Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Speer Deepcurl as an elk bullet?

JB, what are your thoughts on the Speer Deepcurl bullets for elk? Got some 30 cal 180s to try out of a 300 win

They aren't designed for deep penetration, despite the name. The core is pretty soft, so they open up very widely, which limits penetration.

They would work great on broadside shots, but if you're looking for really deep penetration I would look elsewhere.

I wonder how the 180s would do in a 30-06 at about 2,800 muzzle velocity?

JB, any idea whats up with the concave base?

Nope.

This is speculation, but I imagine the Deep Curl shares some of the same technology which has proven itself with Speer's Uni-Cor line of bullets. If I remember correctly, that involves the plating to a lead slug, followed by swaging to get the precise final shape and size (and therefore the concave base), followed by a nose trim to make the bullet a softpoint.



This is a 300 grain Uni-Cor bullet from 45-70 which made a hole in both shoulders of a bull moose. Another 300, same rifle, but Barnes X, exited. I suspect the 300 Nosler would have also. Nevertheless, this bonded bullet seems like a good bullet.

Not a hunting bullet but the speer .45 pistol bullets that I have seen have the same dimple on the butt.

edited to add "Unicore Bullet"

MD,

Would the DC be more comparable to say a Ballistic Tip in the penetration and expansion department?

I too was thinking the DC was gonna be more of a deep penetrating bullet from the name...

My bet is that a 180-grain .30 Ballistic Tip would out-penetrate a 180 DeepCurl. The 180 BT has the really heavy jacket they used to put on the 200-grain .338, and penetrates quite deeply.

I haven't tested that, and might have to--but I am pretty certain that's what would happen.

The .30 180 grain BT my F.I.L. shot his moose, straight through the vitals, exited. The follow up shot hit low spine, and exited as well.

R.

That doesn't surprise me. Thanks for the info!

I would also add that this bullet shoots less than .5 of an inch from the bench. One of my best groups ever with the .300WM.
Glad I could contibute to a sane bullet thread.

R.

Sane for least for the first dozen posts, anyway....

My 300 WM loves them as well. I haven't shot a rifle that didn't shoot BT's for that matter.

Yeah, they just zip right into the same place. If a rifle doesn't shoot BT's well, there's probably something wrong with the rifle.

One of the 300 mag for deer guys at the camp was using the Combined Tech version of the 180 grain Ballistic Tip and remarked how chest hit deer still ran farther than he thought they should. I got him switched to the Fusion, 165s I think, and his deer started dropping straight down.

This Deep Curl ought to be a good deer slapper.

Back when one could only choose from three colors of BTs, I shot a moose twice in the classic broadside lung shot. Perhaps it was because I didn't know they couldn't/shouldn't, but those 180s zipped right through, both of them. The only thing I've not liked about them, even the heavy jacketed 200s in .338, is what they do when a shot doesn't land quite where I want it to. I've never had killing issues. Sometimes I've just had a bit more killing "effort" on the part of the errant bullet than I'd like. I really need to try the more current version of the 180 30 caliber.

The Remington Power-Lokt bullet from the Sixties of similar construction as well as the current Gold Dot also have the concave base. I had thought it was for better obturation for enhanced accuracy. Perhaps easier to do than a drawn jacket with a swaged core or maybe it's just peculiar to the manufacturing process?

JB, do you think if a guy was a good enough rifleman to put a 180 Deep Curl at 2750 FPS into an Elks vitals, that the Elk would die??


Or would the Elk die, and we'd be discussing "Bullet Failure" again?

if the guy was a good rifleman he could kill it with a 180gr speer deepcurl hornady interlock has been doing it for years but give me a barnes or a partition and i would be happy