So I’ve taken 4 deer in the past two years with my 45-70 and hard cast boolits. The bullet is cast from an accurate 46-350L mold. It drops a 353 gr wheel weight water cooled bullet. Two of the four deer have dropped on the spot with shoulder shots. The other two made it about 30-40 yards a piece with the same shoulder shots. Not the high shoulder shot mind you I’m talking about getting bone and lungs. The two that did make it a little ways had zero blood trail. Now I haven’t actually needed a blood trail on these 4 examples but it does make me nervous.
So my load is 12 grains of tight group and I’m assuming somewhere in the neighborhood of 1200 FPS. The bullet blows straight through a deer with basically no expansion. Now accuracy with the hard cast slug is great out to 125 yards. Change that bullet to air cooled and the accuracy goes to hell.
My fear is that I’m am going to one day make a rear lung shot and not be able to find the deer secondary to a non existent blood trail. I’m thinking about try to make a pure lead nosed with the back half of wheel weights. If I water quench the bullet the nose should theoretically stay soft? And will this soft nose bullet get expansion at such a modest velocity. Lastly will the soft nosed bullet give a decent blood trail theoretically?