Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Anybody do any deer hunting with cast?

I went the 50/50 route, coww to pure for two years - hunting hogs and deer. I found it to soft if you hit anything but a broadside lungshot. I wasn't getting reliable pass through shots, especially on the hogs. One 150 pound boar retained two bullets that mushroomed to almost 70 caliber. I switched back to straight coww and hollow pointed them. I know get reliable expansion and pass through consistently. All the shooting was done through a 94 carbine 30-30 and my m.v is 1850. I don't usually shoot over 150 yards unless it's a coyote.

Good information, J.....thanks!

Right at 2000fps in my 24" barreled M54 Winchester bolt gun .30-30. 1900 fps-ish in several 20" Savage M1899 H's in both .303 Savage and .30-30. (Same load used universally in every .30-30 and .303 Savage I've owned, but with the expected slight variation in velocity between the various rifles.) Factory 190 Silvertips average 1900 fps in the 20" Savage .303's- my reference point as that load historically has a waonderful reputation as a woods thumper.

I was guessing close to that, I get right at 2100 out of my 308 with 32 grains and the 180. The 308 has an oversize throat and bore so it's slightly slower than normal.

IMO it's all the pizazz necessary for clean kills in wooded short range deer hunting scenarios.

You fellows are certainly saving me a lot of footwork. I have the RCBS mold and wanted to find an alloy that would work well on our whitetails at somewhere between 1500 and 2000 fps. It'll be used in 308, 30.06, and 30-30 (if I can find an Encore bbl}. Thanks again for all of the input! My apologies to Ole 270 for at least partially hijacking this thread. It was so nice hearing from folks who have walked the walk instead of just prone to spouting opinions.

I'm not too keen on getting up to 2000 fps and above. It would seem that I'd be fighting lead fouling constantly. Granted, I've heard the discussions about driving cast bullets very fast from both perspectives and choose to just not go there if my loads will get the job done below that threshold. I've shot many cast bullets at 1100 up to 1600/1700 fps without any undue issues. If my cast loads will perform acceptably at <2000 fps then that's where I'll be.

Sound plan. I bet you'll find your sweet spot at around 16-1800 fps. 2000fps is, to me, the level beyond which my hunting alloy starts to lead and accuracy starts to fall off. I've dinked around with alloys as hard as woodpecker lips and gotten higher speed with accuracy- but what's the point? I don't target shoot past 200 yards where high(er) velocity makes things a little easier, and like I stated before, the hunting venues I frequent don't require flatter trajectories. Besides, alloys hard enough to sustain high velocity are notoriously poor performers on game.

Powder coating? Ok for some but I'm ambivalent about it. Higher velocity without leading? Again, pointless- for my needs. Your mileage may vary. Besides I have better things to do with my time than dink around with that yet. If the stuff magically made a one MOA rifle into a half MOA rifle I would maybe reconsider, but I've seen little or no evidence of that kind of magic.

No apologies needed Hook, it's all info on another form of looneyism.
My alloy is just under wheel weights with a percent of tin added, nothing special, just what I had mixed when the mold arrived. I powder coat because I seat this bullet out long and it has several grooves out of the case mouth. Conventional lube would gather dirt too easily. I've pushed it to 2450 with H4831 and H4350 with no leading, but settled on 2150-2200 with Varget and N202 because the slower ones were in short supply locally at the time.
As to leading with faster loads, I've had better luck with the slower powders. They pick up speed relatively slower, not the same kick in the pants of the faster powders. Of course fit is king, I'd rather have an oversize bullet diameter than undersized. This Higgins barrel measures .310 at the muzzle and tapers to .3105 at the lead. I size bullets to .3125 and have good luck with it. I used to run my 25-20 with Lyman 257420gc bullets conventionally lubed at 2050 fps with no leading. Shot thousands of them before deciding to take it easy on the 100+ year old rifle.

With traditional wax lube - yes, probably. With good powder coating - not at all. You can easily push powder coated cast bullets over 3,000+ fps with zero lead fouling, even with repeated rapid fire (in semi-autos) to heat up the barrel. 2,000-2,500 fps is nothing with powder coating; you can forget about leading issues and adjust your alloy for accuracy and terminal performance, it just takes one of the variables out of the balancing act equation.

Some guys insist powder coating isn't needed, which may be true depending on your definition of "need", but it definitely makes things easier with cast bullet loads.

Of course you can do the same with paper patched bullets as well with equally good or better results, it just requires more time investment.

There is a young man about a mile from me that powder coats metal stuff for sale on the net. I asked him the other day if he would be willing to do a few cast bullets for me when he is running his equipment anyway and he jumped at it. Seems he wants to do it for handgun bullets for himself. I think that will give me an idea whether I want to go that route. I have used the NRA alox lube and the liquid Lee lube and, at my velocities, they both seem OK. When I push the 30 cal velocities, I may have to try others.


Boy did you hit the nail on the head, 270! I'm sitting on a stash of jacketed bullets sufficient to last long past my 'end of hunting' days, yet here I go chasing killing deer with 30 cal cast bullets. Big bore bullets for medium game is a no brainer. Smaller calibers require a lot more care with what you load and where you hit the game than big stuff. I can imagine there will be circumstances where I will walk away from a shot where I wouldn't hesitate using jacketed bullets. So be it....I just want to kill stuff with my own cast bullets like I have with the 38s and 45s.

[quote=Hook] I'm sitting on a stash of jacketed bullets sufficient to last long past my 'end of hunting' days, yet here I go chasing killing deer with 30 cal cast bullets. /quote]

I hear you there. I've got quite a stash of partitions, accubonds, TTSX and similar saved for game larger than deer. Now it seems I may be past the days of climbing high altitude hills for elk. Oh well, I can still get a charge out of putting meat on the table with homecast ammo whether it's deer with the 30 cals, or 38-55, or small game with the 25-20.

I've used cast stuff from rifles on deer and hogs, the smallest being 22, the largest 50 caliber.

Yondering is correct in the adage that what alloy works well for a Spitzer or round nose 30 caliber changes its tune if the nose is flat or hollow pointed and things change as calibers change too.

The one thing that works in almost universal fashion is a heat treated base (or Lino base) with a soft nose, as long as the base exceeds 60 percent. This gives us a safety valve at both high and low velocity and when our noses are too flat.

At handgun impacts with large calibers and flat/hollow points, we get maximum penetration with the magic weight retention. The hollow points make the largest flares.

At the other end, a wide flat rifle bullet with even a pure lead nose, heat treated shank is going to work well if the bullet is somewhat heavy for caliber. I've shot hogs with the LBT LFN 250 35 caliber with pure lead softnoses and heat treated shanks at 2,500 fps impacts.
A 1-20 alloy nose would perhaps be better, but what you have at this extreme situation is a soft nose to cushion the base until it blows off or is blown through by the base. The base sheds some weight, but not enough to keep it inside the hog or dig out of the dirt.
My best description of the carnage is a hole the diameter of the base of a beer can, from entrance to exit.

Similar bullets flat nosed and some hollow pointed in 44 caliber, 45 and 50 at the more sedate impacts from 1,200 to 2000 fps give the same predictable results on deer. Only one bullet recovered, the 385gr. 50 caliber, that was recovered in a rear hip bone (broken) from a slightly angling head on shot.

If I get around to the 308 or 30/30 for the deer and hogs, I'd be pitching them with jacketed loads and heat treated softnoses. The noses would still probably be pure lead, though 1-20 might be "perfection".

If going the single alloy route, pick your cartridge, nose profile (that might depend on the cartridge) and adjust the alloy in wet and dry phone books to get the results you are looking for.

Or, just cast your rifle bullets out of 10-13bhn alloy (unquenched/unhardened clip on wheel weights), select a wide flat nose (or hollowpoint, but trust me the wide solid meplat works), load them to 1600-2000 fps, and go forth and kill things. There is no need to over complicate this stuff!! (Fun as it may be to do that very thing.) Those simple principles have been working for hunters since before our great grandfathers were born.

I suppose that may be one way to try it, but the details on coating bullets are sorta important and different than coating metal parts. I'd be concerned you'll end up with a very thick coating, and/or flashing on the bases or noses depending how it's done.

Better would be to get some powder from him and coat them yourself, see my tutorial in this forum. You don't need much for equipment, and he could bake them for you if you don't have a spare toaster oven.

I have had great success with Yondering's methods. And that is from someone (me) with very little skills.

Probably a bit late to the discussion but I'll throw a log or two on the fire anyway.

First off, I agree with Gnoahhh to a very large degree and will say I don't have his experience with big game and cast bullets. I do have some experience with hogs, competition and the devil that drives me to do as well with cast and I can with that passing fad known as jacketed bullets.

I cast my first bullet somewhere back around 2007 or so, a pure lead picket bullet for an ancient scoped muzzle loader built up in Cornish, NH around 1870. My tutor was Mr. Steve Garbe (SPG) and he gave me a few tips for that particular rifle. 1. Pure lead 2. 800* 3. Lube the slug before putting it in the hammer swage. A few years later my wife and I drove out to Cody for a shoot and I took 2nd place with the gun against about 15 other shooters struggling with 10-15 G20 full value crosswinds. Ya gotta love a breezy day in WY, no?

Well, it came to pass I rather enjoyed the process and as fate would have it a few older friends passed along some moulds of various calibers, some of which I actually had guns to use them. My first try at conventional casting was for the .30-30 with a Lyman 31141. I water quenched, sized to .309" and went to the range. I was not terribly impressed. WTH I thought, I did just what all those guys on the forum said, and.....and....but...but....

So, I went back to class in a manner of speaking. http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm Picked up a hardness tester, a good mix of lead/WW/Lino and tin, a few more sizing dies (Lee) and began futzing around, brewing my own alloy mixes. It worked...


On the 50 yard line, elbow rest with the Trapper:


Subsequent to that I have loaded for the .22 K-Hornet at something akin to warp speed, down to more pedestrian things like the .22 GTC, .30 Sneezer, .38 spcl,, a couple of .25's, 7x57, .38-55, .405 Win, .45-70 and a few ML cannons to name a few. I use Lee push thru sizing dies, pan lube BP bullets with SPG and use ALOX for smokeless w/o exception. I have learned a few things about bullet fit/sizing, alloy hardness etc. that are sometimes contrary to conventional wisdom.

1. Hard lead alloys are overrated by a factor of about 8 bazillion squared. In fact they are usually counter productive to my objective, which is precision.
2. Correlating hardness to anticipated peak pressure is a winner.
3. Using a bit of surgical tube to dip the bullet carefully into dilute ALOX, ie the heel and bands only, leaves the nose clean for pocket carry. Dusting the shank with a mix of mica and graphite leaves it tack free for loading, and when sized properly they will not lead the bore, though they will lead the boar with regularity.
4. I have not hunted with any alloy harder than BHN 9. The target above was shot with that hardness as well. My reference for alloy blends is based on the famous Lyman #2 alloy, generally reported as 14 BHN. The alloys I shoot are referred to on the BHN scale as .25, .50, .75 as a percentage of hardness between pure lead and Lyman #2. Roughly, they are 8, 10 and 12 BHN. It is my own weird reference, your mileage may vary. I also shoot 30:1 in the BP guns that use greasers and pure lead for the paper patch bullets.
5. You gotta slug your bore!
6. A chamber cast won't hurt if you're a world class nit picker, but it isn't mandatory.
7. A fella can do whatever he wants to do with cast bullets, but it requires a little thought and at least a half pound of diligence. Full fill out on the slug requires proper temp for the alloy and mould. It also requires a steady rhythm. It minute of gnat's ass is your goal, weight sort the bullets. My standard is .1% spread. That's about 1/2 grain for a 530 grain bullet.

The 31141 will smack the crap out of deer size game at 2,000 fps +/-
My Sneezer bullet does the same on hogs, despite it's rather slinky form. The alloy below is 75% pure, about 22% WW and the rest as tin.


Shot into soft damp sand at about 900 fps


5 shots each during load development


Hogs disapprove of this round vehemently.

Contrary to popular theory, a fella can hit stuff with a big chunk of lead and Lord Black. So says my .45-70.

Almost forgot to illustrate why I like paper patch and soft lead. Critters don't like it at all.







I have patched round balls too. Tedious I know, but you can put two in a .44 mag case and they work too.

My powder coat procedure is about like Yonderings, except I'm anal enough to stand all my rifle bullets up for baking. I shake and bake, use a gloved hand to pick out the bullets and in the case of these long 30 calibers I place them into a silicon mini ice cube tray that I got off amazon. The small square pockets are just about perfect size for them.Makes it easy.

There's some musings here and there about using really hard alloys; they improve precision but don't work terminally, they suck at precision and are a waste of effort. They lead horribly or they just aren't worth the effort.

I won't argue that if using a bullet of decent weight for caliber that plain wheelweight metal with flatnoses from 1800-2000 impact velocities won't work. At handgun speeds the target hardness of 10-13 works really well too.

Just throwing this out there for the precision enthusiasts. This is Dan Lynch's treatise and findings, not my own.


What we see is 10 shot aggs at 100 yards, with accuracy the primary consideration.
Note the velocity, twist rate and psi of the loadings. Using what many of use know considering obturation levels and what many of us post here as "successes", take a look at the winning loads and multiply 18-22 BHN times 1,422. Pretty interesting.

Bullet hardness is lino (18-22 BHN), across the board. The author does mention he sees even better accuracy with greater hardness.
Here's three shots from a stock 1895 Marlin 45/70 at 100 yards after a 25 yard zero with the softnoses I made to hunt with. The base shanks are in the 28 BHN level, from testing the same solids from the same casting session. I fired these three shots and called it good. Fit was snug to the throat; that's all that is required.


So there's a little bit on precision with hard as nails alloy.
Now let us consider terminal results.

I choose the heat treated base softnose, because of the mentioned "safety valve" at both high and low impact velocities, the variances of caliber and nose profiles. From high speed 22 rifle lightweights to sedate 45 ACP loads, the partitioned softnose, like in jacketed bullets, provides us a wide velocity range for terminal results.
Someone mentioned the universal results of plain WW metal bullets at their specified velocity. The same metal and bullets, heat treated, doesn't lose these attributes, it just requires greater velocity and pressure to act just like they did with 200-500 fps less velocity. They perform universally at that greater velocity impact level. They will shed more weight, but that weight being shed translates on the target, often "powdering down" through flesh and bone.
Is this needed or required? Absolutely not, but if you want to get beyond 30-30 speeds and accuracy, plain WW metal is just a beginning.
One doesn't even need to drive the .30 caliber 170/180 flatnose to 1800-2000 fps to keel over deer with some expansion; simply load up the pure lead/lead tin as Dan posted.....its simply modifying impact speeds with alloy and nose shape.