Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Your opinion please

Hornady Interlock, Sierra Gamekings, Speer HotCors, and Nosler BT’s. They all work good. Although I’ve used more Sierra’s than anything.

They were once……but, most folks don’t drive Model T’s anymore! 🤔 😁 memtb

Most bullets are premium when you get to the register to ring them up.
I think CoreLokt came out in 1939 and Partitions in late 40's but the Partitions have never grouped very well for my taste.
I have several spent CoreLokt bullets along with ivories, since most bullets can be found under the hide on the far side.

GameKing

In the 7mm Mag the 162 gr Hornady BTSP put a lot of elk on the ground for me. The 160 gr Nosler Partition is good too.

I would go with a Nosler Ballistic Tip or Hornady Interlock in 180 grain for the .30-06 and 160 or 162 grain in 7mm Rem Mag. Either should work fine with good shot placement.

That sounds like a pretty good list. Lots of guys like the 7mm 150gr Ballistic Tip as well. Supposed to be a pretty tough bullet. Probably any 180 grain bullet would work at 30-06 factory load speeds. The 200 gr Speer 30cal would kill some stuff too.

I've killed elk with the 30/06 using 180 grain bullets----mostly with factory W/W power-points & Core-lokts. I killed elk with 180 grain Hornady interlocks----3070 spire points. All worked. For factory I would go with W/W power-points. Reloads---56.5 grains pf IMR 4350 & the Hornady 3070.

Reloading stuff is getting hard to find----I would go with factory W/W-------Walmart has them.

About any chunk of lead one can push to 2,400 fps. Placement is about 90% of the issue.

165 or 180 gr Speer Grand Slam, I guess. I used 165 gr GS in a .308 back in the day.
I suppose I would use a 160 gr GS in a 7mm.

I like the Hornady 180 gr. Core lokt in the .30-06 for a standard type bullet

For standard C&Cs I tend to prefer heavy for caliber bullets as the heavier they are, the more stouter they tend to be. Not always, but generally. I prefer a stout bullet when it isn't chemically bonded.

Speer Hot-Cors have been good to me, though not always the most accurate. There's plenty of good options though.

When I hunted elk with my .30-06, 150 gr Hornady Spire points and 180 gr Sierra Spitzers kept my freezer full. A 117 gr Sierra GameKing bullet from my .257 Ackley instantly dropped my 2nd best 6x6 bull one year, and the only elk that I've shot with my 7 RM was an istant kill with a 160 gr Accubond.

Bullet placement is most important.

"Hornady 180 gr. Core lokt". ????

Remington Corelokt
Hornady Interlock

JJHack, who used to post here, and has killed and seen killed a lot more animals than I have, thought the 165 in '06 was about ideal. I have always preferred the 180 myself. For no partiular reason other than it has worked well for me. Mostly I use Corelokts in store-bought C&C, tho I have a bunch of Interlocks for reloading also. Need to get to some of that...

I won't use Fed Hi-shock on animals anymore, after a moose and a ram taken 4 days apart some decades back. Expanded muchly at hide contact, and almost immediate core and jacket seperation on both animals. Ram at 330 yards, moose at about 70. Both did die, tho. 2 shots each. Very acurate in my rifle, tho.

I'd not use them on anything over 100 lbs anymore. Coyotes and small deer, pronghorns, maybe.

To the OP's question, I would use Interlocks in either caliber, for elk. (The only elk I have taken was at 150 yards with a .260, 140 gr Corelokt factory load. Bang - flop. Adequate.)

Another enthusiastic vote for the Hornady Interlocks,; in 30, either the 165- or 180-gr, flat base or BTSPs.

For the 7, I’d probably pick one of the 162-gr BTSP or the 175 flat base. But I know of guys liked the 154 too.

For 7mm RM I used 160 NP, for 30-06 I used 180 NP or 165/168 Barnes TSX

Hornady interlock

I also like Interlocks as a cup-and-core--but also feel compelled to point out that Remington Core-Lokts have changed considerably over the past 30+ years.

Way back when they had thicker "sidewalls" in the jacket than most other cup-and-core bullets, the reason they tended to hold together better. But around 1990 the jacket was made thinner in the Pointed Soft-Point Core-Lokts, saving money on production--partly due to not having to replace forming dies due to wear as often.

However, the round-nose Core-Lokts still had the heavy jacket, due to reduced demand--so dies didn't have to be replaced as often.

A couple years later Remington started using other bullets in "Core-Lokt" PSP ammo, especially the Hornady Interlock Spire Point.

Don't know whether the "new" Remington Core-Lokt ammo is the same. They still list the 180 roundnose in some cartridges, but haven't seen any so haven't been able to section any of the bullets. But have sectioned some of the PSPs in the new ammo, and the .308 load has the thinner jacket in the shank of the bullet.

I’ve killed three Alaskan moose. One with a 270 and 150 CoreLokt RN in 1978, one with a 30-06AI and 180 XBullet, another from the same rifle with a 200 NPt. The moose that died the quickest was with the CoreLokt. i found the bullet stuck between the ribs on the off side.