In "Sixguns" Keith speaks of using soft cast bulelts with flat noses. He soundly denounced the Remington 45 Colt BP load of the day as being too rounded on the nose and it simple went through game without cutting the tissue. He describes shooting a goat at ranges of 10 to 300 yards, hitting it with 10 of 18 rounds before it died. He says he then went to a 300 grain bullet for the 45-90, pushing it 800-900 fps. (This can be found in the chapter on hunting game)
He said the flat point was a far better killer than the round nose, but nowhere does he speak of anything any harder than 20:1. I think the hard bullet craze came along as cast bullets shooting began to become popular and Linotype was a favorite metal amoung the rifle shooters. It was plentiful as practically every newspaper used Linotype machines and scrap lino was cheap and easy to get, and resisted leading too. That in itself was aboon to hadgunners shooting arms that may or may not be designed well to handle cast bullets, a common problem in 45 Colts was .452 chambers and .454 barrels. I think hardcast came to be recommended to prevent leading without thought given to the consequences in the game fields. The thinking may well ahve been to switch to a softer bullet for hunting, but this does not seem to have been communicated well. What seems to be passed on is a hard bullet is required for penetration, yet Keith says plainly that the Remingotn bullet and load he so dispised would pass completely through game, and several shots he made on the goat at 300 yards did just that!
Too much time and too many gun rags have a way of rewriting what was originally said, and before long, nothing the original advocate was saying is left in the common wisdom of the present.
Keiths favorite load also only pushed 255 grain bullets to 1200 fps from 4" barrels a far cry from the 1500 + people seek today.
I don't see why 20:1 won't get the job done, it was a common alloy of the BP era. As a note, 20:1 is 10 BHN, WW is 11 unhardened.
I've killed 4 deer with cast 44 bullets made from 50-50 WW/Lino best I recall. That should make a little harder than 15, as the percentage of antimony will be higher thatn 50-50 Lino/lead which does replicate #2 very closely. 2:1 lead/linotype will give an approximation of WW with 1% tin added, and 3% antimony (lyman says WW is 4% antimony)