Would 120 grain ballistic tips be good on deer out to 200 yards. I had troulble with federal soft points not expanding well and leaving poor blood trail. I am shooting 14" contender in 7x30 waters. If not what do you recommend. thanks
This was my first Contender set-up. As such I was new to everything involved with them and did QUITE a bit of research. I had purchased it exclusively for a Wisconsin hunt and wanted all I could get from the loads with accuracy and energy.
After spending hours on the phone with powder and bullet companies, discussing my needs I settled on the 140gr Nosler BT for the final hunting load. My criteria had to have a bullet which would provide at minimum double caliber expansion at impact velocities attainable out to 200yds. This narrowed the field down to only a couple of bullet really quick. It ended up being between the Noslers and the Barnes, but the latter was more trouble than it was worth so I stuck with the BT.
Using Winchester cases, I worked through several suggested powders and ended up with RL-15 as the top performer, in both accuracy and velocity. While I do freely admit I pushed the load a bit initially, the results were outstanding. I didn't get the deer I was looking for on the initial hunt, but have taken several hogs out to 200yds and one whitetail doe at 283 yards and the bullet expanded wonderfully. In fact it literally almost flipped her over sideways when it hit her in the shoulder. It penetrated the onside shoulder in about a quarter sized hole and exited with about a 2" hole in the offside ribs destroying everything in between. She made one leap and piled up.
The only issue I could say I have really had with the BT, was on closer shots of around 25 - 50yds where the bullet DID expand rather violently. For a general deer load where surrounding meat damage might be an exception this might be an issue, but if your hunting the once in a lifetime trophy, meat damage to me is of little concern as long as the vitals are destroyed.
I have since backed off the charge a bit but am still getting 2250 from my barrel with excellent accuracy. Also while I have not tried any of the Hornady SST's, the standard lead tipped version of the boat tail bullet also shoots less than 1" at 100yds from my gun. Same loads with both bullets are pretty boring actually as the groups are generally only changed by how much paper you want to tear off the edges of the initial hole.
There are WAY more possibly great bullets available now than when I worked up my loads, but I have plenty of bullets loaded and no real reason to change whats already working. If I did, I would look hard at the Accubonds or the SST's both in 140grs and work up to an accurate load with a safe max velocity, and be done with it.
