oldrookie

I am really aware that it does not usually pay to go the opposit direction that Dave suggests but....

I hunt all deer (whitetail or muley)with the 250/260 grain and I do use the 300 grain on elk... one reason the thickness of the hides... at closer ranges the 300 being a physically stronger bullet can get in and out of a deer before it even has a chance to expand to it's fullest. The 240,250,260 bullets are built to expand quickly. The Hornaday 240 has probabaly dispatched more deer than any other bullet @ normal hunting ranges. My choices to 175 yards are always 1. a 260 grain .451 Nosler Partition and 2. the .452 - 250 grain Gold Dot and my third and rising very fast is the 10mm 200 grain Hornady XTP ( I have not been able to strip the lead from the copper with that bullet yet.)

Two years ago - I was elk hunting and a really nice 4x5 whitetail buck walked within fifteen yards of where I was, I normally do not shoot deer during elk season but this one was to nice to pass - so I dropped the Remington right on him, just behind the front shoulder - squeezed off the shot. The buck jumped 5' straight up in the air came down on all fours an ran off at blazing speed in that low crouched running thing they do, went about 30 yards to the north turned a circle an ran right back by where I had shot him and down the draw - get the DOWN part by yhe time i found him he was 200 yards down the draw. Had one really nice45 caliber hole all the way through - clipped a lung and the bottom of the heart & a piece of a rib on the way out. Not much expansion. The bullet was a 300 grain Nosler - that same shot would have done in an elk quickly.

The 250's expand now and create a tremendous hydrostatic shock in the chest cavity - turns everything in their to jello from 25 yards to a 170 yards as I experianced last year.

It is a myth (IMO) that you need to shoot big bullets.... UNLESS you are shooting pure lead then size matters, but with a modern hunting bullet size is not the pre-requisit, I look at velocity and performance.

My vote tune the gun up with the 250 GD for thin skinned animalssuch as deer.... bullets gets there faster and does a lot of internal damage but is pretty easy on the meat.

Altohough all of this is just one guys opinion...

Sabotloader - do you suspect that the 300 grain Nosler would hold together without expanding at the close range you reported about, better then a 300 grain XTP at close range? Now I am not saying wet newspaper is flesh and bone, but I tested 300 grain XTP at 25 yards out of the Black Diamond XR with 100 grains of Triple Se7en 2f and that bullet expanded perfect. I have never tested the Nosler Partition that you like so well on anything because of their cost for one thing.

I have yet to shoot a deer with an XTP so I could not say that one will work better then the other. I have read a few reports of the 240 grains XTP splattering you might say, when compared to the 300 XTP grain. All I have done was test them in paper.

cayugad

I believe that the XTP will expand better at close range than will the Nosler. The Nosler has a very small amount of lead in the fron compartment, the bulk of the lead in the the rear. The Nosler's front compatment will open and expand to it's extent, guessing .65 to .75 and then continue driving through with the wings of the front compartment cutting their way through, even if it contacts a major bone it's expansion is done but it will continue to drive forward. I believe the XTP will expand more as it works it way through - the longer it is in the animal and has energy it will continue to expand. If it moves it way through small bones and tissue (wet newspapers) it will stay together but ifit contacts major bone with enough energy it will strip the lead out of thecopper, you will find the copper at that point and a huge blood clotted wound on the other side of the animal. been there - done that

This has nothing todo with ML's but for the biggest share of my life I hunted with a 300 Win Mag, and early when I was hunting elk here in northern Idaho I was shooting Hornady 220 grain RN or Sierra 180 grain spire points. Often and especially when I was shooting the 220's, I stagger load a 220 then 2 180's and finally a 200 again, I would find the copper just inside the hide of the elk, stripped clean of the lead. The lead continued on but did not always do the damage that I wanted, most often a follow up shot with the 180 got dispatched. I found this same problem shooting the 300 grain 45 XTP's. That is when I bit the bullet again as a poor clollege student and went back to reloading Noslers.

All have done well in "wet newspaper" even for me, I believe the problem occurs when the open copper passes through bone and a wing of copper gets caught and stripped loose and tears down the side of the bullet once that is done the integrity of the bullet is lost. I believe that is one of the reasons that Barnes produce and sales so many Barnes bullets... the copper can not be stripped if it is all copper.

As I have said also "a saturated wet clay water bar is not an animal either but it will tell you what bullets will hold together and which ones do not." It is a positive test for me but really not a just one. You can not believe how surprised (and happy) I was when the Gold Dots held up to that...although today their pries are running up their. The Speer plant in Lewiston, a town just below Moscow. was complaining in the paper the other day thay can not keep up with the demand for Gold Dots and on the average are hiring 10 new employees month for the last year. Good for Speer - but bad for us because of the law of supply and demand... if we would quit buying them the price would come down.

The 10mm 200 grain XTP has survived my torture test and I have no real explanation why... and that bothers me...

mike

sabotloader, I went to Gandr Mtn today and they had 1 box of nosler 250 HPs, so I bought them. $22 for 100 count. I think they are .451. According to your chart, will they have similar BC as the speer?

By the way, pricing wise, speer is more here. Last week I paid $12 and change for 50 count of speers. I'll shoot both at 90g of 777 and 100gand see where they group best.

By the way again, I have gone through 3 packages of cotton patches for swabbing. Anybody cut their own and is 100% cotton material the best?

oldrookie

I am thinking these are the ones you got. They are 44 cal (.429). If you have not opened them yet and Gander is close I would suggest not opening them and returning them. They are an excellent Sporting Handgun bullet and will probably work for an ML.





http://www.nosler.com/index.php?p=3&bullet=7

The one below actually the one you want but they are expensive. .451 -260 grain Nosler Partition



http://www.nosler.com/index.php?p=3&bullet=4

The Speer Gold Dot 250 grain .452 is the correct Gold Dot - I can usually get them for right at $13 from Sportsmans if I go to Spokane, here locally on the shelf they are right @ $16.

For spit patching I use the cheapest patch i can find and I buy large bags of them to cut the cost. For cleaning I do use the lilly white cotton patch again bought in 500/1000 count to reduce the price. Cayugad and a lot of other cut their own patches hopefully he will get on and tell you what to get at your local Wal-Mart.

mike

I get my patches at Wal Mart. In the sporting goods they sell a bag of patches for $1.99. They come out of India I think and are chunks of left over T-shirts but they are all around the right size for patches. Some you have to trim or cut in half, but for the price, they work really good. The other thing that works real good is cotton white socks. You can cut them into strips and then the strips into chunks. Trouble is you only wear socks out so fast...

crap sabotloader, its neither one of them and they have been opened. the box reads .451 250g colt. they look to be the same size comparing them to the speers, length etc. the nose is HP but black. Will they still work? What should I expect?

cayugad, thanks for the info, I gave a piece to my wife and ask her to find same material in a bolt. She will cut it in squares and I won't have to keep buying someone elses used underwear.

oldrookie

They will work just fine especially for target practice and they should shoot about the same spot as the more expensive Gold Dots. In fact the 250 Gold Dot is a Colt also, but the bullet is longer because of the deeper hollow point...



http://www.nosler.com/index.php?p=11&b=5&s=18&t=45

Can not get the Nosler site to tell me the BC I will keep looking...