What brindle hardness for shooting deer in the shoulder’s

[rob-c]

So a back story on why I want to shoot them in the shoulder’s. A few weekends ago i hit a medium size doe in the shoulder with a 240 grain xtp out of my 44 super redhawk ( not on purpose ). She ended up running and stopping 40 yards from my son and he got a good look that I indeed hit her in the shoulder . So as he brings his gun up to shoot her again she bolts. Long story short she ended going onto a property that when I called the owner he would not alow me to track her. So to the question, at around 1300 FPS can a 15 bhn bullet hold up to shoulder shots and not deform the meplat a bunch or should I go with a 22 bhn hard cast bullet ?

Thanks for the help..

[Outpost75]

A solid, 10-15 BHN bullet at .44 Magnum handgun velocity, having a meplat 0.6 to 0.7 of the bullet diameter will be very effective and have good penetration. You don't need a HP. At handgun velocity harder alloy is not needed. I use Accurate 43-230G in both the .44-40 and in .44 Magnum, revolver and carbine. Works for me.

Attachment 231991

[DougGuy]

I was digging fragments of jacket and bullet out of deer I shot with the same XTP bullet years ago. When they hit bone the turn to birdshot more or less, by completely shedding the jacket and then the core goes to pieces. Probably the single worst bullet you could use for whitetail deer, judging by my actual real life experience shooting several small does. All the damage done basically at the surface, not enough of the core penetrated the shoulder to do any real harm.

ANY cast boolit, BHN10 and up will be better than the XTP. I now use the Lee C430-310-RF cast soft enough to scratch with a thumbnail, and soft lube with gas checks. I think the alloy is 50/50+2% and the lube is Felix. You cannot go wrong with this one.

[45&30-30]

That was unfortunate you were not able to recover the deer. I have taken three deer with cast bullets and none of them stayed in the deer. Two of the bullets were 16 BHN, one shoulder and one in the neck. This years bullet was 22 BHN not my make, but shot through the chest. I searched the manufacturers website if the 22 BHN bullet was by heat treat or by alloy alone, but could not find an answer. With a search on the net you can find where elk have been taken with 357 Magnum rifles with 187 grain LBT bullets and they were pass thru shots. I hope this helps.

[rob-c]

The bullet I am looking at has .324 meplat, I was pretty sure a 15 bhn bullet would work on shoulders just wanted some opinions to reassure me .

[Wolfer]

My experience with the XTP is very minimal. The reason because penetration was non existent if bone of any kind was hit. I cast all my boolits at about a 10 and have taken a truck load of deer with several different calibers. Velocity has ranged from 900 fps to 1900 fps and performance has always been superb.

[brewer12345]

I would not want to buy a really hard bullet because it could be loaded with excess antimony and therefore potentially brittle. Brittle bullets fragment if you hit bone.

15 is plenty hard. You want to make sure the alloy has some tin to help it stay together on impact. 12 would work fine, actually.

[Thumbcocker]

I have heard that the reason some food programs stopped accepting gun killed venison was all the bullet fragments sprayed in the meat. Showed up on x-rays. I bet boolits at pistol velocity would leave little if any lead fragments. I never found any fragments processing our deer killed with pistols and boolits.

[MT Gianni]

Shoot to break the far shoulder. A 120 gr bullet won't do it no matter how soft or hard. A 425 gr won't matter much either. With a 44 Redhawk and bullet 260 + gr should give good penetration.

[dkf]

Not the first time that has happened with those XTPs.Water drop clip on wheel weights and that would be good enough for hardness. Going to be hard to stop a 250gr+ solid with that alloy. I often mix range scrap with some unknown alloy babbitt I have.(about 5%) Water dropped I get a bullet around 23bhn, you can beat with a hammer and it just seems to get harder and tougher the more you hit it.

[rob-c]

Keep it coming guys, so 15bhn on up I am good to go. Thanks to those that have replied.

[Petrol & Powder]

Brinell scale not brindle .

[richhodg66]

My oldest son was a little boy and he and I were hunting muzzle loader season when he shot a small doe in the shoulder with an XTP in a sabot and 70 grains of Hogdon Triple Seven. Most destructive gun shot wound I ever saw, ruined one shoulder completely and a whole lot of the other yet the doe still ran farther than most I've ever shot.

Cast only in muzzle loaders since, even inlines with sabots. Performance has been better in every respect.

Never shot one with a handgun, but .44 SWCs work in my experience with muzzle loaders.

[rob-c]

Brinell scale not brindle .

Oops , thank you..

[Messy bear]

I shot lots of xtp into deer and never had a problem. Even at 1800 out of a 454. I would like to see pictures of grenaded xtps. Just haven't seen it so would be interested.
I would caution against using 2/6/92 alloy like all the commercial guys use. I have seen that fail badly. Too brittle for bones unless velocity is low enough. Im not sure what velocity it fails at because of many factors. I personally would stay below 1400 with it.

[Messy bear]

Case in point- my buddy gets a new 454 a few days before a moose hunt. Dang thing came with a front sight that was too short. Couldn't get it close to sighted in with any 300 plus weight bullets. Didn't have any 260 gr Freedom bullets so all we could do was run 335 LBT wfns at 1600. They were commercial 2/6/92. Thing still shot 1foot high or more at 75 yd. But he knew it and took it hunting.
Shot a moose and brought back fragments of bullets that hit shoulder and brisket. Took many shots to get one in the vitals. One of those was split like in quarters. Total failure.

[500Linebaughbuck]

A very basic rule of thumb I use to determine if an alloy hardness can be expected to expand is this, BHN X 100 = impact velocity.
If your impact velocity (not muzzle velocity) stays higher than BHN x 100 then your bullets should show some expansion. The higher the impact velocity over the BHN x 100 the greater degree of expansion can be expected.

[ole_270]

The last couple years I've killed two does by shooting through the shoulders with my 38-55. One at 1400fps muzzle velocity, the other 1600. Both were under 30 yards so the speed wasn't off too far. The bullet I used is a home cast 250 gr with a fairly large meplat, Accurate 38-250B, cast at 9 Bhn. The slower version hit a doe quartered to me, took out a 2" section of the large bone below the shoulder blade and pushed it through the ribcage into the lungs. That bullet continued on and exited just behind the farside ribs. The faster load hit broadside and punched the lower, narrower end of both shoulder blades. Neither doe went over 30 yards.
As someone said, an excess of antimony compared to tin will cause brittleness. Bhn doesn't tell the whole story.

[Iowa Fox]

The alloy I usually use around here is about 12-14 on the LBT tester and I load them about 1200 FPS. Shots are normally not long range and the high shoulder shot is my favorite using a LBT LFN. Practice is the big thing. I usually like to fire about 100 rounds per week, not all at one sitting before seasons start. My bogey is to be able to break a clay bird almost 100% of the time with a 44 mag 12" Encore from a solid rest. High shoulder shots can be tricky if your off just a little bit. Nothing kills like a well placed cast bullet.

[LazyTCross]

I do not have extensive data on the xtp. But I thought this was interesting.
This bullet was fired through a 800 lb dead creature... I shot several into it, at point blank with a stout load of wc820 and 180xtp. I mostly aimed for pelvis and shoulders with several bullets than I let the coyotes dig them out for me.

For whatever reason the dang things decided to use them as chewing gum and wrecked all my samples!

This bullets retained weight even after the chewing was 147.

Don’t know if this helps anyone. But it was a formidable sized critter and point blank.


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