Lloyd is right on the mark. I use a 204 grainer with a soft nose at 1650 fps and have never had a deer get up after it was hit. This is in a 308. I have an soft nose caster that I bought from Veral (LBT) 20-25 years ago. It works well and can be adjusted for various weights of softnoses. Have used it in 30, 35, and 44 caliber cast bullets with total satisfaction.
Another option to soften noses...I read somewhere that you can soften noses by putting the cb's in water and heating the nose with a torch...don't know how deep the water, how much nose is exposed during the operation, or how consistant the results are...I haven't tried it and won't so long as my soft nose caster keeps working. The soft noses I'm producing seem to operate like Nosler Partitions when they impact the game you're after.
