Just Wheel weights lead ok for hunting boolits?

[jhalcott]

I test myy reloads for accuracy and penetration by shooting into bales of wet paper or phone books.I place the wet pack at the distances I expect to shoot a deer. It not perfect, but it does give me an idea of what to expect from that load.

[Don Fischer]

If you stop and think about it, if you could drive a round steel bearing out of a wheel hub bearing fast enough and put it in the right spot, ya got a dead deer.

[MT Chambers]

On very large bones from say Moose and buf. and bigger tougher game I would be concerned of the bullet fragmenting. With your ww's I'd add tin.

[sixshot]

Killed my bull moose with a Ruger 480 & a 370 gr. softnose cast, drove it clear through both sides & out at about 45 yds offhand. He went about 30-35 yds & down.

Dick

[Eddie Southgate]

Yes .

[Markbo]

I'd like to revise this very old thread for one reason: To see if sixshot will tell me if I am on the right path
I have taken your information about the .480 and though my bullet weight is very slightly lighter I am on the right path.

What about .45 Colt? Will these same mixtures/Percentages hold true for 27-300gr .45 Colt loads?

[Chad5005]

I to would like to know more about the 480,i have a mold on the way its 385gr flat nose and slightly liter hollow point,would a water quenched gas checked powder coated boolit work good for deer hunting or be to soft

[Duckiller]

To add perspective on deer running after being shot. My last deer was a reasonable sized doe that I shot from an elevated stand at about 40-50 yds. Used a 270 Win with a Nosler 150 gr partition bullet. Not sure of velocity but since I probably loaded it for my brother it was close to a maximum load, maybe 1-2 grains below max. Anyway shot her 30 minutes before sundown . Hit lung and nicked the heart before exiting at off shoulder. As soon as hit she started running flat out. She probably ran 75-100 yds before falling over dead. I was horrified when she started to run, afraid I had missed or had wounded an animal at sundown. When we dressed her out she had bled out internally. I have never had an animal run like that after being shot and Nosler partitions are supposed to kill instantly, which it probably did. The doe just took a while to realize she was dead. My brother has shot more deer than i. Nothern Michigan is better hunint area than Southern California. He has used 257 Roberts, 6.5x55 Swede, 270 Win and 7mmRem Mag. In his experience the 257 Roberts dropped deer fastest. All deer died when shot with any of his guns but they seemed to drop faster when hit with the 257. My hand loads were about the same as factory loads. In my family's experience an animals has to be hit exactly right to drop instantly, a somewhat larger area will kill most animals.

[sixshot]

Markbo, yes you are, I just used a 260 gr. Keith slug in my 45 Bisley last week to take a depredation doe using 18.5 grs of 2400, broke one front leg, got both lungs & an exit with that same 70/30 blend. Knocked her flat.
No need to water quench a gas checked hollow point bullet. You aren't going to drive it fast enough to lead & you're defeating the purpose of the HP by water quenching, just my opinion but we are taking moose, elk, bears, big bison, etc with this bullet with great success & almost always complete penetration. Once in a while we do recover a bullet with about 1" expansion & about a 380 gr bullet weight remaining.

Dick

[smoked turkey]

There are so many good responses to the question of ww or 50/50 mix as a hunting boolit, I don't expect to add much to the gene pool. But I will relate my experience over several years of deer hunting and one black bear in eastern Canada north of Maine about 175 miles. I have taken dozens of our 100-130# whitetail deer here in southwest MO using various calibers from .243 to 45/70 using air cooled wheel weights. I have almost always felt that the lowly ww did a good job for me. My shots aren't long by any means with say 50 yards about average. I have found our deer are not hard to kill using any of the calibers I have mentioned if the shot is placed correctly. Bear might be another story. When I was preparing for my black bear hunt in Canada, I took a little more care and did a bunch more practice with my 35 Whelen. I didn't want to go that far, spend that much money, and take any chances when going after something that could do serious harm to me if I didn't use the very best boolit I could construct. Naturally I wanted the quickest and most humane kill I could have on Mr. Bear. So that led me to conclude that a mix of 50/50 gave better expansion on wet paper packs as well as improved accuracy. So the quick answer to the question for me is that for hunting whether here for deer, or somewhere else for more dangerous game that 50/50 is the way to go. The game hunted deserves that kind of boolit in my opinion.

[Yooper003]

I am a big fan of Hi-tsk or powder coat , no matter what your alloy usually helps & have not heard of it hurting.

[Tripplebeards]

I wouldn't be too committed to using WW's given that most liberal states are banning lead wheel weights. My experience from casting bendable lead fishing jigs to sell for the last 35 years has been that one batch of WW's will produce a nice product while the next would be so brittle that the jig would crack at the first attempt to bend. One batch could shoot well and be excellent for hunting while the next, not so much. Plumbing and roofing lead are more consistently pure so doing a 50/50 will probably give you a better and more trustworthy product over the long term.

Yep get a tester. I made some spinner baits a few years ago before I got into casting. What ever I had went into the pot. I had 2 smaller spinnerbaits torn apart and the hook came off on two northern pike in a row. The fish were approx 15-18 lb...real hogs. I switched over to my bigger spinners and ended up recovering the hooks busted off in their mouths the next day.

As far as straight coww boolits I'd rather have some pure mixed for expansion instead of having a brittle boolit. I mixed 80/20 and added 12% pewter by accident a few months ago. It's tests at 15.4 BH and makes one heck of a mushroom out of ruger 77/44 at a full velocity charge which I'm guessing is in the 1850 fps range. It's harder than coww and stays together instead of fragmenting. The pure helps with elasticity and I believe the tin dose as well along with bumping the BH a few points.

If you check my home page I have pics of some mushrooms with different alloys I've tried. There is a straight coww with 2% pewter added. I recovered the boolit at 200 yards from a dirt pile. It fragmented and sheared off its hp pedals vs the 80/20 I shot at 10 feet into a tote of water that looks like a text book mushroom.

[OFFSHORE]

This was a good read. I'm falling in the straight 50/50 to 60/40 COWW and SOWW ratio mix and liking it very much. Maybe down the road I may try adding a bit of tin to the mix, but for now all is good in the 'hood for .45 ACP/LC .44 Rem Mag, 445 Super Mag and 30/30 Win

[waksupi]

I've used ww bullets on antelope, deer, elk, bear, and buffalo. They all die just fine.

[500Linebaughbuck]

i use COWW and a little bit(1 or 2%) of tin, for now. COWW is about gone but i have a mountain of "pure" lead. i do the 10 lead and 1 tin whenever i run out of COWW.