Optimal Speed?

[Tripplebeards]

I don’t know how it would die any faster. That deer slammed to ground like it got hit by a Mac truck and never flinched. Some day I’m sure I’ll try a FN but for now I’d rather loose some rib meat on broadside shots and watch them hit the ground in front of me. I tried using HP boolits out of my Ruger 77/44 with a BH of 15.4 loaded at 1750 fps. I shot three deer with them back to back. All three were broadside shots right behind the shoulders. Exact same shot placement as the 35 Rem above. Two out of the three ran close to a 120 yards with little to no blood trail before expiring. The boolits never expanded so IMO I’ve already went that route and was less than impressed with a non expanding boolit. I have a post floating around with photos of the entry and exit holes. Poked right through them like a FMJ or an arrow with a field point. Maybe a FN that is close to pure lead PC and GC would impress me but I’ll stick to HPs. I do agree that it made a lot of damage but so did the hard non expanded 15.4 bh at 1750 fps out of my 77/44 because I hit bone and the fragments acted like a rapidly expanding boolit causing ALOT of damage. More than the 35 Rem did.

Found the post…

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...my-devastators!!!

I like the extra speed of the 35 Rem. After going from 1750 fps with the 44 mag to 2100 fps with the 35 Rem lever gun seemed to make a huge difference on dropping deer quicker IMO.

Who knows, maybe the next deer I shoot with the load might run a country mile. I shot two deer last season. One with a 200 grain RN Seirra out of 300 RUM loaded around 2900 fps. The buck I shot went a 125 yards with a massive blood trail. Broke one front leg and blew out one lung and bottom of the heart. A blind man could have found it. I shot a little doe the next day with my Remington 600 chambered in 243. Used a 90 grain Nosler ballistic tip loaded a little hotter than book loads. The doe dropped on the spot and never flinched just like 200 grain HP did out of 35 Rem. I recovered the bullet between the shoulder and the hide. About the same amount of damage as the 35 Rem as well. We get multiple tags here in WI. I end up with a half a dozen deer on average a year or more so I don’t mind loosing a little meat with an expanding boolit so I have a better chance of it not running over to the neighbors property and loosing it to them.

[Norske]

My Browning BLR 38W really liked a 200gr RCBS cast boolit from Missouri bullets over 39gr IMR 3031.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

That alloy sounds rather hard which would make it frangible. If it is as hard as it sounds, you might want to slow down the MV a bit so won't be picking lead shards out of your teeth when at the dinner table. In my experience, a boolit that size only needs about 1000 FPS terminal velocity (probably even less) to do what you want on deer sized game. You might only need about 1600 fps at the muzzle to get that 1000 fps at 200 yards if your rifle likes that lower velocity.

I thought that having equal parts tin and antimony prevented fragmentation. Like Lyman #2 which is 95/5/5. I make my checked .30 cal bullets from #2 and always figured they would work for a shoulder shot at about 1,750 fps.

[Larry Gibson]

I thought that having equal parts tin and antimony prevented fragmentation. Like Lyman #2 which is 95/5/5. I make my checked .30 cal bullets from #2 and always figured they would work for a shoulder shot at about 1,750 fps.

Correct Cosmic_Charlie. The OP's 94/3/3 alloy is actually pretty soft and ductile. Even #2 alloy at 90/5/5 seldom will seldom, if ever, be "frangible". Both have equal amounts of antimony and tin forming the sub metal SnSb. The OP's chosen alloy is a very balanced ternary alloy and a good one.