300 xtp or gold dot?
 

I wanted to see which bullet you all thought would be best for deer in the 100-150 pound range and hogs. Most of the hogs I have seen would go under 200 pounds with the average "good eatin size"being around 100 pounds. I am looking at using the 300 grain xtp or 300 grain gold dot and didn't know if everyone felt better about one than the other. The load is going to be roughly 100 grains of loose pyrodex RS in a black harvester crush rib sabot. I sent my broken Knight Shadow back in (great customer service by the way) and received the new Knight Extreme that I ordered in its place, so that is what I will be hunting with. I'll try to post some pics of it soon - I really like that gun. I am thinking of using 300 grain bullets for a better chance at pass through since the areas I hunt are very dense. Shots should average around 50-60 yards with some being as close as 20 and some stretching 115 or so. Thanks for your input.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

Because you shoot a knight and I am basing this on how well my two Knights shoot them... a .44 .430 caliber 300 grain Hornady XTP in a Green Harvester Crushed Rib sabot. They are deadly accurate in my Knights, and would do the job on deer and hogs. You can buy them in bulk and even save some money.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

smokeblower

Unlike Cayugad i have never found the time for 44 caliber bullets from a 50 cal ML - Ireally like being closer to bore size, so much so that I in fact shoot .458/300 grain bullets for elk hunting. For deer i do come back to .451/.452 bullets.

I have to tell right off the bat I am totally partial to the Gold Dot. It is a bonded bullet and it has a BC of .232 close to some of those pointy bullets out there.

In defense of the XTP - they have taken a ton of animals and shot by a lot of shooters. You should also know that there really are 2 .452/300 grain XTP's. One is just the plain old XTP and is an excellent buttet form 10 to 100 yards on whitetail, the other is the XTP-Mag - it is a bit tougher bullet and does not expand as easy as does the regualr XTP - but it is probably better at long ranges.... At close range I have found that it will pass through a white without expanding much at all.

I have torture tested both against XTP's against the Gold Dot and it my conclusion tha Gold Dot will provide better penetration from 10 to 200 yards - plus it will stay together - I have nickmamed them a poorman's Nosler.

Most important you will need to discover which one will shoot from you gun best...

These are recovered Gold Dots both 250 and 300 grain...



These are recovered XTP's from the same test... This does not show an XTP-Mag. You can see there is/was significant weight loss. But I will be the first to tell you shooting a projectile in mud @ 100 is awful hard on a bullet.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

mike: what are the part numbers from speer #
250 grain
300 grain
I was over at the speer web sight it shows the 250 grains as 45 cal
300grain as 50 cal?

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

There you go...

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

I'm sure the Gold Dots are good bullets. But personally I like the 300 gr XTPs (.430" with Harvester Green CR sabots). They are accurate and perform well for me. Below is a pic of the only recovered one I've found. I also use 200 gr .40 cal in my 45 ML.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

The vast majorityof my muzzleloader hogs have been killed by the 240 grain .430 XTP.Over90 percent of them bang flopped.

A friend killeda big hybridboar lastweekend with myCVA MagnumHunter using the 240 grain .430XTP bullet and 120 grains of Goex 2F Pinnacle. That hog weighed over 280 poundsfield dressed. Range was about 30 yards. The 240 grain XTP bullet hit the hog just behind the crook in the leg and made mush of the heart and lungs. Hog staggered about 5 yards and fell over dead. This was her first hog and she wasecstatic.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

I have a question, are those gold dots from animals?

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

1eyebuck

You bet... the 454 Casual is a big game pistol.

Doesn't count but the only anmal I have shot with one, a .452/250 grain was a peeper @ 51 yards... blew it to bits...

Members that I know that have used sucessfully are Lemoyne and Chapman Gleason. There are others that are using them but do not remember the names...

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

The reason I suggested the Hornady over the Speer is I get much better accuracy with the Hornady in my Knight Rifles. In fact I just bought three more boxes of the .44 300 grain Hornady.

The worst shooting bullets I have are .44 caliber Speer Gold Dots. They are a 270 grain and I forget the other ones. I have shot them and they were accurate out to 75 yards. After that they started to spread out. But that could have been me.

Now I have been shooting a .458 Speer 300 gr HP in Orange MMP sabots and they shoot accurate. Sabotloader was telling me they are different thena Gold Dot and look like they should hold up well on critters.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

Here are the entrance and exit wounds from an 84 yard broadside hit on a 100 lb. doe300gr Gold Dot (#3974) with a muzzle velocity around1650 fps.

ENTRANCE


EXIT

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

+1 to What Cayugad said re: Hornady vs Speer in terms of accuracy.

I shoot a Knight Elite and T/C Omega. My buddy shoots the Encore. We found:

1. 300 Hornady XTP's (.452)- very accurate up to 100 yds..good penetration on deer.. good blood trail
2.300 Speer Gold Dot (also .452)- pretty goodgroups.
3. 270 Speer Gold Dot (.429) - groups open up after 50 yds.

My favorite & most accurateout of the Knight is the Barnes 250Expander and the 285 Spitfire.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

This one was, from a Doe I shot 2 years ago in FlintLock season in Penna with a 300g Gold Dot. Perfect mushroom. Bullet went the length of the deer and was nearly 300g, I forget what it actually wighed, but it didn't loose a lot. Note the perfect mushrrom with Gold Dot in the middle. These are the bullets cops shoot in their 45 ACPs for "man stoppers", they are also deer stoppers.
Chap

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

Both bullets are good, in my opinion the 300g GD is better because of no weight loss. They are both about the same cost $15 or $16 for 50. The Savage was designed around the 300g XTP, and they shoot that bullet very well. Choose the one that is the most accurate in your gun. Sabot fit is critical. I like the Crushed Rib sabots with both the XTPs and the Gold Dots. I like 300g better than 250g since they always exit on deer instead of on the off side under the skin. The 250 XTPs also tend to frag a bit more than the 300g. Still dead deer if you hit in vitals, but no exit hole in most cases since not enough energe to poke thru when the bullet is in several pieces. In my mind a bullet must be:
1) accurate--accuracy is king---no accuracy, no confidence in placing your bullet in the vitals
2) penetration is queen, must have 12" or more, for killing power
3) expansion is prince, since with expansion you get large wound channel and maximum blood flow to brain and vital organs which causes quick death (i.e boom flop and DRT)
4) shoot thru, is required in my mind because you want great blood trail and small 45 cal hole going in when your shooting down and no exit hold means deer loss, since there is little blood from a single hole and if it is high, then ya got issues.

So gotta have all 4 for an "excellent bullet" in my mind. Flat nose well constructed bullet are best within 150, for 150 to 200 yards best to use a Barnes TMZ, T-EZ, bonded SW, Parker Ballistic Extreme or Barnes Origonal.
Chap

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

There ya go. Another great bullet from Barnes is the .458 diameter rifle bullet called the TSX Flat Nose, part number 45843, I am gonna shoot them in my Savage next year. Great bullet. Exactly the same as the .452 Expander except cheaper ($17 for 20) and .458 diameter, which I find shoots best in my Savage. This is a 45/70 bullet designed for a rifle and designed to shoot between 1500 to 2000 fps, i.e ML velocity. As Bryce Towsley says about the Expander, it is like "shoving a beer can all the way thru a deer"---picture that in your mind's eye as a description of wound channel. Bryce is MLer editor for American Hunter and has hunted MLer for over 40 years, FL, Slidelocks, inlines everything. He knows the deal. He also likes Sierra 45/70 bullets in an inline.
Chap

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

There is one thing that no one can deny; if you can not hit an animal in the right spot you are not doing the job right.
The first requirement is reasonable accuracy, two identical guns may need different bullets to get good consistent accuracy.
I use XTP's in the system One and the Thunderhawk, The Omega shoots Gold Dots and SW's The Triumph shoots Gold Dots and SW's and FTX's the FTX has not been tested on any thing as far as I know except that I am happy with the accuracy the first time out if it continues to be that accurate AND provides penetration and expansion it may well be my go to bullet. Some of my guns do not shoot some of these bullets with good consistent accuracy so I do not use them in that particular gun. The only other point I wish to make is that I use the XTP at 1800 FPS or less; they are not nearly as effective if they are over driven and come apart.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

For those that know ballistics and use chronographs...

for a .44 .430 diameter 300 grain XTP.. What do you think it a optimal velocity for that projectile, how much Pyrodex RS would be needed to achieve that kind of velocity, and would that work busting bone?

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

300gr XTP, None Finer for Doing the job next to the 240gr XTP. BP

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

There are some Varibles, but my experance is that 90 or 100 gr [1750fps]of RS is all I want behind a XTP. I had trouble with them Seperteing from the jacket and breaking up real quick with 110 or more. Lee

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

Cannot offer opinion on Gold Dots, never shot them. Used 300gr XTP's the first year I bought my Savage. Three double lungers, no expansion what so ever, all 3 traveled less than 50 yds before expiring with little to no blood trail. Exit wound same size as entrance. They did shoot very accurate out of my gun though.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

Thanks for all the input guys, especially the pics of animals taken with the bullet. You can't ask for much better evidence than what the bullet should do than that. I used a .458 Speer hollow point flat nose 45-70 government bullet (300 grain) in the Shadow this seasonalong with the orange mmp sabotand killeda hog and deer with that combination. The expansion didn't seem to be the best although the hog was shot in the neck (don't expect a lot of expansion in that case) and the deer was shot at about 15 yards (again probably shouldn't expect a lot of expansion). I was justa little concerned that the rifle bullet might not expand as well at the velocity produced by 100 grains of RS as a pistol bullet would and figured I would try some of the non-mag xtp's or gold dots that I keep hearing so many good things about. I noticed the diameter of the gold dots are .451 for the 454 casull (300 gr.) bullets. Would it still be fine to use the .452 black harvester crush sabots with these? We have another public land hog season coming up in Georgia in about two weeks (kinda odd but we can use a muzzleloading rifle to turkey hunt on public land and are allowed to shoot any hogs that we run across so I will be hunting hogs during that time)and I was hoping to try out a new bullet. I appreciate all of the info.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

smokeblower

Both the 250 and the 300 grain Gold Dots are .452

Spreer does make a .451/300 grain Uni-core but it is not a gold dot....

Go to this web site:

http://www.speer-bullets.com/ballistics/bullets.aspx

and to the right of Product Number 3947 - click on Detail, while you are there check the BC of tht bullet.

RE: 300 xtp or gold dot?
 

I have taken numerous deer using the speer 300 gr gold dot with a harvestor crush rib sabot in my omega. Very satisfied with the results. Never had the opportunity to try them on hogs though.