gr Nosler Partition; and IMO worth the extra cost for their consistent performance to use on any game where I would use a .270 Win.)