Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Lets talk Whitetail Bullets............

I am back!!! After a long hiatus, I was able to get on a decent deer lease this fall. Lets talk Whitetail bullets.......

I have three rifles to gear up for this season since variety is the spice of life and I am thinking about what ammunition choices for each.

Savage 99 in 300 savage......Hornady Super performance ....sst 150 grain

Custom Mauser ( harry lawson ) .300 win mag......???? ( however I do have .300 win mag lite from hornady with a 150 grain sst with the idea of texas whitetails shot with the .300 win at 70 yards)

Winchester 70 .308...............????? accubond..........balistic tip.....maybe sst

Having an explosion with a corelokt back in the day looking for something else.

I’d shot 150gr accubonds/ ballistic tips in the 308. 165-180gr in the 300Win.

I shoot 150 grain GameKings in my 308’s. 165 grain Barnes in my 300 Win mag, 130 Barnes in my 300 Savage. Ballistic tips would be good in any of them for deer in my opinion, so would GameKings. Deer and pigs are not hard to kill.

I use the 168 Berger VLD and absolutely love it in my 308. It's all I use on deer now for the past few seasons and will continue to do so. I highly recommend them

I use whatever WallyWorld has on sale for my 30/06. Just make it 180 grain. I'm not picky

Bob you are on the low end of the spectrum from "Elitist". Don't be telling everyone factory .30-06 ammo just plain works.

It will confuse them....

It would be a short list to summarize .30cal bullets/ammo that do not work on deer. When you get to that diameter and are talking 150-200gr, it's really more about what shoots in your rifle and what type of trajectory/zero you are looking for than "will it be effective on deer". If a person is a 300yd and under deer hunter, Wallyworld has great deer ammo in the .308 / 30-06 / 300 Win Mag. I tend to prefer Fusions and Hornady American Whitetail ammo if hunting store-bought ammo for deer and hogs, although Federal Non-Typical and W-W Deer Season XP have also been good. All of it is sub-$23 in a .308.

I'm going to try out some W-W Copper Impact today in my AR10. Was $23 on sale in 150gr .308. We'll see how it does as a budget TTSX.

If I buy factory ammo it is with the long run intention of using the brass so I buy Winchester ammo loaded with their Power Point bullets. Used many of them on deer and hogs with never a problem and it usually shoots just fine. Thinking about it now the reloads don't have much of an edge other than I can fine tune for accuracy. Geez a room full of reloading gear...........

I've never shot any SST's, but have read posts here on the 'fire they can be frangible. Seems like there are better choices for the 300 Win Mag at short ranges, such as the Accubond or Ballistic Tip.

Shot near 2MOA in my AR. The regular W-W Deer Season XP continues to shoot really well. Like 1/2-3/4MOA. Guess I'll keep shooting them. Tough to beat for $19 Wal-Mart ammo in an autoloader.

As an aside, three rifles hated the Copper Impact, but the fourth (Rem 600 Mohawk .308) shot it sub-MOA.

You made me turn in my Loonie Card. I really don't miss it. I now just stick to shooting trap & sporting clays. I forgot about sighting in 2" high at 100yards-------then don't touch it.

I've used 150 NBT's in 30/06 for a lot of deer and now use them in a 308 and they are still working well.

My deer rifle is a .35 Whelen, for years I shot a 225 gr. Sierra Game King with excellent results. Last fall I switched to a Hornady 200 gr. RN Inter loc, worked superbly, perfect mushroom retaining 66% of its original weight on a raking shot at 100 yds.. The buck managed to run about 40 yds. though I don't see how his lungs had been liquified, tremendous hydrostatic shock.

Yep. Bad mojo. Way too simple and effective.

Poor excuse for Loony talk.

DF

Boxerdog, I have found that generally SSTs also are supper fast expanders, and often blow up. If you are trying to avoid the same thing you didn't like with that Core-Lokt I would say the SST probably is not it. I have used them in 257, 6.5MM, 270, 30 cal and 8MM. I have killed deer antelope and elk with them. They are some of the most accurate bullets I have used in my hunting rifles, but I don't like the way thye break up, and the fact they do it fairly often.

A blow-up on a deer is not usually going to give you a long tracking job like it would on an elk just because deer are not all that big, but I have seen a few times they have gone a long ways with wounds that have been inflicted with bullets that break up. I have seen it with SSTs, a few Speer Hot-Cores, many Sierras, and several Burgers. And yes I am talking about deer, not just elk here.

The faster you fire a bullet, the faster it's likley to be going on impact and therefore the more likely to break up on impact, except for the solid/expanding types like Barnes X and Hornady GMX. I have had fewer blow-ups with mid velocity hits then I have high velocity hits with standard type bullets, so I am going to venture a guess here it may be best for you to go with one bullet for your 300 Savage and 308, and another for your 300 mag. I have had very good results with most flat base bullets from 300 Savage in both 150 and 180 grain, but the exact bullets I used I cna't say because it was so long ago I don't remember. In my 308s I really like my handloaded 150 gr Winchester Power Points, but Winchester seems to have quite making them for sale to handloaders. 150 and 165 grain Nosler Partitions will be good in either one of those shells.

In my 300 Mag I like to use 165 and heavier. I usually leave it zeroed for 200 grain bullets, but I usually use it for elk, not deer. Slowing down a bit makes for more reliable and straighter penetration in my experience, but as I said above, I doubt it would matter much on a deer.

I used a 110 grain bullet in my 30 06 one time at max load'' the buck I shot went down but got up and ran toward me , passing me at about 4 feet. I diden't see any blood on him and wasen't sure he was the one I shot. he ran about 40 yds past me and went down . when I gutted him his heart was blown to pieces as was part of his lungs.. how do they manage to do that? the bullet never came out..I went back to the 160 gr bullets that I usually used..that was an experiment to see if hi speed would stop them from running.

Nosler Ballistic Tips are the best for Whitetails. Never seen anything better as long as they are kept around 3000 fps or less.

Too many good bullets to try! I've used Bergers (really accurate, but as others mentioned they're designed for break up), Sierra Gamekings (highly accurate but didn't seem to get consistent results) and Nosler Accubond and BT. Accubond was giving straight through with minimal expansion on SC whitetails, mainly due to the size and thin skinned nature we have. Switched to Nosler BT and having good results so far. I'm currently using 168gr BT in a 300WM, but I got the rifle during season last year and didn't have much time for load development. Looking to go up to 180 and 200gr this year. The 168gr shot last year was a head-on neck shot and complete pass through with DRT results. Exit wound wasn't overly large so was happy with it. Took another with a Nosler 90gr BT in 243 at 50 yards, didn't have an exit would but turned everything in the chest cavity to non-working order and DRT.

Speer Hot Cor is my first choice for a good deer bullet. 150gr in .308 Winchester to .300 WIn Mag has worked as good as anything. SO has the 130gr in the 270 WCF and the 200gr in the 8x57is.

I think you'll have a harder time finding something that doesn't work for deer in those three rifles than you would finding something that does work well...barring the extreme ends: that being FMJs/solids and extremely light varmint bullets.

That said, I'd avoid anything sierra and the SST in the .300 Win Mag unless you don't mind a wound that looks like Madonna's crotch. The .300 Sav and .308 should be fine with those bullets though.