Any difference between TMJ and lead bullets for hunting?

[wreckhog]

I understand that TMJ is really swaged with a very thin copper plating.

[Graybeard]

Some brands might be but could also be just a FMJ with flat nose. I'd expect them if like that to more or less act like a hard cast with meplat of whatever size the nose flat happens to be. If swaged and then lightly plated I'd expect them to act pretty much the same as if the plating wasn't there.

[Lloyd Smale]

turnacute nosed bullets have kind of a tendency to dive in penetration tests and it game. A lfn or swc is a better choise.

[Mikey]

I ran a bit of a comparison between fmj-swc slugs and hard cast slugs from my 45 acp.  The fmj-swcs are Mag-Tech fmjs.  The jacket seems thick enough.  The cast bullet is the old Lyman 454423, the plain based Keith design for the 45 Auto Rim.  The test medium was a cross cut section of a big telephone pole.  I shot lengthwise into the cross cut section with 3 loadings, all over 6.5 grains of Unique. 

The slugs were the 230 gn fmj rn-ball, the 230 gn fmj-swc and the 238 gn (245 actual weight) Lyman 454423; estimated velocity for each loading was 877'/sec as per my Lyman 43rd Edition. 

They all penetrated the same distance, about 6".  The fmj rn-ball slug more readily followed the grain of the wood (Cedar) and began to yaw at about the 5" mark, finally ending at 6" with a 45 degree yaw.  The fmj-swc and the 454423 also penetrated about 6" but drove straight on until stopping.  Neither bullet was deformed and could have been re-used.

I think that if used for hunting the fmj-swc slug would perform the same as a hard cast swc.  jmtcw.

[Ak.Hiker]

Interesting report on 45 acp bullet penetration. It sound like ball holds its own pretty well and the FMJ flat point is pretty much equal to the cast load.