Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Got a new rifle:)

Well I went and bought myself a ruger 77 7 mm mag and I was wondering what bullet I should hunt deer with. I am a handloader. Thanks

150 Ballistic Tip. 154 Horn, 160 Mag Tip, 145 Speer...lots of options

TSX, TTSX, Noz Partishies...

I was thinking 140 NBT or 150 Tsx

Prob not ideal. The 150 is a little heavier constructed. I used the heck out of the 140 in a .280, but probably shouldn't add 200ish fps to that bullet.

Whats the hightest grain bullet you can go with a 7mm mag?

H4831SC with a 140 Nosler Ballistic Tips.

Lot of options around 175, plus the 180 Berger. Might be some other odd specialized bullets, but most hunting 7mm bullets run 120-175 grains.

Then ill prob go with 175 tsx.

That'll kill elephants too. (Not saying I don't like it. )

Forgot who you were... Kid, that 175 TSX won't buy you anything. Though it will penetrate any deer in your woods from stem to stern, I'll bet that you'll end up tracking stuff a lot further than necessary by slowing that 7 mag down with the 175 and going with a bullet that doesn't fragment. If you go 175, use a Partition or Hornady or Speer to get a better fragmentation and penetration combination. 100% weight retention ain't the end all be all.

I like the idea of using light for caliber bullets in the monolithics, so don't get me wrong, but for deer sized game the 175 defeats what I see as the usefulness of monolithcs.

IMO 160gr. is were it is at in the 7mm mag.

If you can't kill a deer with plain jane Sierra soft points in a 7mm mag, you are doing something wrong.

Try out the 154 Hornady.

Here we go again... the TSX will expand, and dump more energy quicker than either of the others. My point is that you don't need near that much bullet to kill any deer and there is no reason to deal with the trajectory of a heavy bullet.

Any bullet will kill Whitetail in a 7 Mag. Most of our deer in west Texas would probably fall over dead if you fired a 7 Mag blank within 100 yards of 'em.

That being said.....I'd go with speed and use a 120 Gr. TTSX.

you should start with a 223
work up to a 223 AI

You could stuff a handful of rock salt down a 7 Rem Mag and kill white-azz...

Can you load a 7mmMag to 7x57 specs safely?

Just asking.

Randy

I have been handloading 120gr X, TSX and TTSX bullets into my dads and brother in laws 7MAG for a very long time and that is all the bullet one needs for deer to elk. Works really well on both critters and black bears as well. My dad even used it in Africa some. NO reason I can think of to get beat up with a 160-175 or to handicap the rifle with such a slow number, unless you are going to handicap yourself further with cup and core bullets.

Easily. AA5744 and other powders do that quite nicely.