Soft Nose, Hard Cast Bullets?

[HBL]

Any of you guys ever try these.

When Veral Smith was making moulds, I got one of his nose molds for the 300gr. LFN bullet design of his.

I have cast quite a few and checked several after casting and found that they fused together very well. Using vise-grips and a table vise all it would do is deform, it would not separate.

I decided to try them out deer hunting this year. Never again!

I am mainly a meat hunter and thought a shoulder shot on a doe would do the least meat damage. Well the bullet went where I was aiming, but apparently the bullet decided to separate. the main body of the bullet went through and tumbled back through the guts and came out high on the lower back. The nose traveled through the rest of the insides and came out the ham the opposite of the direction I was shooting.

This should be great for varmints and predators, but I won't use them for deer again. I'll probably just use straight WW metal from now on.

Any one else experience this type of performance with soft nose bullets?

 

[wener]

yea i have used them in a 44 but this it is an nei mould where the nose is a mushroom shaped shank. when the hard lead is poured around the nose it stays! the bullet mushrooms out real nice! :wink:

[Leftoverdj]

Doe died dead, though, right?

Lost meat is one thing. Game down crippled and slowly lost in the woods is another.

We owe it to the game we shoot to use the best load and the best shot we can. I lost a buck near 30 years ago to what should have been a sure killing shot with a full house .308. Since then I have taken one shot to every ten I could have taken.

I'd still shoot a deer under 100 yards with a soft nose cast bullet.Where I hunt, you are most unlikely to get a shot past that. Even if it separates, 2 200 grains chunks of lead will still likely find something vital. I figger the odds at better than a hard cast .45-70 and a lot better than a factory .223 or .243. Probably even better than my beloved .250-3000.

There will be bullet failures. There will also be times when the bullet behaves exactly as intended, but a different bullet type would have given a better result.

Do the best you can, and try not to beat yourself up when that is not good enough.

[carpediem]

Greetings from Alberta, Canada:

I have a couple of questions:  What caliber bullet were you casting?  What range did you shoot the doe at?  What was the velocity of the bullet at the muzzle?

I'm one of those lucky guys whose hunting partner is his wife :-D .  Yup, it's true.  But she really gets pissed with me when I damage the meat.  For short range shooting, under 100 yards, I use my trusty single shot 45-70.  For a few years, I was using a 360 hollow point cast out of pure lead.  Hit them in the boiler room or the engine room and they would lay out like a rug.  Problem was a wasted shoulder due to meat damage.  Bullet expansion was impressive but I hunt for the meat.  I moved on to a 405 grain 45-70 bullet cast from ww and cold water quenched.  Expansion was minimal but death was quick.  

My whole point here is,  use a big diameter, hard, heavy bullet and you won't have to worry about expansion.

 :grin: I love my 45-70.

Kindest regards,