Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Speer 358 caliber 180 gr Hot Core question

Interested in feedback from those that have used this bullet in either a 358 or 356 Winchester on deer.

Now that Mississippi is allowing 35 caliber single shot rifles during the primitive weapons season, I plan to set one up in 358 Winchester and thought this might be a good bullet to use.

So asking about folks personal experience using this bullet.

Thanks

I shot one deer with this bullet with a 358 win and I also shot them into wet newspaper. The deer was a pass through with good but not exessive damage. I didn't hit bone other than ribs.

Its a tougher bullet than the remington 200g rn (which I suspect that remington designed just for the 35 rem). I think that for deer the 200g hornady SP, remington 200g PSP and the 180g speer are all great bullets out of the 358 win and at woods ranges the differences are conversational.

My feeling is that both of the speers are a little tougher bullets than one might expect from a 35 cal FN. I suspect that when Speer designed them they were not just thinking about the 35 rem but also the 358 win and 356 win.

These days I mostly load either 200g spire points or 220 speers. The 220s are a bit tougher and where I hunt there is some chance of having a shot on black bear.


The hard part about choosing deer bullets for 358 win is that so many bullets work well at 2500 FPS that its hard to settle on one.

gldprimr,

I have shot many deer with the 180 gr Speer from a .358 Win. for the last few decades. In every instance the performance was outstanding. The longest shot was about 200 yds.

Before that I used the 200 gr Silvertip, handloaded, in the .358.

I see no reason to change from the 180 Speer. I used to load it with IMR 4198 but now I use RL 10 for powder.

Gentlemen, thank you both for your feed back. I'll pursue load development with the Speer 180 gr Hot Core. Based upon your experiences and given the modest size of the deer here in Mississippi it should work just fine.

I've settled on the 180 grain Speer FP for deer and the 220 grain Speer FP for anything larger/tougher when shooting my 356, so I think that it would be a good choice for your needs.

Jeff