Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Speer Grand Slams

How good are the old Speer Grand Slams? I came into some in a bullet lot I bought.

Well, I wouldn't enter in any benchrest matches, but a good solid working bullet (my only experience is in .30-06) in my limited experience. I acquired 250 of them as a sweetener in another deal. I got a couple of "shoot throughs" on small bucks at 80 or so yards. Which makes me nervous when other deer are behind the target buck. Probably ideal in the magnums. I think ol' Bob Hagel loved 'em. But he always liked plenty of gun.

If you look at the thread (gunwriter subforum) on the Schiuchetti .30 cal bullet chart the 180 GS did very well.

Speer revised the bullet, construction-wise, at least once tho.

Bought some revised .375" 285s. Mediocre accuracy even compared to the other Speer offerings. Noticed COAL after seating was variable. That's because ogive lengths are all over the place, which has the effect of creating varying distance from bearing portion to rifling. Dunno if it's contributory, but doubt it helps.

Certainly good enough for 250 yds, as far as I'll shoot them.

160s in a 7mmRM worked very well for me on three elk. MOA accuracy, too.

I'm running the old style Grand Slams in my .280 Rem. Bullet is the 160 gr. and accuracy has been excellent. I'd have found out how they worked on elk but a car wreck killed that hunt. Just depends on circumstances whether I'll do a hunt this year.
Paul B.

a few recovered 30 cal grand slams. most were not recovered as they were pass throughs.
these were from elk moose and bou. deer shot length wise was a pass through. the 2 bullets' on the far right have an interesting story.

i shot an elk and on the off side a patch of hair was missing and it looked like there was a lump there so i cut out the right bullet. it is a 308 but not a grand slam and had been in the animal a while and was healed. some poking and the real grand slam was right beside it.. just against the hide. how a bullet could be in what appeared to me to be a lethal spot is hard to believe,

I was curious, ended up with 34-150grain 270’s in a bullet lot I bought. I used 120’s in a 25-06, accurate but i couldn’t get anymore, so I switched to Ballistic tips.

The 100gr Grand Slam is still the most accurate bullet to be shot out of my old .243. The "old style" really got my attention out of a factory load. When I thought my 1980's era Ruger was simply a 1 3/4" shooter at best, the Speer factory load changed my mind. Fast-forward about 35 year later, I started to handload for the old rifle and tried all the fancy tipped bullets and some not so fancy. It shot better than before, but once I dropped the "new" 100gr Grand Slam into the mix, that when my groups got to bragging size. On more than one occasion I've covered 3-shot, 100-yard groups with a dime.

They seemed to have a great reputation 20 years ago.

I fired some 145gn GSs in my 7x64 and couldn't get them to group under 2 1/2 - 3 inches. This rifle will put five Ballistic Tips and five RWS Twin Cores under an inch at 100m. So tried them in my 7x57 and same result.

But I have five boxes of 140gn 6.5mm and shot a nice group just over an inch from my 6.5x57. So I will load them next, after I use up the 140gn Woodleighs, and go shoot some deer and pigs this year and see how they go.

I have tried them in several diameters. In one case accuracy was so bad I thought my scope had died. Had much better luck with the Mag Tips.

In 1997 I shot a 275 pound Wild Boar with a 160 grain Grand Slam out of my Ruger 77 7x57. The load was 45.5 grains of W760 for about 2550 fps. 50 yards broadside the bullet punched through both side gristle plates. He made 2 jumps and fell over. I was happy with the performance.

Ron

Their first grand slams were a disaster. But they didn't take long to fix it according to MD. They've changed it again I understand. I have not tried them since when they first came out.

When they first came out I tried them on elk and deer. They failed to give me the results I was already getting from the Partition. I don't think I have any of them any more.