Hard Cast Bullets for Game

[Wolfdog91]

Ok so question. Has anyone taken game with hard cast Boolits? When I say hard cast I'm talking 18-21 bhn in .225-.313 cal. How did they preform ? Like as in with proper shot placement did they drop animals ? Or did they more or less pull a FMJ type of effect and zip though ? Did the Boolits design help ? Like does a hard cast HP work better than a flat nose ?
In hard cast ? Extremely curious to y'all experiences.

[405grain]

I used to hunt feral pigs with a 44 magnum. I don't know how many I shot, but I was able to fill the freezers of myself, my family members and my friends for a couple of years. My only 44 caliber mold back then was the rcbs 44-245-swc. I cast this boolit in both soft, (40/60 COWW & lead), and hard, (Lyman #2) alloys, and hunted with both. I have no experience with hollow points. Both alloys would deform if they hit bone in the shoulder area, but the softer alloy would deform more. 3/4 of the time the boolits would penetrate fully and pass all the way through. The only boolits that I remember recovering had hit heavier bones. All shots were within 70 yards or less, and I loaded to a velocity of around 1200 fps. Pigs are tough and results varied from bang-flop to three rounds in the head. I only had one pig get away; shot twice in the rib cage, (both lung shots). That one ran for over a quarter mile into heavy brush and canyons. I tracked for it the rest of the day and the following morning, but only found blood at the place it was shot and never saw that pig again.
What did I learn from all this? It's the meplat that gets the job done. A hard cast boolit might not expand much, but it sure isn't going to shrink! Most cast boolit designs are going to give you good penetration. The only thing you need to add is tissue disruption to cause game a rapid demise. Generally a flat nosed bullet with a large meplat will produce those results across a wide range of alloy hardness's. I would think that really hard alloys with hollow points might cause fragmentation rather than expansion, so your going to have to break out a pile of wet magazines/phone books/newspaper and experiment with that to see which alloy and velocity combination gets the best balance between expansion and fragmentation. If it's hollow point or a flat point, a big front end is what transmits shock to the critter the best.

[mroliver77]

I shot a ground hog with a 30-06 FMJ once. It did not "pencil through". It was not a huge pass through wound but pulled a lot of insides out the exit hole.
My nephew uses the 30-40 Krag to hunt most everything he hunts. He uses hard cast 200 gr Lyman with a round nose. At 2000 fps it leaves an approx 1" wound all the way through a deer in about any direction. He hasnt lost one with this setup yet. One also can "Eat clear up to the hole" (very little meat loss.)
I focus more on practice and shot placement.
Lee Jurras wrote about designing a bullet for a .44 that had a thick jacket and had core. He sent some to varous gun writers to try. He was amazed that a couple wrote him that said bullet traveled through multiple feet of animal tissue but did not expand. The animals were harvested without an expanding bullet!
Now for lightweight critters that I dont eat I want massive damage.
My take on it.
J

[Doughty]

Wolfdog
Hardness itself is not the answer. An alloy that is hard but brittle (example=straight linotype) is likely to perform poorly in my experience. An alloy that is hard but malleable (example=water quenched wheel weights) has worked well for me. Malleability is the ability to be shaped or formed by pressure while retaining cohesion.

[MT Gianni]

I bought some 311440's in the late 90's before I found a mold. I shot two small whitetail with my anterless tags at 75 yards and 125 yards. The further one went down and had lung damage but the bullet didn't reach the second lung. The first one was further back and exploded after hitting ribs throwing liver particles and diaphram muscle through the hole. Velocity was about 2350 fps at the muzzle. I shot the rest of them at paper.
I believe now it isn't the hardness that is the whole equation but tenacity or stick togetherness, for lack of a better term and ductility, the resistance to change shape.

[cwlongshot]

To answer the question. YES. 1-3 pigs and at least one deer. 45 Colt and a LINO CAST WFN BULLET. Worked fine knowing more now... I taylor my alloy to my impact velocity.

"HARD CAST" isnt a measurable hardnesses. Its anything harder then pure so 8-10 is hard... ER.

CW

[Markopolo]

Wolfdog
Hardness itself is not the answer. An alloy that is hard but brittle (example=straight linotype) is likely to perform poorly in my experience. An alloy that is hard but malleable (example=water quenched wheel weights) has worked well for me. Malleability is the ability to be shaped or formed by pressure while retaining cohesion.

this is the answer.. i only use harder boolits on Bear hunting where I want max penatration. the rest get normal average tough hunting alloy in the softer side..my 44 large frame carry in the woods gun is loaded with lee 310's that are wheel-weight mix that has been water dropped.. my theory is that I will only need them on a frontal shot of an on coming charging bear, and I want them to exit his butt.... so far this has never happened.. but come close. it only takes one bear stalking you for dinner to make ya want more penetration... and there is a difference between a startled bear and one that is stalking you for dinner..

marko

[waksupi]

I've shot deer, bear, elk, and buffalo with hard cast flat nose bullets. All worked excellently. I would forget hollow points, except for things you don't intend to eat. They just are not necessary.

[ChristopherO]

Other than pure soft for muzzleloaders, my first foray into casting for centerfire was 112 grain flat points for plinking and coyote hunting for the 30/06. All I could get my hands on said Lyman #2 hardness is what a man/or woman/ wants for hunting. I scrounged up what I had to accomplish that and shot many hundreds of those at the spinning target and one coyote. The head on shot to the coyote at 40 yards dropped it straight down. As she was trying to rise I placed the second shot broadside, that finished the task immediately. The face on boolit was recovered, had hit bone and deformed some at a muzzle velocity of 2,000 fps. It worked fine. The flat nose is what made the little boolit do it's job effectively.
Now, for the 45/70 I prefer a somewhat softer alloy at 1,620 fps muzzle velocity. These 405 grain slugs have a large meplat to begin with. They mushroom impressively in water jugs, but somewhat less than that when recovered from a large, muscular buck at 125 yards that was already hit but facing straight away. That was a lot to deer to penetrate and after the boolit punched through the left lung after the ham, guts and stomach it was laying in the ribcage upon field dressing. It wasn't a text book mushroom, as one would imagine it should be, but it did penetrate well. That was the toughest buck I've ever shot or eaten. He still ran some after that shot.
With cast I prefer big holes with an alloy that will hold together and not fragment apart. The super hard cast bullets I save for target practicing.

[white eagle]

hard cast is a state of mind a term way over used IMO
by people who just don't know,YET...
the beauty of casting your own is being able to tailor your boolit to your needs
a lot of so called soft boolit killed a lot of things,look at the slaughter of the buffalo
and the many many men killed in the civil war
with the advent of powder coating of boolits we made another evolutionary change in the way boolits are used
get over the hard cast and be a tailor

[M-Tecs]

The OP is asking about 18-21 bhn in .225-.313 cal. In the smaller bullets not much of a meplat. Everything I have taken with cast has been 35 Cal and over with the exception of prairie dogs using a 22 Hornet.

Also are we talking rabbits or deer? Something else? It makes a difference. With the larger calibers using a good sized meplat expansion is much less important. For smaller calibers I would be looking towards 1-20 or 1-16 lead tin.

[rjathon]

I have killed lots of deer using the 175 gr Ranch Dog cast with water quenched COWW. None went over 75 yards, many dead within 10.

[Winger Ed.]

I've killed a handful of deer with a hard iron mold .30 cal., 170RN. at 100 yds or a little less.

I never got off into splitting hairs over meplats and BHNs.
I developed a accurate, safe load that didn't cause Leading,
I pump them up around factory .30-30 speeds, and none of those deer every took another step.

[444ttd]

i use my 30-40 krag with (.311") 165gr ranch dogs going 1930fps. i used all of coww(and a little bit of tin) on the boolits, now i'm a lyman #2(a smidge of tin) guy. i believe that the coww boolits were about 12bhn and the lyman #2 is around 15bhn. i shot 6 or 7 deer and my son is around 5 - 6 deer, the deer are all drt and the boolit is thru and thru. my son has killed a doe at 173 yards(i have killed a doe at 150+/-yards) but mostly they are around 30-50 yards. the boolits do expand but not as violently as the nosler ballistic tip. i used my 270 with 130gr nosler bt at about 3000fps and it was like a grenade went off at about 100 yards. after 100+ yards, it did a "perfect" mushroom bullet.

FN boolits are the rule, i myself luv wfn, lfn and fn boolits. although i want to try hollow point some of the .313" 185-r 185gr rn gc boolits for my 91 mauser.


i dug these 165gr RD out of my berm. i think they are 50 yards but it might be 100 yards.

[missionary5155]

For us it is WFN first. That will dump the energy fast and carve a nice channel so the red stuff will leak out.
Next is at what range will the critter be shot ? How much critter needs penetrated to zip open the right organs ? This will decide my velocity requirement so how hard a slug do I want to get that velocity + some extra.

[Wolfdog91]

Hey y'all thanks a ton for all the responses!
Ok sor first sorry for possibly using the wrong terminology. When I say hard cast I was referring to something in the 18-22 bhn range as M-Tecs stated.
For my alloy I'm using 100% clip on wheel weights, double water quenched (once after casting and once after powder coating) again apologize I'm still learning the proper terminology.
Main target is hogs that can range from 30-350. I do night vision hog shooting and since I can't really find any jacked bullets I'd like to be able to cast them. I'm also shooting these out if a AR-15 hence the higher bhn. So far 20-21 bhn isgiving me good velocities and cycling the rifle well just still working in a better load.
The blue circle is what I always try to shoot for

I've had no problems dropping hogs in the past with a regular run of the mill .223 shooting them like this .

[Wolfdog91]

Wolfdog
Hardness itself is not the answer. An alloy that is hard but brittle (example=straight linotype) is likely to perform poorly in my experience. An alloy that is hard but malleable (example=water quenched wheel weights) has worked well for me. Malleability is the ability to be shaped or formed by pressure while retaining cohesion.

Hmm ok so where does BHN com into this ? Sorry I'm just confused because I've always been under the impression that BHN =Hardness of the lead and the Higher the BHN the less malleable

[M-Tecs]

Hardness is only part of the equation. High percentages antimony alloys tend to produce a brittle bullets that can fracture on impact. A lower antimony percentage alloy that is heat treated to the same hardness will be less brittle.

Good reference material here.

http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletAlloy.htm

http://www.lasc.us/HeatTreat.htm

http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

[Edward]

Ok so question. Has anyone taken game with hard cast Boolits? When I say hard cast I'm talking 18-21 bhn in .225-.313 cal. How did they preform ? Like as in with proper shot placement did they drop animals ? Or did they more or less pull a FMJ type of effect and zip though ? Did the Boolits design help ? Like does a hard cast HP work better than a flat nose ?
In hard cast ? Extremely curious to y'all experiences.

Guess you need to ballpark FPS if you want real life experience , as you suspect like a FMJ depending on what you hit/Ed

[405grain]

Wolfdog91: I saw in another thread that your interested in a slick-sided, (non-lube groove design), bore riding, gas checked semi-spitzer boolit, and we're wondering if something similar were available in hollow point. (http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...e-this-in-a-HP) If this, or a similar design of bullet is what you want to use for hunting, then there are some considerations to think about before committing to it. First, because it is a design intended for powder coating it can be cast in a softer than normal alloy that will allow for better expansion. The hard PC shell acts like a jacket and lets you get away with a more malleable alloy. That particular boolit has a rather small meplat, but that can be compensated for by expansion from a softer alloy. The second consideration is that you intend to use these in an autoloading platform. If it's a bore riding design the powder coating might give it a fat nose. This may or may not be a feeding problem, and you won't know until you try it out. If the boolit causes feeding troubles after being powder coated, you might need to use a nose die so that it will fit the bore. On that design, it would be much better to have an expanding nose than a hollow point, (unless your varminting). That boolit should give you good penetration already, and if it mushrooms without breaking up would be ideal. Hog hunting requires a boolit that will penetrate through the thick shoulder, (or that boulder that they use for a skull), and reach vitals to create a major drive train malfunction. A hollow point may break up too soon if it's a harder alloy, and for me would be a lesser choice over a good penetrating solid in a moderate alloy like air cooled tire weights. As a plus, the boolit that you inquired about in your other post should make a nice target boolit in a hard alloy.