Which camp are you in when it comes handgun hunting bullets?
Let's say you will be hunting white tail deer, and black bear. What bullet would you choose, and why? I read an interesting article about both tonight, it got me thinking. I may be hard to convince the user of one to try the other.

For black bear I would tend towards a heavy, hard cast lead bullet. A heavy jacketed solid would do if that was all I had available. Never thought about hunting either deliberately with a handgun and never figured to be attacked by a deer, so I never gave that one much thought.

A Wide Flat Nose (WFN) cast bullet would be my choice, but everything has to be right.

Can't Forrest Gump your way around with cast like with jacketed stuff.

I would also use a WFN hard cast bullet especially for Bear. You want good penetration. I reload and would use Cast Performance bullets. They are the sister company of Grizzly Cartridges. You didn't say which cartridge you are asking about but in general cast bullets would be my choice.

Welcome to Grizzly Cartridge - Grizzly Cartridge for the ammo.

Cast Performance Bullets Archives - Grizzly Cartridge to give you a better idea what the bullet looks like.

Garrett Cartridges is also a good choice for handgun hunting ammo.
Garrett Cartridges Inc. 44 mag .45-70 .44 ammo ammunition bullets african hunting cartridges

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Freedom is never free!!
SWCA #3437

If I were hunting big blacks and shot for bone (shoulders), then maybe a 300 grain XTP, or a hard cast bullet with a large meplat.

Otherwise, I use and like the 240 grain XTP out of my .44 magnums, and almost always go for heart / lung shots thru the ribs. Deep enough penetration, as in usually thru and thru, and drops them a little quicker than a solid does. Neither are hard to kill if you place your shots where you should.

Larry

In my cloudy past I killed two black bears with 357 revolvers. Both shot with cheap Zero JSP. Both bears decidedly dead and the bullets exited. Very limited experience but all I had with me and it was a necessity thing.

I've had great experience handgun hunting with 357 mag and 44 mag for whitetail. I use exclusively Hornady XTP's to handload. The 158 xtp for 357 and 240 xtp for 44. H110 powder for both calibers about max powder charge. Always dropped deer within sight. They work.

I have not hunted black bear with pistol but have taken two average sized Canadian black bears with a 270 rem and 7mm rem mag. Personally I don't think black bears are per say any tougher than our big whitetail as long as shot placement is dead on.
They do have thicker, courser hair and I suppose a large bear would have bigger bones but so do deer. They are wider than most deer but again with proper shot placement those XTP's would expand upon entry and tear vital organs up just like they are designed to do. I don't see penetration being an issue.

My handgun hunting pistol these days is a 1911 in 10mm. I'm using Underwood ammo's 180gr XTP and proved they shoot over 1300fps out of the 5" barrel. I have not taken a whitetail with this load yet but do expect it to perform great.
NOW, if I had to hunt bear with the 10mm I think I would work up some 200gr coated hard cast WFP as hot as I could get them.

A jacketed soft point.
You get both needed features expansion and penetration.

Yes I've also actually used them on bear.

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Paul
S&WCA #2726

Either will do if shooter does their part . As stated shot placement is king regardless of caliber / bullet . Also stated harder bullets shoot for bone . Down here pretty much even split twixt the 2 , XTP's , Deep Curls on one side & WFN & Lyman Devestators on the other . Hogs heavy for caliber & no cast HP's .

Soft Cast ... a 50-50 mix of clip on wheel weights and soft lead .
Gives you a bullet that mushrooms ...supposed to be BHN - 8 .
Solid point or hollow point . Hard bullets shatter , soft bullets deform and hold together .
People have been sold a story about "Hard Cast" ... you don't want Hard in a hunting bullet .
If you can't get wheel weights Elmer Keith reccomends :
1 part tin / 20 parts lead - for normal pressure hollow point handgun loads up to 1,000 fps .
1 part tin / 16 parts lead - for heavy handgun and rifle HP
loads +1,000 fps .
Gary

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Certified Cajun
NRA Member

At 30 yards or out at 300 yards?

Revolver or rifle......... ?

From a stand or walking.........?

I use both but need to know what is taking place for the best choice.

At 30 yards or out at 300 yards? 25-50 yards

Revolver or rifle......... ? Revolver, M29 or Super Blackhawk

From a stand or walking.........? A bit of both

Generally, I agree with what you stated. As far as I know, there is no real standard definition for "hard cast"; it's sort of like "heavy crimp" - a term that means different things to different people.

Truly "hard cast" bullets, assuming a BHN of anywhere between 18 and 22 (or even more) may have some specialized usefulness, but for casual shooting, target shooting, and hunting, most are better served with softer cast bullets. Many, especially non-casters, seem to be unaware of this. A hard cast bullet will not only shatter on bone or other hard object, it will even come apart in a thickness of newsprint or magazines used to test penetration. This doesn't always happen, but it can happen often enough to make one question the suitability of a hard cast bullet, especially for hunting.

Granted, softer cast bullets are far more useful, but success with them often require a good bit of load development work to achieve good to excellent accuracy results and freedom from leading. It seems a lot of handloaders /shooters today either don't have the time to devote to such a project or they lack interest.

For those folks, a jacketed (not plated) soft point (not hollowpoint) might be the best choice and the quickest route for success. I still maintain that for handgun use, a jacketed bullet offers no advantage at all over a cast bullet that fits and is made of the right alloy mix for the load, but to get there usually takes some work.

A 180 gr will work for deer with 1036 MV ...........

the 240 with 971 ME is not too shabby for all around ........
deer: XTP HP Bear/Pig: SP

if you don't want to be changing out ammo all the time just go BIG with
the 300 gr lead GC bullet with 1041 to 1170 ME for anything that comes your way.

Some like an exit hole for a blood trail, when deer hunting.......
so the type of bullet and placement is important.

I prefer copper monolithic bullet construction for my hunting- mostly bears, but pigs, bison, and deer also taken with revolvers.

While any well constructed jacketed bullet should perform well (have used them also) such as A-Frames, XTP MAg, and deep Curl. Hollow point and ballistic tips designs should be avoided in experience.

While hard cast bullet with large meplate are often chosen and sited I find them a better choose for protection loads than hunting.

I remind folks the ammo is the cheapest part of the hunt and the terminal performance is key to success, don't cheap out here.

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be safe
Ruggy

Flat Point FMJ.

Why? Because they feed more reliably in semiautomatics, will sooner deform than shatter when they hit something heard like bones, and cost substantially less than Hard Cast Lead SWCs.

Based on what I've read coming from hunters, Hard Cast Lead Bullets can be too hard and thus too brittle, causing them to break apart if they strike bone. Typically, the results are still lethal, and potentially even result in greater tissue damage, but to hunters that's generally considered a bad thing because it results in greater loss of meat/pelt.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

At our Nevada deer camp, we let the hunter choose any legal weapon to
fill the tag for the date and season set forth.

It may be any Bow, BP, Revolver or rifle with proper equipment, to do the task of collecting and filling their tag.

However they are only allowed to draw blood on only one animal.........
and that animal shall be either retreived or lost, per the hunters ability.

The tag will be filled on a kill........... or destroyed if the animal is lost.

Get er done.

A cast bullet even cast from wheel weights will do the job any day. You dont need to driveca good cast bullet to stupid velocities. Put it through the shoulders or shoot length ways. Good cast will do both. Im a put two holes through an animal guy.

Black bears aren't hard to kill. I've killed a number of them over the years. Either would do the job, but I'd probably use a nice 240 grain JHP load just because I don't like scrubbing lead from my barrels anymore.

There is a reason for the law prohibiting non expanding bullets in rifles for big game hunting. Not much tissue damage. Give me a good expanding bullet anytime. I watched a large cow buffalo killed with a 475 Ruger using factory Hornady bullet. One shot and you could see lots of air escaping the entry wound at every breath. I shot a cow a little while later with an original 1863-68 Sharps in 50-70. Used an original round of ammo from the 1870's. Not much of a reaction and when gutted out their was not much tissue damage to the lungs.

I like Cast bullets and Hornady XTPs.

Bear = Revolver loaded first two XTPs the rest Cast bullets.

Deer = Revolver just XTPs.

Powder will be Alliant Unique, but Red Dot, American Select,
and Bullseye will work also.

Attached Images

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SD social distanc'n since 1889

Forgot a first hand incident involving a friend, a 44 magnum and 220 grain silhouette fmj ammo. A friend accidentally shot himself with the above. He was seated and it drilled him though the pelvis, exiting his buttock, aka his brain. Had to get up and call the ambulance himself as his wife had fainted. When I saw him a hour later in the hospital, he was kidding with the 18 year old candy striper that was shaving his pubes prior to surgery.

What WAS he aiming at...?

Cheers!

P.S. Jus' got to LOVE those 18 year-old strippers!

I go with what my gun shoots best. (Go ask the gun!) I prefer cast but my Contender likes jacketed, so for hunting I'm using jacketed.

P.S. Jus' got to LOVE those 18 year-old strippers![/QUOTE]



Spelling wasnt my fourtay, ah strong sut, ah best subjt,

At times if it weren't for a gutter, my mind would be homeless.

Ouch. Just ouch. Seems the meds were starting to kick in.

I kinda hate to point this out, but in some states the use of non expanding bullets for hunting isn't legal. I expect this was intended to apply to rifles and military ball, but the legal beagles might not be that picky.

White tail deer really aren't that hard to kill if hit properly. Back when Remington was developing the .44 Magnum, they realized that performance on the WTD was key to the success of the caliber. The 240 gr SJHP was the result. I used this for quite awhile on PA WTD and never needed a second shot. Somewhere I've still got the one recovered from the first deer I ever shot with it. Entered the rib cage on a quartering shot and was recovered in the muscles of the opposing shoulder, just barely under the skin. IIRC it's almost 7/8 in in the largest dimension (oval expansion due to impact direction.). Come to think of it, all the deer I took with a handgun were with quartering shots.

The black bears I've personally seen taken weren't much bigger than a human. OK, they're fluffy, they might appear bigger. If you're in some area where you can expect the 400 lb + ones, a soft point or just maybe, a hard cast if you're expecting to have to break bones-and it's legal.

Everyone thinks they have to use hard cast bullets if using all-lead bullets to reduce leading. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes a soft or medium soft cast bullet is the best choice to prevent leading and get the best bullet performance in tissue.
Wide meplats are a good thing.

A top quality hard cast GC shouldn't lead the bore, or at least very very little. Soft cast cowboy loads can be a different story.

I thought all bullets sold in the US had to be expanding by law. some just expand more than others, even a hard cast will expand if it hits bone.

From my limited knowledge, there is no law concerning non expanding bullets. I have several cases of 30-30's with factory full metal jacket. About every caliber of handgun ammo is available in non expanding full metal jackets. Lots of military surplus armor piercing rifle ammo available. Handguns can not have armor piercing but non expanding full metal jacket isn't regulated.