Best bullet for short range deer hunting?

Why are you shooting deer with a cannon?
Deer are not that hard to kill. I take them all the time with a .300 blackout 8.5" barreled pistol out to about 100 yds. Shot placement is the trick. No shoulder shots, no neck shots, no head shots, just an easy shot to the chest right behind the elbow. It takes out the lungs & usually the heart.
Here is entry wound, exit wound, & heart. The doe walked 3 more steps after shooting from 97yds away with Hornady 110gr V-Max supers.
The small gun is extremely easy to carry long distances, very maneuverable in thick woods & has almost no recoil so it is easy to hold on target.
 

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The scenario you describe is perfect for a good old 30-30, or even a 7.62x39 bolt action or semi auto. When they first came out with the Mini 30 I jumped on it for deer hunting. When I lived in North Dakota I shot several big deer out to 250 yds and never had one go further than 100 yds before expiring. When I had a rare standing shot at one they always dropped within 10 yds.
 
Typical T Oheir reply, yet again he doesnt think anybody should use what they actually have because its way too much overkill, no need for quality components, cartridge or rifle.
Everything falls like a brick,,, yada yada....
Myself Id use the 06 for that work with a Sierra SBT in 165 at 2800 fps or so, should plunk right through those deer easily.
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Keep your Axe sharp and your powder dry.
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He's our honorary troll-sniper; every forum has at least one.
 
Why are you shooting deer with a cannon?
Deer are not that hard to kill. I take them all the time with a .300 blackout 8.5" barreled pistol out to about 100 yds. Shot placement is the trick. No shoulder shots, no neck shots, no head shots, just an easy shot to the chest right behind the elbow. It takes out the lungs & usually the heart.
Here is entry wound, exit wound, & heart. The doe walked 3 more steps after shooting from 97yds away with Hornady 110gr V-Max supers.
The small gun is extremely easy to carry long distances, very maneuverable in thick woods & has almost no recoil so it is easy to hold on target.
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I built virtually the same set-up and the barnes tac tx 110 black tips are by far the most accurate bullet--have you tried them for hunting? The black tips open way down in velocity--the v-max I assume is fragmented to some degree?
 
Grab the IMR 4350 and any 150 grain projectile and get it done. Yes I have several 30-30's that I've hunted with for years but now my go to is the M1917 Winchester and the 30-06 gets the job done.

If you're worried about destroying meat take your time with shot placement.
 
Rather than try to get you to buy another rifle, I think a stroll down the ammo aisle at your local sporting goods store is in order. I believe it's Federal that loads the Barnes TTSX bullets in their ammo. Since they are a solid metal bullet, impact velocity doesn't matter, so they work whether they're going 3,000 fps or 1,000 fps.
 
Scorch said:
Rather than try to get you to buy another rifle, I think a stroll down the ammo aisle at your local sporting goods store is in order. I believe it's Federal that loads the Barnes TTSX bullets in their ammo. Since they are a solid metal bullet, impact velocity doesn't matter, so they work whether they're going 3,000 fps or 1,000 fps.
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I am a huge Barnes fan. Having said that, they flat out suck at low velocity. At low velocity, they punch a tiny, clean hole that usually gets skin sealed and does not bleed much. Think FMJ.
 
T. O'Heir said:
It's not about the distance. It's about velocity. Any 150 grain SP or, preferably, a 165 grain SP out of a .30-06. You do not need a high priced premium bullet like any No$ler.
Any 165 grain hunting bullet out of a .30-06 will kill any game in North America with no fuss. The brand makes no difference. Partial to IMR4064 myself.
There's no game in North America that requires a Magnum of any kind to kill. Including big bear.
The "on top of a really brushy knob" part will matter too. That's about where you aim not the bullet though.
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Why you use premium powder like IMR? There is a lot of cheaper stuff out there that will kill any game in North America. Get some cheap powder behind those cheap bullets. There is still a lot of Korean war era pull down stuff available really cheap.
 
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ReloadKy said:
Last deer season I loaded 140 gr SGK for the 7 Mag and 165 Nosler ballistic tips for the 30-06. Unfortunately I never saw anything that I wanted to shoot so I did not get to determine bullet on game performance. Seems to be a pretty fair consensus that my 06 load is fine and that I should bump up the bullet weight in the the 7 mag a bit.
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I have had 140 gr Game King failure in my 7 Rem mag. Shot a buck at about 80 yds. Hit shoulder blade. Deer ran off. Killed him 2 weeks later. The largest piece of bullet penetrated less than 2 ". Some of the fragments probably made 3" Blew the bullet to pieces. Deer had gangrene. I kept rack and threw entire deer away. That was 25 years ago and the ladt time I hunted with a Gameking. He got shot the second time with a 148 HotCor.
 
My advice in 06 is a 150 ballistic tip.
7 mag 150 ballistic tip also.(I shoot deer with them out of my RUM and my WSM and they stay together good enough to do massive damage.)
 
A 7 Mag. is what can actually make a lot of mince meat that is unusable meet. Its great for 300yds.> in open country and even then it would be destroying lots of meat. My favorite round in the 100 Yd. brush shots would be my 358 Win. 200 gr. silvertip in my Browning mod. 81 lever action. It hits hard and drops them where they stand. All though only with light brush close to the deer where I might not see it would be acceptable. I always check for twigs out there that can deflect any bullet. The closer the twig is to you. The greater it can be nocked off its course. The closer the bullet is to the target the closer a larger piece of the bullet will hit its mark. Avoid hitting any thing IN front of the target. A crippled deer is not good at all.
 
30-30 bullets in 30-'06

Another option is to use 30-30 bullets in your 30-'06. They will expand more violently at 30-'06 velocities, so maybe you should throttle them back to perhaps 2600 fps or so. Nosler makes a 170 grain Partition for the 30-30 that should work excellently for this purpose in your 30-'06. "Think about it......."
 
I dont think many of you take modern bullet technoly into account. We now have bullets that perform well at high velocity. We dont have to reduce loads like was necessary back in the day.
 
I hunt similar terrain in Tennessee. My average distance for rifle shots has been 51 yards; only two were shot at 100 yards or longer. I've shot deer with several calibers from 243 to 308, and I've settled on 140 gr .264 bullets at about 2600 fps from my 260 REM. I used to use Ballistic Tips and SSTs, but now use Cup N Core like Hornady Interlock, Sierra Pro Hunter, or Speer Hot Core.

My most recent deer was a dandy 11 pt 4.5 yr old, shot at 30 yards with an 1873 Lever action 45 colt with a 255 gr lead flat nose at 1150 fps. The buck ran about 80 yards with a hole through both lungs and his heart.
 
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Jakeway said:
I hunt similar terrain in Tennessee. My average distance for rifle shots has been 51 yards; only two were shot at 100 yards or longer. I've shot deer with several calibers from 243 to 308, and I've settled on 140 gr .264 bullets at about 2600 fps from my 260 REM. I used to use Ballistic Tips and SSTs, but now use Cup N Core like Hornady Interlock, Sierra Pro Hunter, or Speer Hot Core.

My most recent deer was a dandy 11 pt 4.5 yr old, shot at 30 yards with an 1873 Lever action 45 colt with a 255 gr lead flat nose at 1150 fps. The buck ran about 80 yards with a hole through both lungs and his heart.
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Ballistic tip and SST are not cup and Core? What are they?
 
A cup-and-core bullet just means the jacket was formed from a gilding metal cup and the core was a separate material, usually a lead alloy added by swaging it into the cup at some stage of the jacket forming. So, yes, the Ballistic Tip and SST are cup-and-core bullets, too.

Examples of bullets that are not cup-and-core would be: Any of the Barnes or Hornady or other solids. The Speer Gold Dot rifle bullets (they have plated jackets). Cast bullets or turned brass or bronze bullets.
 
Partitions are cup and core, they just have 2 cups and 2 cores. If the front core separates from the jacket on impact, the remaining core retains about half the bullet weight and will carry the bullet through whatever you're shooting. I used Partitions for a number of years, and my only gripe was the cost of the bullets, about twice what others cost. Never had a problem with the bullets themselves.
 
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