ORIGINAL: gleason.chapman
ORIGINAL: falcon
We havetalked aboutbullets on this forum for a very long time andmany of us do not agree on bullets. The bullets that have worked so well for me do not seem to work for some others. The250 grain SST/Shockwave has worked very well for me. With one exception, nothing ihit with onewentover 20 yards: That deer was hit very low in the shoulders, call it upper legs, and it went about 50 yards before i shot it again.There is absolutelyNO substitute forproper shot placement.
Hogs are much harder to kill than deer and shot placement is much more important. i have killed over75 hogs with the .430 240 grain XTP and 250 grain SST bullets. No hog ever went more than 20 yards after being hit.
More than any other topic bullets seem to push people's buttons. I am not going to say anything about the SW, as your experience speeks for itself, but I wish it were different, since they shot like this in my Savage:
http://www.the-gleasons.com/TC_Shockwave_300g_2007_06_02_AA5744_44g_FederalPri mer_default%20sabot.jpg
I like the Nosler Partition 300g HG bullet in a Crushed Rib sabot for penetration, expansion, quick kills and blood trails. In most cases, even hitting the shoulder blade, you will get penetration into the chest and a quick kill. Nosler has been around a LONG TIME (60 years---1947 was when John Nosler hunted with his first partition for moose) and it was the first "balenced bullet" offering expansion down to the partition that separates the head from the shank of the bullet and expansion for excellent wound channel. Another bullet that has done well for me(no fragmentation, excellent expansion, excellent penetation) is the Speer Gold Dot 300g, they are $16 for 50 at MidSouth Shooter's supply.They are bonded jackets to the core, called Unicore by Speer. Cabelas doesn't carry them. That is my first hand experience.
Another good bullet to try that a LOTTA folks over onDoug's Savage forum use is the Barnes Bullets, the TMZ in particular, but the MZ for a non-smokeless ML would work well. I intend to try their .458 rifle bullet after the season, since I have money down on an elk huntin Oct 2008and I want to use my Savage ML to 200 yards.Bryce Towsley, a well know MLer writer and gun editor,calls the Barnes bullet " the near perfect ML bullet". What he means by this is it penetrations bone, near 100% weight retention,expands to 2x diameter, shoots thru deer for excellent blood trails and opens up immediately offering large wound channels in game.
I have found that huntersthat are interested inbullets and terminal performance tend tograduate to either Nosler or Barnes (just my observation, I have not seen this written any where). Ask for this bookfor Christmas:
http://www.ramworks.net/estore.html
Read it a few times and you will get a really good idea of "Balanced Bullets", fragmenting bullets, penetrating bullets, etc and why bullet designers do things the way they do.
Also order these two free DVDs from Barnes:
http://www.barnesbullets.com/products/free-dvds/
and just watch and listen to them about whey they design bullets they way the do.
Bottom line there is no magic "silver bullet" that we all can use to always get the deer, but some bullets are definitely designed better than others to do the job. Best Wishes on choosing yours.
Chap Gleason
