Which Hardcast Caliber for Hunting Large Whitetail Deer?

[Messy bear]

Have had very satisfactory results from cast as well. A Texas heart shot or through the differential with cast works well too. I don’t worry about meat loss with slow cast as they don’t grenade the area. If the rear end is out they won’t go anywhere

[vmthtr]

https://www.montanabulletworks.com/p...-280gr-wfn-gc/
I would not hesitate to use these.

[Danyo]

Yep that's pretty much what I bought. You'd use them even though they are hard? Just go for a high shoulder shot?

[vmthtr]

Yep that's pretty much what I bought. You'd use them even though they are hard? Just go for a high shoulder shot?

Yep

[Indiana shooter]

I have taken 3 deer with a handgun, 2 with a .44 mag and 1 with a .357 mag. The .357 was a 4" S&W and I was using a 158gr XTP. The deer was directly below me, at maybe 5 yards. I'm not convinced that that bullet opened because of the small exit and minimum damage inside. I did, however, place the bullet where it needed to go and watched the deer drop after 3 minutes or so.

The second deer was with the .44 using a hand loaded 240gr XTP. This was about a 40 yard shot and the animal was only on her feet for a few seconds after the shot. The bad thing was that I found the expanded bullet in the ribs on the off side, the shot was only slightly quartering away angle.

My third deer was taken with a 265gr hardcast flat nose boolit cast of pure linotype, then heat treated. This shot was perfectly placed just over the heart at a distance of 30 yards. While the internal damage and exit was much larger than the XTP bullet out of the .357 it still took about 2 1/2 minutes to hear the crash. The biggest difference between the hardcast .44 and the HP out of the .357 was the blood trail. I had a nice, consistent blood trail from the shot location to the dead deer with the hardcast, and if I didn't see the deer fall with the XTP I'm not sure I would've been able to find her. Anecdotal at best, sometimes the deer just don't give up the ghost that easily.

I'm going to use my .44 solely this year to gun hunt. My load will be close to a 50/50 mix alloy with a 265gr RNFP over 23 gr of H-110.

As far as which gun or load you should choose, I'd choose whichever one you can place the shot where it needs to be best. If your answer for that is that you shoot both of them equally well then I'd choose the .44 mag with a heavy, big meplat boolit.

[Danyo]

Excellent, thanks for the info guys. Glad to hear you got a good blood trail with the hardcast. I'll spend hours looking for blood if I have to. I'm very surprised the 44 mag XTP didn't exit.

I did end up finding a roadkill deer last week, probably a 150 pound doe, and brought it to the farm for some testing. I tested a 44 magnum 180 grain soft point, 10mm Underwood 200 grain XTP, and 10mm Federal 200 grain Swift A-Frame. I shot it broadside with each load at 5 yards and at 30 yards. All exited. I found an A-Frame that expanded nicely. I found an XTP that expanded even more but lost it's jacket. The 44's zipped right through, I did not find those. On water jugs at 5 yards these 44's expanded to 0.491" and were caught in the 6th jug, and at 30 yards on water jugs it expanded the nose to about 0.35". Pretty interesting I thought. Oh, then I shot the deer carcass in the thickest part of the shoulders broadside with the 10mm XTP and while it had mushroomed nicely, it was stuck under the hide of the opposite side.

I recently shot some 44 mag 225 grain Barnes copper hollowpoint factory loads, and those did not recoil hard at all in the model 69. I might buy some 200 grain 44 mag XTP bullets, and work up a handload for those. As the Barnes factory load expanded to 0.8" in the milk jug test and was caught in only the 3rd jug. The XTPs may expand less and penetrate further I think, and still not recoil hard.

Also, since I do not cast my own bullets, and cannot find soft-ish cast bullets from a commercial caster, couldn't I buy 240 grain JSP bullets and launch them at 1000-1100 fps for deer hunting? They usually don't seem to have a sharp edge or super large meplat, but they may mushroom or rivet a little, even though they did not do that in my milk jug tests. They'd zip right through 8 jugs and be found with little to no deformation. These were factory loads rated at 1180 fps. But I suppose if you hit some hide and/or bone they may expand a little.

I don't know... At least I've been having some fun doing all this testing. I find it pretty fascinating.

[Indiana shooter]

Like I said it was a quartering away shot. The bullet entered about the 3rd or 4th rib up. I found the jacket just inside the body cavity leaving the mangled lead core to traverse through the liver, both lungs and coming to rest against a rib underneath the shoulder.

About the 200gr XTP, I loaded some for my kids H&R for deer when they were much younger. This was an 18" barrel and IIRC I was loading 8gr of Unique to produce a muzzle velocity of 1100fps. They killed 2 deer deer with this load. One was a passthrough behind the shoulder, the other broke the shoulder and lodged under the hide on the off side.

You can try to anneal the commercial cast. See if you can softer it. I know some companies use a heat treating process to get harder boolits. To do this, set the base of the boolit in a pan of water with the nose exposed. I would like the water line up to the crimping groove. Then heat the nose up with a blow torch until you see it get "shiny". Give it a few days before testing it

[Indiana shooter]

I did that with this boolit that I tested out of muzzleloader at a velocity of 1600 fps. Higher velocity than we'll get out of a handgun, but you may get better riveting or expansion than none.

P.s. hopefully the pic uploads. It only seems to work sometimes for me.

[Danyo]

Interesting, sounds easy enough, I will give it a try!

[Rockindaddy]

Dan: I have shot the 240 gr Lyman Keith boolit for many years. I try for a 1-20 tin/lead alloy. No antimony at all. Have taken many deer with my 44Mags. Recently acquired an RCBS 2-cavity 429 300 gr that I shoot with 16.5 grs of Winchester 680 ball powder (have around 40 lbs of the stuff). This load is a freight train out of my Colt Annaconda. Good Bambi shoulder breaker! Hard cast usually pass through a deer. A soft boolit transfers most of its energy in the game. I skin em out and butcher my deer on my farm. I like finding the projectile just under the hide on the opposite side of the entry. Its rare to find a bullet in a shot deer though. Good luck experimenting!

[Hickok]

For sake of a common milk jug reference:

Typical police duty auto hollowpoints will typically penetrate three. Sometimes you'll get four. Some of the more "pancakey" will stop in two.

I've had 70% meplat diameter 230gr. .45 and 135gr. 9mm a non+P speeds take nine jugs to stop.

Any of your listed options will do, but the revolver's lack of need to mechanically feed a round up a ramp will allow a more aggressive meplat, and possibly, a little faster bleed out as a result.

I agree with this. I was truly amazed at the penetration of the Lee .356-120-TC loaded in my 9mm pistols. My load clocks @ 1140 fps from a Glock 19x.

Decided to try this 9mm on water jugs. Gave up at 6 jugs, and still could not stop the 9mm Lee 120 T/C. Perfect straight line penetration.

9mm FMJ ball ammo curves and veers out of the jugs irregularly.

My .44 mag and .45 Colt loads from 900 to about 1250 fps all easily penetrate 6 jugs. They go through deer like they are made of tissue paper.

[brasshog]

I have a 4.25" Smith and Wesson Model 69 44 Magnum also. I prefer 245gr SWHP's for lighter skinned animals personally. I run them at about 1290 fps (stout) and the mold that I use also makes the flat point version of course.

Here's the data : https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...Magnum-LSWC-HP

[atfsux]

As others have said here;...shot placement is king, all else follows. So while it may sound like heresy here where many argue incessantly about the best boolit for this or that purpose, terminal performance of the projectile on target is not as critical your ability to put it there. Therefor, my answer would be "whichever one you are most accurate with". If you are able to reliably place your boolit in that animal where it will do what needs to be done, the particular design and construction of that boolit ALMOST doesn't matter.

As the old gunfighter maxim goes, "a .22 in the eye is a lot better than a .44 in the big toe."

[DougGuy]

I'm gonna stick with old skool, tried and true. Take the S&W, load it with the Lee C430-310-RF cast in 50/50+2%, gas checked, soft lube even SPG works good for this load, 17.0gr 2400, WLP. This gets me 1180~1200fps from a 7 1/2" SBH. This load is also assembled with the boolit seated to the bottom crimp groove giving it the loner COA than seating in the top crimp groove. If you have to seat it in the upper crimp groove to use the shorter COA be advised you will need different load data than what I posted.

[Lloyd Smale]

some may argue my opinion but if it starts with at least a 4 youll be ok. 41mag/10mm will work but the 44 and 45s are where cast bullets really shine. some will tell you bigger is better but on thin skinned game ive really seen no difference between 44s and my linebaughs. when your talking something the size of moose and bison the bigger guns probably have and advatage but that said i showed up at mt buddts game farm to cull some pigs he wanted dead and took mt 4 5/8s super loadek with 240 rcbs swcgc bullets at 1100fps. shot 5 pigs that day. when we were done he said he had a 1000 lb coe bison he wanted dead because it had a lame front leg and he said shoot it and you can have it. i would have preferred a bigger gun but "love the one your with" i shot it broadside at about 75 yards and it dropped like the ground had been jerked away. hands dowm the quickest kill ive seen on a bison and ive seen many killed with rifle and handguns and with cast and jacketed bullets. might have been a bit of luck but it sure got it done. for deer my preference goes to 44 spec and mag with a cast swc or lfn at around 900-1000 fps. ive killed many with 45 colts loaded the same and it works equally well. but im one of the rare ones that prefer the 44s. mostly because across the board ive had better luck with accuracy in my 44s. but that said on a whitetail at 50b yards theres not much of a difference in a 1 in group and a 3in group. im a big fan of the bigger guns but honestly they buy you very little on something 500lbs or less. matter of fact on pids id chose a 44 over my linebaughs. with the light recoil of even full power 44s you can get back on target faster if you need to shoot more then one. just dont base your opinion on knock down. ive shot probably a 100 deer using about every caliber and id say on average with perfect shot placement deer will make 50 yards before piling up.

[Ramjet-SS]

The hardcast will be fine put it in the boiler room. Wide meplat is preferred WFN or LWFN. Cast Bullet Performance by Veral is a great book and explains the temporary tissue disruption from WFN Cast which leads to lethality. In addition hardcast bullets penetrate and ventilate good blood trails. In addition not all shots are exactly perfect angles, deer moves as you pull the trigger etc… so deeper penetration helps get into the vitals which is the goal. So either gun you are suggesting will work with hardcast. But accuracy first, the bullets will do the rest. Practice allot and enjoy the journey.

[Tom_in_AZ]

I’m a bit partial to large meplats. I’d go for the largest diameter possible at a reasonable velocity. If you haven’t read it already, John Linebaugh has a great article about the 45 colt and all the game taken with it a modest velocities.