I have a tag for a mulie doe next month and it is in a place that can have kind of sparse cover between the Ponderosa stands. That means that most likely I will be on the ridge looking down or straight at a deer, and the lack of cover means the shots can be a little longer. My comfort level is 150 yards, 200 tops. Beyond that I will likely pass on the shot and try to get closer, cover or no. I most likely will be hunting with a Tikka T3 in .30-06 for which I have two developed loads to choose from. The first is a cast load based on the Noe 311-195 mold. This throws a 198 grain boolit lubed and checked and it has a big meplat (almost as big as the one on the RCBS 35-200 mold I use in the 35 Rem). Over a charge of 4198 I get about 1900 FPS. The ballistic calculator I plugged all of this into suggests that the boolit will still have 1000 foot pounds or so at 200 yards, with a 10 inch drop from a 100 yard zero. That sound like enough sauce to put down a good sized mulie doe with a shot into the boiler room?
My other choice is a Nosler partition load that flings a 165 grain jacketed slug at 2800 FPS. I have no doubt this will kill deer at 500 yards, not that I would take such a shot.
I would really rather hunt with cast this year. Good idea? I suppose I could figure out the difference in POI between the two loads and just keep a second mag loaded with the partitions for longer shots, but that seems like it would be confusing to sort out as I get excited to have a deer in the scope.