Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Am I overthinking bullet construction?

Should add that the last time I used Hot-Cors on game was about 20 years ago, while culling some doe deer on a ranch in eastern Montana, using a pre-'64 Winchester Model 70 "Westerner" with 140 Hor-Cors at around 3200 fps. Didn't shoot anything closer than 150 yards, or farther than 250, and all of the bullets exited, while killing quickly and ruining very little meat.

John, your experience mirrors mine. I took my biggest whitetail (4pt, 200 lbs dressed weight) with a 150 gr. Hotcore from an 18.5” 308 carbine, and my biggest bull elk (mature 7x7) with the 165 Hotcore from a 22” bbl’d 308. Both bullets on each animal exited. When I used to shoot bullets into test media, I was always impressed at how well the 30 cal Hotcore’s performed, and came to think of them as “the poor man’s Partition!”

I believe it was in the 80's when I saw a Speer ad about the 165 grain .308" Hot Cor where they mentioned how they had beefed up the jacket walls in the shank of that particular bullet. I believe JB remembers that ad as well.

Yep!

I tried to switch my father to that one for his 300 Win mag loads but he told me to keep loading the 165 Sierra for deer. Then he went another direction and started popping them with a 308 Win in a Steyr carbine and a 30 Herrett Contender.

Probably my favorite bullet is the Speer 7mm 145 gr btsp.

What do you use to launch them?

They were recommended here for my Savage 99 .284 due to their dimensions. They've proven to be extremely good bullets. I may try them in the 7mm Rem Mag since I have so many of them.

They may be a little soft for the 7 mag. Speer deliberately makes the BTSP an easy expander. That said, I have not worked with that particular one.

A 7 Mag is just a .284 a little further out.

Hint.

Yeah, but what if the deer aint?

Well there is that. Best you can do is plan where you can and wing it from there. The terrain I hunt is usually long but you never know, it could end up a shot at 40 yards. That's hunting.

Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not one of the Barnes or bust crew. Last year I did all my hog killing with 85 grain Speer boat tails out of a 243 and 100 grain Sierra boat tails out of a 250 Savage.

In the early 80’s and into the 90’s all we used for the CA black tails & hogs were 130gr/270 and 150gr/30 Speer Hot Cor bullets. We (myself, family & surrounding neighbors) all had cattle ranches and had great luck - can’t remember any failures. I seem to remember that was before the Horn Innerlock appeared because we made a gradual (and unnecessary) switch to them because we had to have the ‘better’ bullets. Lol. Results were exactly the same though.

Now I shoot lots of Nosler stuff mostly blamed on SPS and their pricing. Lots of Red & yellow boxes on the shelves to this day.

Not equal in RPMs.

Hint.

Yeah, I think I started on SPS in 2004 or so. It pretty much converted me to Nosler. I'll admit I have bullets into the 1000's from SPS

Guy walks up to deer, "How do you like those rpm's m'r f'r? Ha!!!!"

+1

But what's a Loony gonna do, gotta be ruminating on something....?

DF

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With apologies to Henny Youngman.

A fellow was going to Canada to hunt. He told the ticket lady, "Send one of my rifles to New York, send another to LA, and one to Miami." She said, "We can't do that!" He replied, "You did it last year!"

When I read about the evils of hunting, I gave up reading.

Why does the new Italian navy have glass bottom boats? To see the old Italian navy!

My hunting partner is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. He drinks right out of the bottle.

I have the Midas touch. Everything I touch turns into a muffler.

A noticed this guy at the hunting lodge bar, drunk. I picked him off the floor and offered to take him to his room. On the way, he falls down three more times. When I got him to his room, he fell down again. I knocked on the door and said, "Here's your husband!" The guy's wife says, "Where's his wheelchair?"

You were implying that bullet performance would be the same between the two but RPM will take a bullet apart faster as they increase.