Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Hornady Interbond for Whitetails

I know from earlier posts that the Interbond has been used by a number of you on elk with great success, and it worked really well on my elk kill as well.

Has anyone used it on smaller game, such as whitetail with success? My worry is that it won't expand enough and may be a straight-through with minimal expansion on a whitetail. I'd be using 180grn...BTW

thnx

No expansion issues at .300 Savage to .270 Win velocities on both mulies and whitetails...

Sorta left a key piece of information out of my initial post...I am looking specifically at 30-06 rounds in 180grn with a muzzle velocity of 2820, which is within the range you suggest. So I should be good them it seems...?

I use the hornady 165gr interlock in the 30-06,...from 10 ft to 300+ yards I have never had any complaints fron a single deer. I like the balistics better than the 150 or the 180gr.

I've only used the 139gr out of my 280AI. No issues at all...

I've taken two deer with Interbonds. The first was a 139 grain from a 280 remington. The second was the same bullet out of a 7mm08 with a 20 inch barrel.

I recovered the bullet shot from the 280, couldn't find the one from the 7mm08.

I'm using the .30 IB 165 grain at 300 fps faster than your velocity, on whitetails. Terminal performance has been OK, I've yet to recover a bullet (these supposedly retain a high % of weight), and accuracy has been good as well.
BUT... In my opinion, in this application the IB seems to be a little bit on the tough side for what I'm doing with it(particularly so at range). I'm transitioning to 168 grain Ballistic tips this year, as this is my "bean field" rifle.
Granted, I'm relaying field experience with the 165 vs your 180, but I imagine the "stoutness" of the bullet is relative.
As a side note, I've got a buddy that I hunt with who has one of my .30-06s on long term loan. He's shooting Federal blue box 180 grainers with good accuracy. I've seen the terminal performance of this load on multiple Georgia whitetails that he's killed, and it leaves nothing to be desired. Just a thought in case you're on a tight schedule to get out on a hunt. I think every wal-mart in the US has this load on the shelf.

have not used hornady 30-06 ammo, have used interbond in 300 win
and sst in 270 and 25-06, i would use sst 4 whitetail it opens
easy and is very accurate.

I've loaded the 165gr version for my buddy to use in his 30.06. That load runs about 2700fps. I've watched him kill a number of mulies with it - expands nicely.

Don't think you'd have any problems with an Interbond.

I'm gonna give the 100g interbonds a try this season out of my 243.I know that doesn't answer your question but i'm going somewhere with this.The 180g in 30 cal. interbond more than likely has a thicker jacket than the 150g interbond so in a "lighter" framed animal such as a whitetail it may not expanded as good.

I realized this when i went from shooting a 30/30 with 170g bullets to a 30-06 shooting 180g bullets. I had quicker kills with the 30/30. A couple of guys told me that the 170g 30/30 had a thinner jacket so it expanded better once i went to 150g in the 30-06 i got better results.

I've shot deer with 139gr Interbonds out of the 7mag and 7STW,165gr Interbonds out of the 300WSM and 308 Win.I also shot an elk with the 300WSM and a nilgia with a 300 Win mag using 165gr Interbonds.The Interbonds performed very well on every head of game killed,all bullets were complete pass throughs and all were one shot kills.

I follow your logic, which was my basic concern. I am zero'd in on the IB 180grns in '06 and the plan was to kill an an elk. The elk hunt is over and I didn't use the '06, so I am looking to the whitetail season, and thinking about using this load becasue I don't have time to switch to a new load. I was just worried about the expansion I'd get out of this bullet as it is a bit heavy for whitetail. I have another rig ready to role with a great whitetail round zero'd in, etc.

...I just need to decide

i have killed a lot of deer with the standard btsp honady in 165gr 308. the interbond i used didnt expand as much as like on whitetail body shots. larger game would probably take them better.

I've used the 129 grain interbond exclusively in my 264 for mule deer.