Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Do you use a premium bullet for deer?

For me, it started with the fact that I could shoot at 3 out of 4 species during rifle season, before everything started gravitating towards going on draw. In a lot of the foothills zones you never know if a 3pt elk will suddenly make an appearance. Deer don't need premium bullets, but, a hard quartering elk or moose shot is something that needs to be allowed for. Then it is nice to have a little insurance and confidence in a premium bullet.

Good stuff but you left out one reason for using a premium that several have mentioned: simplicity in multi-speciies hunt opportunities. Dangerous game is a different factor.

One poster said it well: "I tend to work up a hunting load with one great bullet and use it for everything, deer included."

For deer alone I would not bother with a premium. But when hunting a place where in the course of a day I may shoot anything from whitetail to moose and elk, I load for the big critter and overkill anything else.

When an opportunity came to hunt little coastal blacktails for a day in mid-season, I killed a small blacktail buck with a 180 grain Swift A-frame, at a range of 15 feet. Overkill to the point of almost funny, but it worked, he tasted good, and no adjustment back and forth to load, sighting in etc. needed. In such a context, I don't think there is any snob nor other appeal for me other than that it keeps things simple.

But when hunting a place where in the course of a day I may shoot anything from whitetail to moose and elk, I load for the big critter and overkill anything else.

So what do you think killed moose & elk for the hunert years before there were premium bullets
Then there's the 90%? of the non-reloader hunters that harvest those big game animals with store bought cheapy bullets every yr.

I suppose we should all go back to driving Model A Ford cars, cause really, they got us from point A to point B, and why would we need something that had newer technology. And years before, smoothbore flintlocks and round balls killed them too. Or sharpened sticks . . . . or Yacua blowguns, or . . . . . . .

It has nothing to do with "need". It has to do with "can".

Steve:
I trust that this finds you doing acceptably well on this last Sunday in July. My how another year seems to be speeding by.

In answer to your initial query, for the most part nowadays at our house we do use what would fall into the definition of a premium bullet when hunting deer at our place.

With apologies for repeating some information here, I'll quickly state that I'm blessed to have both of our girls hunt now and before they started, my good wife and late father hunted as well. That meant on a good year we got to do a fair bit of "bullet testing".

Since about 1989 or thereabout, we've cut our own game and helped friends cut theirs as well though somehow it never occurred to us to keep a tally on what was cut until 2000. Since then, we've passed 85 animals cut and wrapped in our garage - mostly whitetail and mule deer, with 2 sheep, 2� moose and at least a dozen black bears thrown in.

When processing an animal, it is most often very easy to see the effectiveness of the bullet used to kill it. That combined with the obligatory retelling of the story of the hunt lets the observant listener learn a thing or two about cartridges and bullets.

Then too, as Okanagan, Rick F and 7STW have mentioned, where we hunt we can and do carry tags for whitetail buck, mule deer buck, black bear, 6 point minimum bull elk, 2 point bull moose and this year wolf. If we were lucky enough to be drawn in a LEH hunt, there are mountain goats and California Bighorn within 20 minutes up the logging road behind our house.

Lastly, in the past 20 years there have been 3 grizzly bears shot in the area we hunt that were bothering the hunters enough to have that take place. As we've no season here, the shootings get thoroughly investigated after being reported and they all passed the process. So while we've not had a brush with grizzly bears in our back yard, it's not impossible to have happen.

The question often asked about now in the conversation is "what did our fathers or their fathers do without premium bullets?". While on the surface that might have some validity, upon some further consideration I'm not certain that it's not a moot point and at best leads to a bunch of unanswered questions.

These would include how many animals did Uncle Ferd lose because of faulty bullets? We don't know and most likely neither does Uncle Ferd. He'll tell you about the 7x7 bull elk he took a cut at on the Bull River back in '48, but nobody knows if he hit it, much less what the bullet did.

Then too, they might have used something like the old Kling Kor Dominion, which were highly thought of back in the day, as were the Peters Belted......so it would appear that even back in the day there was a segment of hunters that weren't altogether pleased with "regular" bullet performance.

The invention of the Nosler Partition and if I was to guess, the RWS H-Mantle stemmed from someone being unsatisfied with the performance of a regular cup and core.

So what we've seen with deer carcasses has been that while the premium bullets might not kill deer any better and certainly no deader than a cup and core, the failure rate hasn't been any worse either.

Sometimes the cost of premium bullets comes into discussion as well, but I really can't see that as being an impediment to one either hunting that year or not.

I can't speak to the costs of hunting in any other part of the world, but for the girls and I to buy 3 BC hunting licences and tags will be right around $300. Decent hunting boots run well over $300 these days, at least Meindl or Kenetrek do out here. Most weekends we'll be able to put $100 worth of diesel into our pickup, while wearing out the $1200 tires and we've not even picked up some discount binoculars for the crew from Doug at Cameraland yet......so a couple of bullets that are $.30 more than a Core Lokt aren't going to keep us off the mountain.

Lastly, I'll end with these examples of "premium" bullets that did work extremely well on local deer. In fact based upon my experience I'd say much better than "regular" bullets would have given the shot placement and resulting tissue damage.

From the left .257" 80gr Barnes TTSX - lost less than 1 grain, .277" 130gr Hornady GMX - lost about a grain, .308" 168gr Barnes TSX - lost less than 1 grain.


None of the above is meant to imply that anyone else, anywhere or hunting anything should do what they do any differently. It's meant only to convey how our Okanagan family hunts and nothing more.

All the best in the upcoming week Steve.

Regards,
Dwayne

Thanks for the posts everyone.

The only answer that makes sense to me so far is a single load for different species of game. One load for simplicity.

With this in mind, I wonder how many here live/hunt in such an area? Specifically, you can walk out your front door or leave your hunt camp and encounter two or more "in season" animals. Or one species and a big bear.

Back home in MT, I could saddle up in my mom's yard and hunt deer, elk, black bear, (unlikely but very possibly) cougar and most recently wolf all at the same time. I usually targeted one species but if I hadn't filled any tags yet the possibility was always there. I never did get drawn for goat or moose in that area, but if I did they would have been added too.

I still used good ol' cup and cores and never had a problem, and I have killed all of the species listed (except goat).

As Dog Hunter said...we have a number of critters here on license at the same time. My fave hunting spot will have whitetail, mule deer, elk, lion,black bear, and wolf all open season at the same time...

That's great. I can only manage deer and moose. There are black bears around as well, but they aren't in season during the moose season.

I must specify though, I shoot behind the shoulder, and don't often use ultra velocity rounds. Basically, average velocity rounds and I almost always punch both lungs without hitting any major bone. For my puposes, cup and cores work just fine.

Yes, I do. There are several reasons including: multi game opportunities, unexpected and unwelcome attention while hunting, consistency in point of impact, consistency in performance, and economics. I will differentiate between things I "know" to be true and things I hypothesize to be true or "think".

The first is something I "know" to be true. Where I hunt I have opportunity for Mule deer, Whitetail, Moose, Elk, Black bear, and Grizzly. With my 338wm I generally hunt everything with 250grn Swift AFrames. From my experience there is minimal meat damage. With my 3006 180 grn Swift AFrames. These weights seem to work well with anything I've encountered.

"Know" The second reason is that there is a broad variety of wildlife where I hunt, including Grizzlies. In fact, with these new restrictive draws there are more Grizzlies than I can remember around. Heck one raided a guy's chicken coop on the outskirts of town last fall. Two falls ago I found myself standing in a Spruce swamp on a little rise. The ground was all torn up and some small trees looked like they had been bitten in half. On looking down I saw what looked lilke part of a moose protruding from the "rise" I was on.

"Know" The third is point of impact. I tend to tune a rifle to one load with one bullet so that I can shoot effectively to the ranges that I have worked at. I have found this to be quite important after 300 yards. While it is true that one can be precise with many bullet types and weights I simply do not have the time to attain this - so I shoot one multipurpose bullet for all game and ranges.

"Think" I think the terminal performance of the Swift AFrame is the superior to interlocks or other less expensive bullets. I think this because of the bullets I have recovered the Swift AFrame retained the most weight, had a nice wounded channel, and penetrated well. Some of my hunting partners have experienced significant meat damage from their bullets breaking into a number of pieces and/or failing to penetrate. Those rifles were 7mm rem mag, 300 weatherby, and 300 ultramag. From what I can recall the bullets were Remington yellow and green box, federal blue box, and interlocks. I recognive that these are higher velocity cartridges and this may play a role in the damage.

"Know" Finally, economics, I have some, albeit inconclusive, evidence that the premium bullet works better and the cost of a premium bullet composes less than 1/3% of the cost of a week hunting trip and the non premium less than 1/6%. Heck, I'll just go nuts and return a couple of pop bottles so that I can spring for a premium bullet.

Remarkably good post, Dwayne. Hope you are having a great morning.

I take the simple approach. My hunting rifles are either a Sharps 45-70, or a Marlin 1895 Cowboy in the same caliber, and I shoot the same load in both rifles.

The load is a cast 480 grain flatnosed bullet out of a Lyman 457121 mold and 66 grains of 3f black powder drives it at 1242 fps. 36 grains of IMR 3031 gives 1325 fps with the same bullet. I have used both loads in both North America and South Africa and have taken deer, hogs, elk, and four bison in North America. I have taken several kudu, two zebra, black and blue wildebeast as well as blesbok, springbuck, and impala in South Africa, and the ONLY bullet I have recovered was from a zebra that was a one shot DRT. Everything else is a complete pass through.

To me it is a magic combination, as ladder sights on either rifle enable you to reach WAY out there if needed, and it gives bone crushing power close in on things that would eat you. Accuracy, light recoil, and power AND PENETRATION in one bullet and load for anything, anywhere. It doesn't get any better than that for me.

Good stuff but you left out one reason for using a premium that several have mentioned: simplicity in multi-speciies hunt opportunities. Dangerous game is a different factor.

One poster said it well: "I tend to work up a hunting load with one great bullet and use it for everything, deer included."

For deer alone I would not bother with a premium. But when hunting a place where in the course of a day I may shoot anything from whitetail to moose and elk, I load for the big critter and overkill anything else.

When an opportunity came to hunt little coastal blacktails for a day in mid-season, I killed a small blacktail buck with a 180 grain Swift A-frame, at a range of 15 feet. Overkill to the point of almost funny, but it worked, he tasted good, and no adjustment back and forth to load, sighting in etc. needed. In such a context, I don't think there is any snob nor other appeal for me other than that it keeps things simple.

I had a similar experience with a little 2 point blacktail, 160 grain NP out of a .280 talk about over-penetration, there were bits of lung spread over a wide area. I agree with keeping it simple as well, one load for all species.

Moose, deer, black bear and wolves have all been seen in my back yard, and I have shot all but the wolf and bear (and could have shot them as well) within a four mile walk of the back step. Got one moose FROM my back step. I live among them critters.

Brother Keith;
I trust this finds you and yours doing well on this warm Sunday afternoon sir. We're about to head up to Kelowna to look at a good used, very light and may I say Canadian made canoe - a project that I've been working toward for years now!

Anyway, your back step moose story just increased your "stock" in my view.

As the story goes out here in BC - "Where's the best place to shoot a moose?" to which the answer invariably is "On the road son, on the road....."

I very vividly recall being unable to so much as roll over the only bull moose I've shot to date. While I was finally able to maneuver my pickup within half a kilometer or so, it was still a "fair bit of work" to take him apart and get him there on my own.

The thought that kept on repeating itself over and over was, "What have you done Dwayne? What have you done!"

Your back porch story shows that you have most definitely evolved into a higher form of moose hunter than I sir.

All the best of our Lord's blessings to you and yours in the upcoming week Brother Keith.

Dwayne

I mentioned one load simplicity earlier.

I think we've established that the ability to use one load for several different animals is at the top of most everyone's list.

Excellent roundtable. Everyone, pat yourselves on the back!

As the story goes out here in BC - "Where's the best place to shoot a moose?" to which the answer invariably is "On the road son, on the road....."

Greetings Dwayne,

Now that is funny....and true!

If it is multi species we're after, then yes definately a premium bullet is required. Up until I had a 338-06AI built my only big game rifle was a 270. The only weight bullet I shot was 140gr. And in that weight I shot a 140gr FailSafe to keep thing s simple. Took Elk, Moose and Deer with that load having complete pass throughs on all of them. But again, for deer alone I'm convinced that premium bullets are not required. In fact I think cup and core bullets result in more devastating, and thus quicker kills.

Most deer I have killed have been via a Partition. I have also used Horn Interlocks and I really like the 154 round nose.

The Partition combines the best the cup and core has to offer plus the design of the partition for increased penetration. No ordinary cup and core even comes close.

Why use a plain Jayne when you don't have to? Partitions ain't exactly "new" to the market.