Hornady 30 cal SST for elk?

I love hunting. Never hunted elk... only moose, black bears, caribou and deer.
After one year of preparations, finally hunting season arrive ... and usually is over with one or two shoots! After all the sacrifice, investment in equipment, outfiters and time, dont I want to use the best bullet to achieve success ?
I use Nosler Partition in many of my hunting cartridges, it never fail.
But on all honesty I admit I also hunted successfully with Hornady SST and before them with Spire, always 180 grain when loaded in .30 caliber.
_______

roberto
















i
 
So I have a question then for those of you who have experience like Wyosmith. What was used before companies like Nosler came out with their premium bonded bullets? Were shots more limited or something? Were people not pushing them as fast? I ask because I honestly do not know. I am not a life long hunter and have only started hunting in the past decade, and have only harvested with archery gear. I just got into shooting just over a year ago.
 
Were shots more limited or something?
Click to expand...
The simple reply is Yes. Yesterday's bullets were simply copper jacketed. Before that, they were unjacketed lead. The advantage of today's bonded bullet is that you can push it faster/farther and therefore get good performance at greater distances. It also makes "marginal" shots more effective. A shot into a body part that previously would have resulted in a long day of trailing blood has a better chance of getting a quick kill.
 
Doyle is correct.
In the days when I was a boy (and before that,) bigger game was usually shot with bigger (heavier) bullets. Even today, the old fashioned bullets in the older shells work wonderfully. Like the 220 grain Hornady 30 cal in a 30-06, and so on.
The question was specifically about the SST bullets from Hornady. They are about like the old Remington Bronze Points. Highly accurate, but not very tough and they come apart on impact.

Having a bullet hold it's weight is very important. I earn a large part of my living making muzzleloading rifles and it's what I have the most notoriety for.
I am a bit of an authority on them. (No bragging intended, but I am just stating a fact)
They have worked VERY well for many hundreds of years on big game.
Why?
Because as a rule, larger game was shot with larger calibers which means heavier bullets, and the velocity of those balls was only about 900 to 1600 FPS on impact, so the balls would never break into dozens of pieces like many modern bullets.
The range at which a muzzleloader is used is not long in comparison to a modern magnum.
But don't kid yourself. If you have never seen an elk, moose buffalo or big bear hit with a .62 or .66 caliber round ball, you would probably be surprised at how fast the big flintlock arms will put an animal down!
Those that have seen it know exactly what I am talking about here.

A 300 Magnum with a Barnes X bullet of about 220 grains will get to an animal much faster, and fly much flatter, but as soon as that bullet hits it starts to slow down, and about 50% of it's speed is reduced by the act of the bullet doubling in diameter. So if it hits at 2400 FPS and the 220 grain bullet hold ALL it's weight, it's going about 1200 FPS 3" inside the animal.

Compare that to a ball of 340 grains that hits at 1400 FPS and slows down in the animal less (if cast from a hardened lead alloy,) so for about 1/3 of it's travel through the animal (about the first 5-7 inches of penetration) it's going faster then the X bullet! And it weights 120 grains more. And it's about as big going in as the 300 mag bullet is coming out.

See the point?
 
Wyosmith said:
Compare that to a ball of 340 grains that hits at 1400 FPS and slows down in the animal less (if cast from a hardened lead alloy,) so for about 1/3 of it's travel through the animal (about the first 5-7 inches of penetration) it's going faster then the X bullet! And it weights 120 grains more. And it's about as big going in as the 300 mag bullet is coming out.
Click to expand...

He's right. Back in the day I became enamored of charcoal burners and hunted almost exclusively with a .54 caliber caplock rifle. The load that I used for hunting was a 230 patched ball over 90 grains of ffg powder. I never put it over a chronograph, but I suspect it was traveling at 1200-1400 fps. I shot several deer with that rifle and they were all one-shot kills. Guys would ask me about the rifle and I'd tell them that my ball started out larger than their bullet was after it had expanded. Every deer I shot with that rifle was through-and-through and I didn't have to track them at all. They lay down and died right there.

Today we've got better powder and we drive bullets faster. Some of the powders the companies are coming out with are really interesting. I've been playing with Alliant's new Power Pro 2000 MR and it pushes the .308 to a whole nuther level. I was shooting 150 grain SST bullets yesterday and getting velocities of over 2950 fps from my completely stock Remington 700.
 
The load that I used for hunting was a 230 patched ball over 90 grains of ffg powder.
Click to expand...
That's the same load I ran in my .54 caliber. ...But I changed it, a few years down the road. I dropped to 76 grains, to give slightly better accuracy over longer ranges (though, I had to compensate for the rainbow trajectory).

The "lowly" round ball gets a lot of bad press, but it all seems to come from people that have never seen the terminal performance. ;)
 
Use the right bullet for the intended purpose

Reloader28 - I'm puzzled by your complaint about the Nosler Ballistic Tip bullet falling apart when shooting Elk. If you read their intended game for such a bullet, none are thick hided, heavy boned animals. (Pronghorns, deer) are the biggest game they recommend it for. I would compare SST bullets to other bullets designed for thin skinned game (e.g. deer, antelope)

Nosler Partition and Accubond are bullets designed for such heavy hided, big boned animals like Elk. I've shot a number of Elk with Accubonds and none have gone more than 30 yds. before staying down for the count. Very accurate bullets. Shot several Elk out to 300+ yds.
I agree with user ".300 Weatherby Mag". Use the right tool (bullet) for the correct application. In this case, quality bonded, partition or solid copper for Elk seems like better choices than SST or other similar thin skin game bullets.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top