Had kind of an interesting day at the range. Tested the above on my standard 12 inch long, 2.5 gal. water jugs.
The Hornady .44, 240 gr. XTP was fired from my 4 inch Smith and pushed by 20 grs. of 2400 and a CCI 300. At 15 ft., I got splashed with water. Blew the first jug completely apart and sent water in all directions. Punched right through the second jug, but couldn't enter the 3rd. Recovered bullet weighed 231.3 grs. and looked very evenly expanded at about .64 inches on the average.
Even more interesting were the .22 LR tests. The CCI Velocitor 40 gr. HP split the front of the jug and exited. That's 12 inches of water plus the plastic skin of the jug. Not bad at all for a 3 inch Smith 317 revolver. Bullet not recovered.
The WW, 40 gr. Power Point didn't exit. It just started to expand. Didn't appear to hit as hard either.
Looks like the CCI Velocitors are my ammo of choice in this little gun. E

Try the CCI SGBs, JFSAG.

E,
Those velocitors are my favorite varmint/small game round out of my 22s. Quite accurate as well.

The 240 XTP is one of the most accurate bullets made but penetration on deer is not good. They open too fast. Better to use the 300 gr.
How about blowing up four, splitting two more and penetrating 14 jugs with a revolver?

Not enough penetration for deer ? That thing penetrated 24 inches of water and four plastic surfaces. On people, anything that penetrates more than 15 inches of water is considered too much for the "nervous about over penetration" crowd.
JJHack has reported that even the 180 gr. loads have enough penetration for black bears. E

Water has excellent bullet-stopping qualities, especially if the bullet expands when it hits. According to literature I have seen that I believe is credible, a bullet can be expected to penetrate approximately 1.55 times as far in ballistic gelatin than it will in water. So if a bullet penetrates 24" of water, it should penetrate about 36" in gelatin designed to simulate muscle tissue.

36" of penetration would make the 240 XTP very effective for deer hunting, IMHO.

The only three deer I shot with 240's, behind the shoulder, no bone hit. If I had not seen them go down, like thick country, I would not have found them because of not having two holes and no blood trails. Think of big bones and tough muscle on bear or a large hog. How about a quartering shot that needs more penetration?
These bullets were against the rib cage, barely reaching the hide.
Believe what you want with jug tests, I believe what I see in the field. The miserable penetration caused me to go to hard cast WLN, RNFP's and WFN boolits from 265 to 330 gr.
Now if you believe in a 180 gr, I feel you will change your mind very quickly with experience. You will also dump the 240. You will find the 300 gr XTP is as good as it gets.

E,

The hornady 240 garin bullet is one of my favorites for wild hogs,I have killed six or seven of them with it in the last few days.

A couple were over 200 pounds. It penetrates to the vitals and often exits,that is what I've seen first hand.

If you want to do a test, try water soaked phone books and paper. The 240 will only make 11" and the 265 gr cast will go 33".
A .475 420 WFN gr hard cast will go 37" but a 400 gr XTP only does 12". A 400 gr soft nose gets to 14".
If you can get a 240 XTP to go through 36" of animal, you are performing magic tricks.

I was in on a hog hunt when a fella shot a boar with the 240 XTP. The bullet was recovered in the off shoulder, never going through it. By the time the outfitter and the rest of us got there it was a 1/2 hour and the hog was still alive. Had to be shot again.
Even a .22 will reach vitals. I suppose you can kill a hog with a .380 and maybe a .32.
To err on the side of "just maybe" is silly when there are better bullets. Even a 240 Speer Gold Dot performs better then a 240 XTP.
Just what is so hard about going to a 300 gr? They are just as accurate.
These arguments are a never ending thing and once understanding that "reaching the vitals" is not enough for game recovery 100% of the time, or instant death of an animal, they will continue.
A friends daughter loved a .223 for deer because of the lack of recoil. She made a perfect shot last season and four of us searched. Not a single drop of blood anywhere.
An hour later I found the deer 200 yards from where she shot it. I gutted it and found the bullet indeed reached the vitals, blew up, destroyed a lot of internals but the deer thought otherwise. I called and while waiting for them I back tracked the deer. No blood anywhere.
I do and will forever hate anyone saying "it reaches the vitals." So will a sharp stick.
If anyone thinks blowing up a water bottle will also flip an animal head over heels, he has a lot to learn.

Which 240 gr. bullets ? What muzzle and impact velocities ?
240 gr. bullets fired from a .44 Magnum vary alot as to how tough they are. That, and the fact that they behave differently when fired at 1200 fps. vs. 1800 fps.
The other thing is that the hard cast stuff does not expand. It penetrates very well, but produces a small wound channel. That's why JJHack cautioned us about using them on black bears. The bears don't die as quickly as they do with expanding bullets.
The 300 gr. stuff can't loaded as fast as the 240 gr. stuff. They produce more recoil and don't shoot the same zero as the lighter stuff. If I want a good deer bullet, I can shoot the XTP. If I want lots of penetration, the old Remington factory 240 gr. lead loads will do fine. And they shoot the same zero. E

Thanks Ruraldoc. That's nice to know. E

You are correct about the Remington and it is a better choice. It is also true the velocity has a bearing on how a bullet expands. But you forget the accuracy point of a bullet where it needs to be shot.
The 240 XTP is most accurate with 24 gr of 296 and a Fed 150 primer. The 300 is best with 20.5 gr. and a Fed 150 primer. I don't have my chrono readings for these. Slowing the 240 will make it perform but at a huge accuracy loss. It is best in a .44 special.
Assumptions about hard cast are wrong though. At the proper velocity of between 1200 and 1400 fps they work but at lower or higher velocities, they need some expansion. This is where alloy work comes in.
A hard WLN or WFN driven too fast will move tissue out of the way in a secondary wound channel and just leaves a small hole when the secondary collapses. This is where you NEED expansion.
Too slow will kill but it takes longer and also the boolit needs some expansion to speed up the kill.
Cast is just like jacketed where it must be tailored for the velocity. To assume one alloy works or fails across the board is where mistakes are made.
Over or under expansion is a problem with both jacketed and cast. To work a bullet for the best expansion zone can shorten the range you can hit at. There is nothing worse then loss of accuracy unless you shoot all animals at 20 yards.
This is internal damage from a hard boolit at the proper velocity of 1329 fps.

MMM, that looks like the lazagna the wife made last night.

Lungs were jelly on that deer too.
Now get too soft with a cast going fast (1632 fps.) and this is what you get.
Complete penetration but a whole shoulder destroyed. A lot of bloodshot meat too. Alloy needs to be adjusted. This was with a 50-50 pure and WW mix. Need to go to 25% pure.

Now the perfect velocity and hardness. Total internal damage, fast kill and no meat loss. This is the exit hole.
Using a jacketed or cast, the same principals apply.
With over 360 deer kills and being in on hundreds more, doing a necropsy on all, I feel I know what a bullet/boolit needs to do and have come to rely on "dwell time" and boolit work instead of velocity and muzzle energy.

I do not want to get down on anyone, but please, please, don't rely on jugs of water or anything else. Only actual animals with all kinds of hits.
It is always best to get two holes. Make the boolit or bullet work on the inside before it exits. There is no such thing as wasted energy after a boolit passes through.

If you shot through two jugs and didn't enter the third,unless your jugs are made different in Cali.,that would only be 12 inches of water.For the record just took my milk jug out and measured.

And please don't tell these black bears on the east coast that hard cast bullets don't kill quickly.

I disagree with this. I have taken a few deer with that bullet out of my SRH using W296 power. Every one was a pass through and none of the deer went more than 15 to 20 yards.

Bob

The water jugs I used for these tests are a full 12 inches long each. They hold 2.5 gallons of water, not a gallon.
JJHack has killed or seen killed literally hundreds of black bears with various handguns. E

"E" I see that all of your experience is vicarously through others.... bfrshooter has a ton of experience. Cottonstalk has taken more 300 to 400 pound bears than most, so he has a lot of expeirence and I have taken a lot of game with both jacketed and hard cast and if the proper meplat size is used with hard cast they kill very quickly and leave a good sized wound channel. Of course we didn't gain our experience by reading, we got it the "old fashioned way" by acctually doing it ourselves.

I have found the 240 grain .44 mag XTP bullet to be a quick killer of deer, hogs, and bear.

Yes, they killed fine, never said they didn't. What I seen was poor penetration on chest hits on deer. They just opened too fast and stopped. Not large deer either, 150# at the top end.
What made me think was what would happen with a less then perfect hit. How about a big shoulder joint going in or a quartering shot?
It is not that I killed the deer, it goes beyond that. I am sure the 180 gr will kill too but not my cup of tea.
The 300 gr is there, is accurate, expands just right, penetrates and kills. Why fool around?
Then there are the WLN and WFN boolits.
With a big bear and a heavy fur coat that can suck up blood, give me two holes.

So I'm suppose to believe you and not him, is that it JWP ?
There are a few things the matter with that.
First, you don't seem to understand that there are differences in jacketed bullets of the same weight. You keep saying just jacketed vs. hard cast/wide, etc. with no distinction between makes or other design features.
Second, you "wide, flat point, hard cast addicts" keep trying to tell us that deer practically wear kevlar.
Then you love to show us pictures of animals you've killed with shoulder shots but never any lung shots. Always it's the exit wound, but never the wound channel. We don't get to know about lung shots that run off a ways and die later, etc. We hear only about shoulder shots that fall right there.
As we argue, the experiences of others who are quite satisfied with these jacketed loads are ignored.
I'm not opposed to lead bullets for certain jobs. For instance, I just bought some 200 gr. wide, flat point, hard cast bullets for my 10mm. Their flat points are much wider than the jacket stuff I've been carrying and they can be used to shoot steel. Got a hunch they might be made to shoot close enough to my standard 180 HP loads so I can use both. If so, they will be very useful. Even to the point of being my prefered load. BTW, the softer lead SWC bullets work pretty well too. Elmer Keith had no trouble shooting through the face plates of several steers with the 240 gr. Remington version in the then new .44 Magnum. That's bone so tough that it will stop a .30-30 rifle bullet. Not necessary to use some special hard cast 300 gr. wonder bullet. E

DH if I understand from your previous posts you have taken 1 bear and it was a smaller one so for you to say "they work on bear" is like the saying a blind hog can find a acorn.Keep shooting bears with that load and let them get some more weight on them,when you've dumped more than 25 over 350 we'll talk.

Now E so defensive of others.I apologize for mis reading the original post and I don't think anyone is telling you to accept this persons opinion and not hear anothers.I think what alot of us would like is for you to get your own.JJHack has killed bears with hollow points and that's fine,but is he the only bear hunter in the US?I wouldn't be scared to say that just as many bears have been dropped by hardcast.While his opinion and experience is one way mine is the total opposite.I have seen jhps/jsps work and fail.Never seen a HC fail to leave two holes in any bear,and here the state record is 880lbs and yes that's a blackie.NC harvest larger bears weight wise than just about any state in the US.

For every product thats made there will always be those that like it and dislike it.But it's easier to defend a product when you have your own experiences with it than depending on what others have wrote some of those to sell something.

And pics...that pic of the heart that is no entrance hole or exit hole or shoulder shot,and if that's not impressive damage,you can't be impressed.

And last bfrshooter was politely just offering advice and his experience killing deer equals that of hacks bears why wouldn't he be reguarded with the same respect?Is it because he doesn't have a couple thousand posts or he isn't a famous rag writer promoting something?

Cottonstalk you are correct, I have only killed one 150 lb. bear with the 240 gr., .44 Mag XTP; it worked well. My experience with the 240 gr XTP is mainly with hogs. I have killed "several" large ones with this bullet and they have always worked well for me.

I don't want to deter anyone using what works for them. All of my shooting is based on the accuracy point of each bullet. I am sure if you slow the 240 XTP, it will penetrate but where it is accurate for me is just too fast.
I refuse to give up accuracy so I match bullet performance based on the final velocity where it shoots best. This is where we might vary with bullet performance. I can only relate my experiences.
However, the .44 mag is right at home with a heavier hard cast of at least a WLN. The velocities are exactly right and they kill way out of proportion to what anyone thinks. From my first deer with a hard cast I have been nothing but amazed at results and am not afraid to use my loads from jack rabbits to big bears or buffalo.
Besides that, the boolits are free when you cast from wheel weights. I can shoot for weeks at the cost of one box of factory bullets.
I match and exceed jacketed bullet accuracy with all sorts of cast. I don't understand the stigma about cast boolits!!!
In the .44, they just plain work and you should really try them because once you do, you will stop buying bullets.
I am not about to change minds but you are missing out on what might be a life changing decision that allows more shooting and boolits that work better then what you buy.
Can you look down at 50 yard groups like this? 10 shots on one and the vertical was the sandbags.

I made a mold for the .44 that weighs 330 gr, WLN configuration.
I wanted to see the drop at 200 yards so I just shot three so I could measure. I used a red dot from sandbags with my SBH.
Was I surprised? Better believe it. My friend is shooting these into 1/2" at 50 with his Ruger Hunter.

I am trying to say that you should not look down your nose at a good boolit in the .44. It is about the most perfect caliber out there and some handicap it by just using one bullet.
If a friend says "let's go deer hunting" or pig hunting or let's go shoot a griz, I can say OK, and grab the same box of boolits for anything.
Lose the stigma, you are missing out.

E, you seem to be casting the same blanket statement over cast bullets -- not all cast are created equally. Yes, some of us post pictures of animals we have shot, unlike you. You keep citing JJHack's experiences, and while they are valid, so are the opinions of others like jwp, cottonstalk, and bfrshooter. E, you really need to get out and shoot some game with a handgun and see for yourself what all of the fuss is about.

My .44 Mg is a 4 5/8" SBH and im far from a huge handgun hunter but have shot a few deer, and elk and a bear with it from 25-60yds. I run my 240gr XTP's over 24.5gr of H110 and have yet to have one stay in an animal of any sort.

Of course my home poured (wheel weights) 245gr LSWC's over 20.5gr of 2400 havent stopped in an animal either.

curious to try the 300gr loads but have several hundred of each above bullet to use up first