Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting 145 gr. Speer boatail testing

Found them on closeout at Midway so ordered 6 boxes for My 7-08. I worked up to XX.0 grains from 44.0 using WC852 (slow) popped with a CCI 250 primer and found a very accurate spot to stop adding powder. My pencil barreled Model 7 puts 3 touching the first group (only fired 14 rounds including sight in and load work up) so I am good with that. I then ran one through 4 jugs of water spaced an inch apart at 100 yards. It blew up the first two, split the third, split the forth less and exited leaving a dent in the backstop board. Perfectly expanded in the Speer fashion meaning not a huge mushroom and still weighing 103 grains. I found lead fragments in the last two jugs but the first two were torn asunder and held nothing. I wanted a shorter bullet to reduce powder compression and was waiting for the 145 gr flat base bullet to go on sale but just couldn't pass on $16.61 a box. Even though a boat tail this is not a real long bullet and powder compression is not unreasonable. I expect to be getting around 2650 fps out of my 18 1/2 inch barrel which is plenty for what deer hunting I will do with it. Seems like a pretty tough bullet.

I always thought of Speer bullets as being designed for hunting, not that they are not plenty accurate usually. Some produce higher pressure but I don't recall which ones but it didn't always correlate with the bearing surface in all cases. Those should do fine on deer and the extra toughness will be good for hogs too.

I've had pretty good luck with that bullet. Thanks for letting us know about your test results.

I started shooting them in a 20" 7mm-08 when I discovered an old-stock box on my load bench. My father shot them in the 80's in a 7RemMag and said they were bombs at that speed. Noting that the ogive allowed me to be near the lands in a 2.82" mag box, I tried them over H4350 in my Rem 660. I got 2,700fps and sub-MOA groups. I like them at that speed and think that their construction is well-suited to that velocity. I generally get exits on broadside shots, with lots of leakage. The buck shown below stopped one with a double shoulder shot, but he fell in his tracks.

I had a M600 Mohawk in 243, wood stock and plastic bottom "metal". It shot great but the floor plate would bow out and in which bugged me to no end. Did the 660 improve on that? I believe the action is the design basis for the model 7. I see you went with a blind box magazine on yours. Nice buck and a good hog. I believe the 7-08 and 308 are hard to beat as deer and feral hog cartridges. Have a bunch of 6.5 bullets so someday I will build a "Creed" but don't see how it could be a better rifle than the other two.

The 660 was simply a 20" version of the 600 with the magnum-contour barrel like the Mohawk. It also wore a different stock. Mine had a pitted bore, so I had a 20" 700SS take-off installed and then put it in a McMillan M7 stock with 700 ADL bottom metal. It's definitely a Frankenstein rifle, but it is light and balances well. I don't have the ammo carrier on there anymore and moved up to a 2.5-8 Leupold. Still shoot the Speers though.

It is a good looking rifle for sure. My model 7 came with a evilly balanced wood stock and I replaced it with a Predator stock that made a different rifle out of it. This year I am running an old steel Weaver 3x with a thick post crosshair reticle but will someday put a 2x7x33 Leupold on it. I do more night hog hunting than anything and the thick post is easy to see.

Boat tail Speers are deliberately made softer than the flat based Hot Cor bullets. That's not to say you need a tough bullet for your purposes.

Well most soft bullets end up in the third jug or the fourth and over expanded. This bullet penetrated four jugs and would have made it into the fifth jug, ended up looking like an expanded partition with some lead still there. I would say for a C&C this one is as tough as any. Expanded bullet is .47 averaged from three measurements and overall length is .59. I know it is just a jug test but jug tests make it easy to compare bullets in an easily put together medium. Could be the bullet is jacketed just right for 2700 fps. I have used HotCor's for many years finding them generally excellent. I would like to run the same test with a 145 gr. HotCor and see if it penetrated more jugs. I may have some 160's laying around, an old favorite for my 7x57.

So what the heck the 160gr. HotCor penetrated 4 jugs, dinged off the backboard and was not to be found pushed to 2500 fps. And that is the end of the jugs for a while. Going to up my standard to five jugs! Interestingly the 3rd and 4th jugs were not nearly as damaged as they were with the 145 BTSP. I never felt the 160 was a very soft bullet but I never shot anything with it weighing over 300 pounds either and I have always been a meat hunter so I shoot for ribs trying to miss the far shoulder or the neck in front of the shoulder if I want the animal dead on the spot.

Have not used the 160 hot core but the Mag tip 160 is definitely a stouter bullet. I thought of them as a Grand Slam but with a single core. They did well in a 7RM but may be on the tough side for the 08 and x 57 velocities. I think either the 145 or 140 at 2700 is perfection.

I shoot the 145 Speer btsp in my 284. They went lengthwise in this bear at about 25'. Dropped him but one more in the neck to be sure because of the close proximity.


[img]https://i.imgur.com/5EkszG0.jpg?1[/img]

I have some Mag Tip 175's I bet I never use.

So the entry was on the end of his tongue? Nice shooting!

Family, friends here in the South shooting 7/08's get converted quickly to the Speer 130g BTSP with around 42g of IMR 4895 in a rem case with a rem primer at 3000 out of factory Remington factory 7/08's. Amazing accuracy, and the bullet kills white tails so quick it is hard to believe the lack or runners in the jungle we hunt in.

These bullets are on sale at Midway presently for $15.99 per 100. If you spend $100. on Speer bullets you get a 20% rebate. I paid $16.61 before the rebate and bought 6 boxes.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/3...r-145-grain-spitzer-boat-tail-box-of-100

I started reloading with Speer bullets. Never saw a need to change.

7/08
Rem brass
9 1/2 primer
130g speer BTSP
42g of IMR 4895
Kiss the lands
tiny groups
very dead deer out of a 24" bbl Rem 700
one of the finest white tail killing loads you can shoot for 350 yds and under, we have converted many. However, we never tried the 145g speer.

I've had mainly good results with Speer bullets over the years. Most have shot good but a few have shot terrible. The Speer 6.5mm 120gn shoots three shot groups as good as Sierra 120gn bullets, well under an inch in my M12 6.5x55. Other good Speer bullets have been the .308 130gn HP in my .308 and 165gn and 180gn SPs in my .30-06. Also the 8mm 170gn SP in my 8x57. But the 6.5mm 140gn SP and the 7mm 145gn Grandslam have shot terrible. I tried the Grandslams in my 7x64 that shoots three shot groups of 0.4 inch and five shot groups of 0.8 inch with other bullets, but the GSs spread about 4 inches at 100m. I then tried them in my 7x57 Ruger 1A and got similar results. Similar with the 6.5mm 140gn in my 6.5x55. This rifle shoots under an inch (3 shots) with every bullet I run through it except the 140gn Speer SP. Maybe some of the Speer tooling needs replacing?

But mostly good results bar a couple. I wish we could buy 100x 7mm bullets for $16.00.

I decided to work up a load using a powder that is listed to get more velocity than WC852 or IMR 4895 and similar velocity to IMR4350 without the powder crushing. Used H414 in the heavy Federal 308 cases I made it to the max load listed in the Hodgen manual with excellent accuracy. Recoil is noticably more than the IMR 4895 load and I had to dial POI down an inch to get back where the rifle was sighted in for the 4895 load. I have 100 pieces of Winchester brass on the way and when it gets here I may work up a bit more to see just what I can get. Speer data is 1 grain more than the old Hodgens data so why not go there with brass that has more internal capacity?

Thanks for the update. I swore off Speer bullets for some time due to poor accuracy in Grand Slams. I gave them another go recently on 150's in my 270 as they were to cheap to pass up. I havent found anything to top them in that gun and have performed really well on game (hot cores). I am new to the 7-08 and need projectiles so think I will pick some up. I, like you, were hoping for the 145 hot cor to go on sale, but oh'well. I have an 8 lb'er of H414 so will give it a go.