so confused

[hound-1]

hello all, I'm new at casting, but have been reloading for over 35 years, and after reading and reading a lil'more , I have a boolet and load that shoot awesome in all my 30/30s . A NOE 165 gr GC ranch dog copy sized .311 , followed by 27 gr RX 7, I get about a 1.5" at 100 yards, I'm averaging 2113 fps through my cronie with no leading. My confusion starts with my alloy, which is air cooled Lyman #2 from roto metals. I plan on using this on PA whitetails, from what I've read its hard-wont expand,x-fer energy, ect. and I'll need something a lil'softer.I've killed a lot of deer with the 30/30 and 35 rem with Jacked bullets to know that a 20-50 yard dash with a lot of blood is the norm. What can I expect on a behind the shoulder lung shot at woods range with what I'm now shooting, a pin hole and a long spotty blood trail, or similar to what I'm now using .What hardness should I be looking for, or don't it really mater. Air cooled , water quenched, tin, antimony ,linotype, OH MY , all I really want to do is make accurate boolets that work for my intended purpose, a clean kill on Deer . Thanks all....Ed a confused noobie

[richhodg66]

The advice I was given was Wheel weights, add 2% tin and then mix that 50/50 with pure. I've shot three deer now with .30 caliber cast and that seems to be good advice in my experience, though none of mine showed real significant expansion or blood trails. None of them went far, however.

That Ranchdog bullets is a good one, I used it in a .308 last year to take a nice buck.

[runfiverun]

easiest way I know to find out is to try it.
test it out on a media of some sort like wet news paper.
compare it to a jaxketed bullet.
that's what I had/have to do when I swaging my own bullets.

[Wolfer]

I've shot several deer with a much softer boolit at 1700 fps with good expansion and terminal results.
I don't know that #2 will expand but that flat nosed boolit above 2000 fps may surprise you in its terminal ability.

If I was going to use it I'd like to break a shoulder first just to get an idea of performance.

[quilbilly]

With that load at that muzzle velocity you should expect results similar to the past. Since you are air cooling, your boolit should mushroom moderately before passing compeletely through. In short, if you are getting groups of 1.5" at 100 yards, as the saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." What I would do would be to collect a pile of phone books 20" in thickness, tie it loosely together, soak it with a hose or in rain, then put three or four rounds into it from 50 yards with your cast boolit to see what the boolit does and what the wound channel looks like. Make adjustments if you need them from what you actually see. You might find you don't even need that much velocity to do what you want. Check your local post office for those extra phone books they pass out every spring (my P.O. currently has hundreds and they beg me to carry away all I need for terminal ballistics tests)