Who hunts with linotype? Is it for the speed?

[gwpercle]

Lino boolits behave like a solid .
For Louisiana whitetail deer and the pesky hogs
Have gone from air cooled COWW to a softer mix of 50-50 COWW & soft lead .
Book says it should be a BHN 8 . I never tested the hardness but I like the results...
in both handgun and rifle boolit loads . I use gas checks on 30 cal. rifle boolits ... seems to help .
Gary

[elk hunter]

My experience with linotype is confined to two animals; a Cape Buffalo and a Kudu. I used linotype and a bullet with a large meplat on the advise of a friend who has taken many buffalo, some with a 475 revolver. What I didn't want was severe deformation that would limit penetration on the buffalo. Buffalo are big and have a thick, tough hide especially on their chest and neck. What I did want was penetration and tissue damage. Not all that easy to get with a cast bullet, hence the use of the semi-wadcutter style of bullet. The combination worked well on both animals. Had I used a round nose bullet I'm sure it would have acted like a solid and would not have done near the damage the large meplat bullet did. I was pleased that the bullet didn't shatter as I was afraid it would on the buffalo. My friend was right. I once had a 400 grain 45-70 bullet cast of wheel weight metal shatter when it hit the large front leg bone on a big Mule Deer buck. It appeared that only about a third of the bullet remained intact and exited. The deer's lungs looked like he had been shot with a shotgun. Remembering that incident made me wonder about trying Cape Buffalo with a cast bullet. In my experience cast bullet performance depends on three things. First is profile: sharp nose, round nose, semi wadcutter or hollow point. Point style generally determines penetration and tissue damage. Second is hardness. Harder bullets deform less and penetrate further. And third is velocity. Most cast bullets travel at rather sedate velocities compared to the jacketed variety. The faster you push one the more energy is has to transfer to the game. In my world balancing the three is what gets the performance needed to bring down game quickly and cleanly. Of course your mileage may vary.

[LAKEMASTER]

This topic peaked my interest because of my ranchdog bullet with a .254 metplate.

1 option being, if that fat linotype metplate explodes on impact, I can make some high velocity rounds for coyote or in situations I might be in where the bullet needs to not come the other side ( hunting near property )

My other curiosity, if that bullet would hold intact, it would be a nasty round for feral pig or things with big hide.

From day one, I was told linotype shatters. But I guess I never got the whole story if it shatters on impact or if it only does when it hits bone

[JohnH]

I think the worst thing that ever happened to cast bullet hunting is the myth that hard cast bullets don't lead. From the mid 1980s to the mid 1990's this was promulgated as fact by almost all the gun rag writers, and there are a few who still swear by it today. And. It's. Total. BS. There is a lot more reading available here and in other places than I'm going to go into here, but suffice it to say that the harder the bullet, the less able it is to expand into the rifling and seal the bore, thus allowing gas cutting to lead the crap out of the barrel.

Now how is this germane to this discussion? Somewhere in time the idea that harder lead is better got into the mainstream of cast bulleting and it's become a mantra that ain't true. Simply put, bullets harder than about 12 BHN are not needed nor desired for hunting. One can easily get 1800-2000 fps with that hardness and it will still deform and not not act like an FMJ and not pencil through or break up when hitting hard bone. Do some research, Elmer Keith's preferred alloy was 16:1 lead/tin which tips the BHN scale between 11 and 12 all day long, and in his day that was considered a hard alloy. For a period of about 8 years I used cast boolits almost exclusively when deer hunting. I used 44 Magnum, 357 Maximum, 38-55, 45-70 the boolits were a modified Lee 310 (gas check shank removed weight is ~250 grains) the SAECO #354, the Lyman 375449 and the Lee 459405 HP respectively, all were cast of straight COWW, all were one shot lung/heart kills. The only bullet I recovered was from the 44, it had passed through and lodged against the far side front leg bone. The nose was deformed such that the bullet had a full 44 diameter, I figure the deformation occurred against the leg bone.

I wouldn't hunt with anything harder than 12BHN and would prefer softer if I could get the desired velocity out of it.

[honus]

Lino boolits behave like a solid .
For Louisiana whitetail deer and the pesky hogs
Have gone from air cooled COWW to a softer mix of 50-50 COWW & soft lead .
Book says it should be a BHN 8 . I never tested the hardness but I like the results...
in both handgun and rifle boolit loads . I use gas checks on 30 cal. rifle boolits ... seems to help .
Gary

I've been preaching that for years, but few believe it. Now that PC has come along, the hardest I shoot is 50/50, but Powder coated pure lead has yet to fail me. Size is King.