Just got a new mould, a Saeco #17 (350 gr. GC). The plan was to get a hunting bullet for my .45-70 that could do double duty on short-range silhouettes. To begin with I wanted to try a 20:1 alloy thinking that maybe I could get away with the softness using a GC. I believe it was in some of Paul Matthews writings that he said a soft bullet at 1300-1500 FPS really works nice on deer.
I cast up a trial batch of the 350's using a 20:1 alloy. They weigh 345 gr. and look nice. I loaded them up with 28 gr. of 5744. They shoot into groups of about an inch at 100 yds. Even got one at .574 in.!! All nice round groups with almost no variance shot-to-shot, averaging 1434 FPS at 77 degrees. They tested at a 5 using a Saeco hardness tester, pretty soft.
My question is if anyone out there has tried anything like this slug on deer. It's meplat measures .230. Is that wide enough to work? Can I expect any expansion with this at this velocity? Or will it be wide enough without expansion to do the job on deer?
I'm not sure how much faster I could push it without leading with this soft alloy and am pretty sure if I went to a Lyman #2 that I'd get no expansion at all. With this small meplat I thought if it would expand some it might do better. Any experienced opinions?