Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters The Speer, Hot core bullet

There you go again - confusing me with facts!

That I don't know. The "new" ones are one piece core as opposed to the amber box ones which were a two piece core, soft up front and a hard section in the rear.
I sectioned a 6.5 140 grainer last fall and the jacket is thinner up at the tip and then gets thicker starting about the end of the ogive carrying through to the base.
I believe the new ones are "harder" than the Hot-Cor bullets and can be driven faster. I could be wrong though.
My son and I recovered 2 165 GS's from bucks he shot with his .308 Montana and both were mushroomed well. One weighed 130grains+/- a little, that shot was straight on with the head down @ 180 yards and it took out about 12" of spine and stopped in the paunch in front of the hams. The other one was 112. The 112 caught the offhand shoulder blade and run up it and was caught in the hide. Shot was about 50 yards slightly quartering away. That shroom was sorta folded over. The load is a milder load but I can't remember the FPS @ the muzzle.

More of less, near as I can tell.

Same drawn fluted nose, thicker jacket, and cannelure, sans the old GS dual core and sheared internal lock.


Consider'em near enough as same.

Priced accordingly as well.




GR

That's my conclusion: The recent Grand Slams are basically Mag-Tips. (Have explained why in previous posts over the past few years.)

No, their performance is not equivalent to Nosler Partitions--though the second generation of Grand Slams (introduced around 1990) performed very similarly to Partitions. But Speer changed everything a few years later--to essentially the same construction as Mag-Tips.

Also, no, you cannot tell which is which by the "amber" box. Have found at least three different versions in the amber boxes. Which is one reason I quit using Grand Slams at least a decade ago. Still use Hot-Cors, because they've been consistent for decades.....

As usual, I'm late to the party on this thread. However, I've killed more whitetails (around 230 to 240 of them) with Speer Hot Cor bullets than all the rest combined. The majority of my Hot Cor kills have been with the .308", 150 gr out of a .308 Win at about 2900 fps; second most with the .277", 150 gr out of a .270 Win at something a little above 2800 fps; but I've also used the 6mm, 105gr IIRC (this one may be discontinued now); .257, 100gr; 7mm 145 gr; .308, 165gr; .311, 150gr; .308, 150gr FN; .338, 200gr; and .375, 325gr.

My experience with the .277", 150gr Hot Cor from my .270 is that they penetrate VERY well, expand well, and hold together much better than a Hornady .277", 150g SST. During a CWD culling on our property, I had one more deer to take to fill our quota. I shot a doe, over 200 lbs, going almost straight away from me at about 115 yds. Bullet entered the rear of left hindquarter, angling forward, hit femur and shattered it just below hip joint, angled upwards somehow missing the rumen, hit bottom of spine, clipped top lobe of the liver, angling down slightly, clipped shoulder blade, and exited front of right front shoulder. Needless to say, doe never knew what hit her and was DRT. I'm NOT a fan of the Texas heart shot, but the performance of that .277, 150gr Hot Cor was exemplary. We pretty carefully autopsied that doe and the bullet remained intact through all of that. The exit wound was about half-dollar sized.

Of all the Hot Cor bullets I've killed game with, I've been happy with the performance of every one of them. Not so, some of the other bullets I've used.

When was the last time you used a Hornady SST?

Just curious, as the SST (like the Nosler Ballistic Tips) had been "adjusted" over the years. In my experience more recent SSTs penetrate like Spire Point Interlocks. Can provide some statistics from a Texas hunt--partly a doe cull.

John, are you saying that Speer put Mag-tip bullets in GS boxes and GS's in Mag-tips boxes? I've never seen a box of Mag-Tips that I'm aware of. Not doubting you but I've never even seen a Mag-tip other than in the Speer manual.

As far as the amber boxes, the ones I have left are labeled GS. 30 cal. 180 and 165's. Whether that's what they are I'm not betting my life on it. They sure shoot and kill good for me though.
Have a good day.

I did not know all these details on the evolution of GS bullets. My observation when clients used them on elk in the 90’s and early 2000’s was they penetrated very well, and performed similar to a Partition.

When I tried the 150g GS’s in my 270’s twenty years ago I couldn’t get them to group very well and gave up because I had other elk worthy loads that were more accurate.

Just received some 130 gr Hot Cors and 2 boxes of 130 gr GS .270 bullets. Grafs in MO. has them now well-priced.

O'Connor had good luck with them decades ago-on all deer: the small Coues AZ deer and Muleys. I still use Partitions and Swifts on elk or moose-bear.
The 338-06 in a pre-64 M-70 for anything that really is big in Alaska...or a pre-war Model 71 in 450 Alaskan. Bear spray is overrated and requires a backup...

No, that's not what I said.

Instead Speer started changing the construction of Grand Slams until they were basically Mag-Tips. The original Grand Slams had a two-part core, with a harder rear end. This supposedly made them expand more like Nosler Partitions. But the jacket wasn't thick enough to support the cores, and they didn't work very well. Soon Speer changed the jacket, to something resembling the Hornady Interlock's jacket, with an internal ring inside the jacket between the harder rear core and softer front core. Those worked very well--much like Nosler Partitions.

But then they started cheapening the Grand Slams, to the point where the harder rear core disappeared, and the "ring" inside the jackets became smaller. At that point they did resemble the basic Mag-Tip design--but weren't as tough. I proved this to my saisfaction by shooting some 200-grain .30 Grand Slams, started at 3000 fps from a .300 Winchester Magnum, into a stack of dry newspaper--my standard "tough" test for big-game bullets. (How I came to use dry newspaper is explained in a long chapter in one of my Gun Gack books.)

None of the three bullets penetrated as deeply as 200 Nosler Partitions--and one of them separated jacket and core. And yes, those came in amber boxes.

Ok thank you for the clarification.
I'm going to section some of the "old" ones I have for a look see.

I shoot 180 grand slams in my 300 Weatherby and they kill deer like turning off a light switch.

The only dual core Grand Slams found are Speer factory loads.

They differ externally from the current production "mag-tip" GS in that they have a crimping groove above the cannelure.




GR

It's been about 10 years since I last used a .277", 150gr Hornady SST, and these were on large northern Missouri whitetails (300+ pounds), and were in my .270 Win handloads. Broadside shots were fine, but with quartering shots when bone other than ribs were encountered, they squashed like bugs on a windshield and didn't penetrate very much. Never lost a deer because of them, but had a few incidents where follow-up shots and/or tracking was required.

When the .308", 150gr SST's came out, they were horrible. The first three deer I shot with them, all broadside shots, the SST's failed to penetrate the ribcage. I got lucky and managed to track them down and anchor all three with follow-up shots. I shot up the rest of that box for target practice. Haven't bought any more of them.

I tried some of the .338", 200gr SST's in my .338 RCM on big Missouri deer and found that those are plenty heavily built. In fact, on broadside shots they didn't expand as much as I like, but the deer were DRT in 35 yds or less. I anchored a big buck that our neighbor had wounded (he shot it in the butt with a .243). I got a fleeting, quartering away shot at it as it crossed the end of one of my shooting lanes in a creek bottom, headed into a multi-flora rose and briar hell. I caught it just behind the last rib on left side. Bullet angled forward, shattering off-side front shoulder and exiting. Deer plowed its nose into the ground, DRT. I wouldn't hesitate to use that bullet and load on elk or bear.

I used some Mag Tips in my 30-06 and really had nothing but complete penetration and dead animals. Seemed a bit deeper penetrating than the same size standard Hotcor but not shaped very well.