Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Speer is dead to me.

Back in the day, my dad and I frequented the Lewiston/Clearwater area. We bought the Speers by the bag full at Lolo Sporting Goods. I still have a few bags, but as already pointed out there availability has left much to be desired over the years. I now pretty much use Noslers for game and Hornady/Sierra's for fun.

I suspect this was litigation-fear driven.

Since the DC's caused higher pressures than other projectiles at the same powder charge, those projectiles presented a lawsuit risk to ATK.

Thats a risk they wont bear if they are all loaded by their sister company Federal, under strict loading supervision.

Just a theory.... but in this day and age, it sounds right. Sadly, I dont think I could blame them, either.

shane

...or maybe they are idjit's like big Green.

Whatever the reloading component is (bullet, powder, brass) and whoever makes it - if it works well for me I buy a lot of them. Been through this too often; i.e., when Speer dropped their 45 Colt 200 grain "flying ashtray" a decade back I went out and found all I could get - think I still have about 850 of them. My wife is going to have a lot of stuff to sell you guys one day!

Hail...long live the Speer HotCor!

I run with a bunch of guys that shoot Savage 99s 250 Savage with 1-14" ROT and the 87 grain HotCor has been the Huckleberry, good accuracy and a demenostrated deer killer. I loaded them in my 1-14" ROT 99, also. Bought a 1-10" ROT 99 250 Savage and the thought process was to chase Whitetails with the heavier 100 grain bullet. Good intentions but I found deer to be just as dead as hit by a Speer 87 grainer.

I buy and shoot the Speer HotCor 130 grain bullet in my 7x57s just to show the boys at the range shooting 270s I can burn their arse with similar velocity.

There is not a more accurate bullet then a 250 grain Speer HotCor SP in my 35 Whelen and performs well on large big game.

Long live the HotCor!

There is probably a lot of truth to that statement, here is a group I got a few weeks ago with them. Speer keeps discontinuing bullets I like but hope they keep the 250 gr Hot Cor.

This! Bought about 8 boxes of the 87gr Hot Cores for my 250's when they announced the Deep Curls. Hornady's and Sierra's are for shooting paper or coyotes.

Were they shooting 160 Noslers?

I've loaded a bunch of TNTs in 22, 24, and 25 calibers over the years, still have quite a few.
87 and 100 gr. Hot Cores make my 99R perk in the deer woods.
Over the last 40+ years I've probably loaded more Hornadys for hunting use, but never had a problem with the Speers I've used. That said, this on again, off again deal with the Hot Core and Deep Curl thing has made me wonder a few times.

Must've been.

Speer IS all over the map bullet wise.

Seems after the ATK buyout, its been going down hill on there bullets.... I miss the old Blount inc. of back in the day, That was my kind of company. Not the malarkey that is going on now. ATK could really have something but seem to not put the energy towards bullets obviously.

Speer bullets were one of my go-to bullets, Not so much now. At one point a while back now all I shot in my reloads were Speer bullets. Then, they were one of the top two cup/core bullets I used on game. The other was the core-lokt

Thankfully, there is other top notch bullets to try.

Nosler is picking up the slack as far as a component bullet brand now for me, and doing very well.

Sorry to disappoint fellas, 130 vs 130 grain. To do otherwise would not be fair, now would it?

Here is an email address to voice your displeasure over all the weird things that have been happening with Speer since ATK took over. I just sent them a message.

Timothy.BrandtATK.com

Comparing a 270 Win and 7x57 with 130 bullets isn't fair

"Speer is dead to me."

Okay. ??

Is it a bullet failure when a 30 cal 165 gr big game bullet at 2800 fps explodes in a two pound blue grouse and grouse bits rain down all over a thirty foot radius? It was a Speer boat tail from an '06 at fifteen yds, about twenty seven years ago.

Grouse makes excellent camp meat, if you just shoot the head off of the bird. And I used to kill a bunch of them every deer hunt. But one time, I missed the shot at the neck and hit the bird in the breast.

The bullets in my cabinet these days are about 60% Noslers, with 30% split between Sierra and Hornady. The other 10% is split between Speer and Berry's. So I have not totally boycotted Speer.

I doubt that bullet exploded. Just about any expanding big game bullet will scatter small animals all over the place if you hit them in the middle. Try shooting prairie dogs with typical big game bullets from just about any cartridge that gets 2800 or more. The dogs will explode nicely, especially at close range, even with Nosler Partitions.

That said, the boattail Speers are NOT Hot-Cors. They're swaged, with pretty soft lead cores, so typical don't penetrate like Hot-Cors.

In reference to the DeepCurls that started this thread, when Speer decided to market them as a component variation of the Fusion bullet loaded in Federal ammo (which Speer made with exactly the same process), the marketing gun at Speer decided they needed to come up with a hot new name, instead of just calling them Fusions.

A bunch of other people at the company thought this was a fairly dumb idea, since the Fusion ammo had already become pretty popular, with consequent name recognition for the bullet. But no matter how many people told the marketing guy that calling them Fusions would be the smart thing to do, he refused.

The result was that instead of hitting the ground running, the "new" bullets had a hard time getting a foothold in the market. Eventually the word got out that they were basically the same thing as Fusions, but apparently it was too late. Plus there was the whole "we're going to drop the Hot-Cors and substitute the DeepCurls" thing, which never really came off.

I don't know if the same marketing guy is still at Speer.

I hope he's long gone and I hope they re-introduce the Fusion line of components. I truly believe it's a fantastic whitetail bullet.

But then again, so are many Nosler bullets...

I've seen pictures of some pretty substandard deepcurls guys have received too. Lots of lead spilling out from the tip and down the ogive.

I think it was pretty premature of speer to try to replace their 'bread and butter' hotcor with an unproven manufacturing process.

I think the bean counters were driving this one.

Right... but for the box and a half you burn to get the OAL perfect and then they change the design and discontinue the bullet.

You want no surprises?
Hornady.