Help with 30 30 and Lyman 311041 please!

Howdy! I've been out of the hunting game for about 10 yrs, but I'm looking to get back into it. I had great success in the past with my Marlin 357 carbine and 180 grain LBT WFN's. Killed every deer I shot with them quite nicely! Since I have a Lyman 311041 mold and a bunch of gas checks I'd like to give the 30 30 a fair chance. I looked down on this caliber in my younger years, mostly because I consumed every article I could find in the gun rags and they convinced me the 30 30 was outdated. Too many newer, faster, sexier calibers for me to give this old standby much of a look. To be honest, I hunt deer mostly in the woods with my longest shot of 160 yards coming in a field behind my Dad's place. I rested my 6.5 Swede on top of my backpack and dropped a nice doe with a high shoulder shot. Felt like shooting a groundhog! Average shot for me on whitetails is 30 to 50 yards.
Anyway, just wondering if air cooling or water quenching is the way to go in this cartridge? In the 357 I was shooting water quenched wheelweights and the big meplat with no expansion worked well for me to 75+ yards. I would think ACWW's would show some expansion at velocities around 2000 fps, while water quenched should just zip right through without expanding. So, hopefully some folks with experience with this cartridge on deer can chime in and point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance!

I have been using this exact bullet for years on the lever gun silhouette range, but have never hunted with it (hunting deer in California is the worst, and we can't use lead bullets anymore anyway). But, I would think that you would want expansion in the bullet, and not be so hard that it just punches through wasting energy in the backstop...

air cooled and as far as the 30-30 being outdate, don't believe much of what you read.

Ideal 31141, cast of straight wheel weights plus two ounces of 95/5 solder in front of 25 grains of the old B-West 36 powder they used to import but no longer do. You could interchange data with IMR 3031, so think 25 grains of that. Not a lever gun so no crimp, but it worked fine. I've since learned a lot about cast bullet deer hunting and now cast them softer, 50/50 COWW to pure with 2% of the wheel weights in tin. The .30-30 with cast will knock them down fast at woods ranges.
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I killed my first deer with a Winchester model 94 in 30/30. I had borrowed it from my BIL. I bought an NEF 30/30 and haven't killed anything but paper with it, although my youngest son used it with my hand loads and killed several truckloads worth it until he bought his own. I just very recently had it rechambered to 30/30 a.i., and am still killing paper with it. It's fun and easy to shoot and can be loaded from mousefart loads to factory equivalent. You'll enjoy it a lot!

Just be cautious about too hard an alloy. Last deer I killed with my old src in .30wcf was a good example of how not to do it. Hit him running all out........we use dogs..........in left thigh.......bullet hit bone and it truly looked as tho an explosive had been used!.......I did get some lead fragments out of the ham......shattered and in small pieces. Deer flipped and got up running and was down in about a hundred yards. Bone fragments and blood spray for about ten yards at the shooting location.

Like I said, my fault, straight wheel weights, lubed with alox, gas checked. Load was 30.9 of IMR 3031..........shoots good in my rifle with minimal leading, but truly that bullet needs to be cast substaintally softer to hunt with.

dogrunner
What boolit needs to cast softer?
The originally mentioned 31141???

That' s a great bullet in the 30/30, just cast it a bit soft as long as you have good accuracy & it will easily take white tails. I use to use it's cousin the #311291 on Texas turkeys with a mild load of Unique, some Kapok pushed down on top & just shoot them in the breast. You could eat the bullet hole with that round nose slug. Your flat nose is better for deer, good luck! My old Lyman 2 cavity mould actually made one of each bullet!

Dick

I tried some RD (like the 041) from marlin on a pig carcass ~1800 fps. expanded on gut but no exit on shoulder. Alloy was ~ AC soww (very soft). Problem is maintaining accuracy at longer ranges with soft alloy. These are PCd.

Forgot to mention, my wheelweights are old. Got them back in the 90's. Haven't checked this new batch of bullets for hardness yet. Just made them a couple days ago. Thanks for the replies!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TCLouis

dogrunner
What boolit needs to cast softer?
The originally mentioned 31141???

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Yes, that's the bullet I was referring to in my post......sorry bout that, should have been clearer!!

So long as you place your slug in a shoulder shot, that bullet or any others mentioned above, will drop your target in it's tracks without a twitch.
A bullet is sized to the bore (+.001 or .002), a clean bore, a gas checked bullet, and velocity held to around 1800 fps are parameters which will accommodate and incredible variability in hardness.
You'll likely have a full pass through as well.

Here is a link to a story about my first cast killed deer. I was using a NOE 311165. Really close to the 311041 but has a tad bigger meplat. The 30-30 is alive and well. Bullets were air cooled and a mix of 50:50 ww and soft lead plus a pinch of tin.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...n-t-bounce-off

No deer so far, but I have grassed some coyotes using Lyman #311041 cast as a Bruce B Soft Point. The casting method for creating them is posted in a sticky on this site. Entry wounds are 1/2" diameter, exit wounds are 1-1/2" or larger, and the song dogs drop like sacks of potatoes. Donor slug (pure lead) is a 72 grain Lyman #257420, the shank portion is 92/6/2 alloy. I run these about 1800 FPS from my 30/30s. Well-placed on a deer, I am sure these will produce backstraps reliably.

Every deer I have taken so far could have been harvested capably with a 30/30 rifle, and 3 of them actually were. Longest shot was my first deer at age 13 (125 yards), and most of the rest were at half that distance or less. The 2018 season will be the last deer season in my Zone (D-14) that lead-containing bullets can be used to harvest game. 4 shopping days until Opening Day. I will be using my great-grandfather's Winchester 1873 in 44/40 WCF with a soft-pointed SAECO #446 to go forth afield this year.

I was able to hunt two days, but alas, no deer. Anyway, I did test the hardness of my ACWW bullets and they read 15 bhn.