Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Hornady roundnose performance

Can’t say as I’ve ever had one fail in my 25-35…

Quite sufficient I would say. G1 Bc being what it is and all, most RN or semi RN bullets are over .300 and as such really are quite capable at most hunting ranges. An added benefit is if you do put one into the vitals at extended range, they are more likly to expand a bit and still penetrate well. The Speer 275 grain semi spitzer which really was a semi round nose renamed to “conceal” that fact took my largest Bull at 425-450 yards, broke onside shoulder, shattered 3-4 vertebrae, was found by butcher in off side shoulder past the clavicle and weighed 212 grains. “Broke the most bone I’ve ever seen “ was what the old butcher told me. It was the only 338 275 Speer I ever caught inside an elk. It started at the muzzle under 2500 fps. I would not have caught that one if I hadn’t gotten into the spine. Shot a big cow at about the same range trotting away at 15 degrees, in the flank and out the shoulder, neck junction. It passed through the liver and never took another step.
I grew up in SW CO and hunted from the rock canyons to above timberline in the San Juan’s, hunted Upstate NY where I lived for about a decade and now in Kansas. I think that geography covers most hunting opportunities and the relationships cover most actual experiences. I understand that there is a group of situations and experiences outside that by I think that percentage is small.
I also use and like higher BC bullets and appreciate the slight advantage they have in my 450 and under hunting as well.
Best regards,
F01

I've used the RN a bit in a Krag rifle and an tremendous amount in 30-30 lever action. I've yet to have much experience with them in anything else but I've got a 220gr for the 30-06 and 250gr for the 338win. In all honesty I don't see any downside within 300-350yds that might hamper taking any critters. I need to try some in that 30-06 soon.

30-40 Krag 170 gr rn
30-30 Win 170 gr rn and 150 gr rn.
200 gr rn in 35 Rem
200 & 250 gr in 358 Win
250 gr rn in 350 Rem Mag
all above good to go - mostly Core Lokts but others too in 358 (Win, Sierra, & Interlocks)

220 grain Partitions in 300 Win Mag - good to go for anything I’ve shot at. Very accurate.

Mag-tips 160 gr 280 (ok flat nose) kills elk and as small as red fox and antelope.

All the above very good to great accuracy. But I never had luck with 220 grain 30 cal for accuracy???

I’ve shot other round nose bullets in various rifles/cartridges but mainly at paper.

My experience also, much more so than the Nosler Ballistic tip and they are more accurate than the Nosler in my go to
30-06.

Back when I was shooting my .308 bullets into phone books when there was such a thing, what surprised me was the difference in penetration of the 180 grain round nose Core-Lokt vs. the 180 grain pointed Core-Lokt into the same tied together stack of dry phone books. One RN in the top and one SP in the bottom. The RN was punching a thumb sized exit out of the third book that the SP didn't match until the fifth book. The RN stopped in book 6 and the SP in book 9. I'm pretty sure that a 180 RN Hornady bullet would be similar.

We never stopped a RN Core-Lokt in any deer, but also got every one that the camp shot. I remember my dad coming to get me to track down a buck he'd shot with his .308. Where did you shoot it I asked him? Right in the middle he said because that was all he could see. Another buck I shot with my .308 RN Core-Lokt going away into a swamp just grazed his hip without breaking any bone. That deer was dead in his bed 200 yards down the trail with a fist size wound in his ham. Remington's advertisement about the deadliest mushroom in the woods wasn't wrong back when we were using those 180 grain RN Core-Lokts. They were the Benoit's go to bullet of choice when they were tracking deer in the north east.

Not quite. The rotational speeds of the bullets will be different at impact, even if the linear speeds are the same.

The effect on bullet expansion from rotational velocity is very small compared to linear velocity says most of the research I have read. Rotation of the monos is a different animal on destruction of tissue though as both jagged cutting action and design to eject expanded petals are both in use on different bullets like Hammer for example.
We are blessed with very good bullet choices today indeed.
F01

Friend and I both use the 154 RN in 7mm-08's, a 20" barrel carbine and 22" Montana. They both shoot them extremely accurately and haven't been able to catch one yet in our New England Whitetails.

I have never conducted a jug test of the .308 Hornady 180 grain RN but I have shot several deer and one coyote with them in 308 Winchester in the woods and fields in northwest Pennsylvania at ranges from 15 to 100 yards. They penetrate completely and leave an exit hole of about an inch to an inch and a half. With a lung shot there is a nice blood trail for about 30-50 yards with a dead deer at the end of it. With a shoulder shot, the deer does not move until it falls. The coyote did not move at all (I do not understand why a coyote would walk out in the middle of a field in broad daylight but it did).

The rifles all have 24" barrels. With a maximum load of Varget, the bullets moved fast enough and were accurate enough. I seem to be the variable. Most five shot groups are about 1.25" center to center. Occasionally there is a five shot group at .75 inch. Occasionally there is a five shot group at 1.5".

This is a very consistent and reliable load. If I had any sense I would just settle down with it. Some of my rifles don't feed the round nose well, so I keep messing around with other bullets. At my age and considering the hunting left to me, I should sell those rifles and be happy. I am not that rational.

I’d sure be a lot happier finding a mushroomed bullet that actually looks like a mushroom like what Jim posted above than those petal-less TTSX examples posted in that thread. If I don’t need to shoot lead free bullets by law, I’m not going to. I owe it to the animal to shoot the most humane, fastest killing bullet that I can purchase. Inconsistent has been my experience with the Barnes TSX bullets that I’ve used for my deer hunting and never again.

Have you tried cutting Edge bullets?

I use the 117 RN in in my 250 Savage, 257 Roberts and 25-06. I miss the 100 grain 6MM bullet.

The only Hornady RN I use is the .312" 174gn in my 1A .303 Brit. It always punches through pigs and fallow deer. I've never recovered one but judging by the exit hole it does expand at a muzzle velocity of 2450 fps.

The Remington 30/220 coreloct was a pretty good bullet as was the Hornady. The Viking fire princess settled on the Hornady 154 round nose in her 7/08. All good useful bullets and great killers on Deer and elk.

Jumping back in for the 2nd time:

Hornady brand RN bullets I have used are the following

Way back in the early 70s I tried some 100 gr .243" bullet for my 6MM Remington. Good accuracy and ok on deer. Not as good as the Nosler Partition but better then most other cup and core bullets I tried

257" 117 grain RN in my 257 Roberts and also in my 25-06. One of the better performers in this bore size. Again, not as good for bone breaking as the bonded, Copper expanding or Partitions, but better than several others I have tried. I still have about 300 of them and still use them in my 25-06 with good success.

6.5MM 160 Grain RN. About the best American bullet I have used in my 1903 M/S rifle. My rifles requires a RN to feed properly, so my 6.5 bullets have been limited. The best I have found so far are the Oryx from Norma and very close behind is the 156 grain PPU bullets. But overall I was not disappointed with the Hornady. They make them only on limited runs so getting them can be hard.

7MM in both the 154 grain and the 175 grain weights. The only game animals I ever killed with the 154 grain RN bullets were deer, but all gave me excellent results. I used most from a 7X57 and only one kill from my old 280 Remington. Nothing to complain about from any. I also killed 1 elk with that 7X57 and I used the 175 grain bullet. I think still have that bullet. Good straight wound channel and the bullet was under the skin on the off-side. I prefer exits, but from the recovered bullet and it's weight after the kill, I'd have no reservations about using them. In my 7MM Weatherby and my 77 Rem Mag I used the 175 grain RN bullets and I killed 5 deer with them and I also killed 2 elk with the Remington and 1 with the Weatherby. If I were to give them a rating on a 1-10 scale I'd place the overall performance at about 7 to 8. Not the best, but very good.

30 cals. From Hornady I believe I have only ever used 180s and 220s. (used many 30 cal RNs from Speer, Sierra and Winchester and Remington too) Deer, antelope and bear have all been shot with both of these and several elk with the 220s. Again on a 1-10 scale I'd give them all an 8 as a best guess. I wish I had many thousands of them now, but sadly I am 100% out of the 180s and I have about 60 loaded round left with the 220s all n 30-06. From the 308 Winchester I have used the 180s and from 30-06, 300H&H 308 Norma 300 Winchester and 300 Weatherby I have used them both to kill deer and elk both and also 2 black bears. I did kill one deer with a 220 grain loaded in my 300 Weatherby when I was hunting elk, and a deer showed up. My overall impression was good for all of them and shot from my M1 Garand with a load of 3031 (for proper port pressure) the 200s did an excellent job on elk in Idaho and Montana.

I have never shot any game at all with their RN .311" or 323" bullets.

My sister killed 2 moose with the 338 250 grain in Alaska and but didn't like the 338 Mag because of the recoil so she went back 100% to her 308. She did tell me the bullets did well but I was not there for either kill so I have no actual knowledge of those 2. My friend Randy did shoot a small buck mule deer at an extreme angle from above, and hit that deer in the spine from only about 80 yards. I was VERY surprised when his bullet broke up so completely and didn't pernitrate past the spine with no damage to the organs at all. The largest piece of bullet we recovered weighed 11 grains! I killed it myself with a 22 pistol while Randy brought his truck around and I gutted that deer for him. The rifle was a custom Mauser in 338-06 and was very accurate with that bullet but the performance on a small deer at close range way VERY poor. So bad I wonder is somehow that one was a bullet that had something wrong with it. My sister killed her 2 moose with a 338 mag, both closer shots, and both moose were 1 shot kills with both bullets exiting. So what happened on this deer kill is just so odd I have no explanation. This is the ONLY Hornady RN bullet I have ever personally seen used that was WAY SOUTH of good. That little buck probably weighed 110 pounds after it was gutted.

I have no experience with kills from their RN 35 cals.

.375" both in the 270 and the 300 grain weights. Both excellent. A side note; all my 375 kills have been in the USA and no African experience with them. But elk, deer black bears and 1 antelope have been shot with the 270 grain RN and also 3 elk with the 300 grain RN and I was pleased with the way they worked. The only bullets I ever recovered were taken from the bodies of horses and cattle on our ranch and even those were rare. Most times I had exits.

Last used Hornady 350 bullet from 45-70s and 500 grain RN from 458 Win Mags and one 460 G&A. The 350s were good but on 2 occasions (1 bear and 1 elk) the cores came out of the jackets. Now from a 45-70 at around 1800 FPS it didn't seem to matter much, but these bullets may come apart if the hit bone. The 500 grain bullets were just big round nose "solids" (despite the fact they were indeed soft point bullets) I found no difference in how they worked on North American game then those I killed with 500 grain cast bullets. As far as I could tell they didn't expand and frankly from a full load 458 or 460 they really didn't need to. For accurate feed-back on these bullets you'd need to ask someone that has killed game with much thicker skins that I have shot with them. I have probably shot up 600 to 700 of them in my life, but killed only a few animals with them, and as far as could tell the soft points and the 500 gran FMJs seemed to be about the same. My guess is that if you are not killing hippo, cape buffalo, rhinos or elephants you are not going to get a realistic test.

I run the 250gr RN in my 35 Whelen and 200gr RN in my .358 deer loads. Both are loaded middle to low end velocities and function flawlessly in my deer hunting area with 90% of shots under 50 yards.