The Reason I Prefer Cast

[tek4260]

I've been hunting with a handgun for about 10 years now I suppose and have taken a few deer. I've always been rather unimpressed with the "performance" of a handgun as compared to a rifle. The caliber never seemed to make much difference. I honestly can't see a difference in effect on deer between my 260gr SWCs at 877fps in a 45 ACP and a 385gr Mihec in a 475 Linebaugh, plus pretty much everything in between. I took a deer Thursday afternoon with a "test" load. 44 Magnum, 240gr JHP, H110 at 100% density, 7.5" Super. The reason being is because more than once I've been told that I'd have better results with a JHP that would expand and do damage, a longer barrel because all mine are cut to 4-5", lighter bullets for more velocity, etc. I wanted to give the other "experts" opinions a fair shot, so to speak.

My contention was that a handgun kills from organ damage and blood loss and lacks the velocity to impart "shock" and drop game in its tracks the way a rifle round does. I came to this conclusion based on the lack of difference in game reaction, and how far it ran whether I was shooting a 45 ACP or something "bigger, badder, faster, heavier bullets, etc".

The deer Thursday was standing slightly quartering towards me at 48 yards. At the shot, it broke and ran about 100 yards, which is further by about 2X as most run with the lowly 45 ACP with my loads. At the shot, I could tell it was a good hit and could hear the "sloshing" as it ran. I also heard it crash and knew exactly where it would be in the 10 year old pines. I started my trailing where the deer was standing, and walked directly to it. There wasn't a drop of blood to be found.

When I shoot one with the 300gr Lee GC, or with a SWC, there is always a good blood trail because it passes completely through. Had I been in thick stuff, tall grass, ect, I would have had a hard time finding the deer.

All this to say, maybe the "old timers" knew a thing or two. But lets be honest, it's hard to market a plain Jane cast bullet. Doesn't sound as lethal as the terms they attach to the latest and greatest thing in hunting bullets.

In the end I got the deer, but had it ran away from me rather than diagonal, had the terrain been thick, had I not heard it fall and knew where to look, I wouldn't have had a way to trail it. Had I used my normal load of a 300gr cast over 23gr of H110, it would have passed completely through and left 2 holes to bleed from along with a trail.

[bulasteve]

I also want two holes and the ability to shoot from other than broadside. Congrats on the fresh meat !

[cmh]

Most all of my shooting has been done with jacketed bullets but that has changed. I have jacketed bullets but have readied things so I can cast my own in several calibers..... Im a believer

[KRal]

Congrats! If you don't mind me asking, what JHP bullet were you using?

[tek4260]

Hornady XTP

[tradmark]

I use cast but dont prefer them. Not all cast are the same, and not all hollow points are the same either. I completely disagree that handguns dont impart shock. There are big fast calibers that do. The 454 and 460 just to name two. I would agree that the ole xtp is not the one to go to though many use them with success. However if i have my choice i use swift aframes and barnes xbp's. If im shooting a slower velocity caliber like my 10mm or 480 i will use cast or some solid. However, if the animal is over 500lbs i use the barnes or aframes or a solid of all copper/brass construction or a punch bullet. I cant say how blood trails go with barnes out of the 454 bc ive yet to have a deer go further than 2 steps. My friend just shot a whitetail buck with a barnes 250xbp out of his 454 and it destroyed over half the lungs. They were gone. Didnt touch the spine and missed the heart and it dropped at the shot. Exit wound out of the chest cavity was almost the size of my fist.

On the jrh bovine bash in october the most decisive kill on 7 over 1200lb bovines was a swift aframe out of a 454. The cast work, and can work well but it can turn bad. I had a 440gr hardcast pass thru but with obvious bullet damage on a perfect shoulder shot. We followed the watusi for over 1/2 a mile where i finished it with a barnes 454. Now rob rowen had a very good decisive kill with his 45 colt using garrett 45 colt hardcast. The garretts were just simply better than the hardcast i used. I have a few garretts now as well! As far as pass thru's with expandables, i got a pass thru on a one shot cape buff with my 6" 454 casull with 325 a frames. I wouldnt have consider that with an xtp and wouldve shied away from a hardcast as well. not that it wouldnt work, theres just better choices. Im not against hardcasts by any means and use them, alot them but i feel, depending on the caliber, theres bullets that do more damage and penetrate from any angle as well. Just my 2 cents and since this was a discussion post, my opinion ✌️

[Yetiman]

I am relatively new to this, only having used the revolver (7.5" Bisley Hunter) the last two seasons.

Last year I took a skinny, but good size Buck with a gnarly 13 point rack at 35 yards with a 300 grain XTP 44 that blew clear through, doing major wreckage. The deer dropped in it's tracks. It was a close enough shot it was almost a gimme.

This year I took a medium size six pointer at 93 yards. I hit it with a 240 grain XTP over 24.8 grains of Win 296.
I was watching him and a doe cross the field in front of me and was waiting to see if a bigger buck might follow them out. He was about 20 feet from disappearing into standing corn when I took my shot. He took two steps, did kind of a back flip and went down.

The bullet went clear through the lungs and made a good size exit hole. When I rolled him over, blood poured out the exit wound.

I have been using the XTP's because they are readily available and inexpensive enough to get a lot of practice shooting in before the season. So far so good.

Frankly, I switched from the 300's to the 240's because they are cheaper, so I practice more.

[whitworth]

I witnessed performance of XTPs on a red stag in Texas recently that gave me cause for pause. Granted, whitetail isn't red stag.....

[zeus]

Dec 10, 2016 22:34:59 GMT -5 tradmark said:

I use cast but dont prefer them. Not all cast are the same, and not all hollow points are the same either. I completely disagree that handguns dont impart shock. There are big fast calibers that do. The 454 and 460 just to name two. I would agree that the ole xtp is not the one to go to though many use them with success. However if i have my choice i use swift aframes and barnes xbp's. If im shooting a slower velocity caliber like my 10mm or 480 i will use cast or some solid. However, if the animal is over 500lbs i use the barnes or aframes or a solid of all copper/brass construction or a punch bullet. I cant say how blood trails go with barnes out of the 454 bc ive yet to have a deer go further than 2 steps. My friend just shot a whitetail buck with a barnes 250xbp out of his 454 and it destroyed over half the lungs. They were gone. Didnt touch the spine and missed the heart and it dropped at the shot. Exit wound out of the chest cavity was almost the size of my fist.

On the jrh bovine bash in october the most decisive kill on 7 over 1200lb bovines was a swift aframe out of a 454. The cast work, and can work well but it can turn bad. I had a 440gr hardcast pass thru but with obvious bullet damage on a perfect shoulder shot. We followed the watusi for over 1/2 a mile where i finished it with a barnes 454. Now rob rowen had a very good decisive kill with his 45 colt using garrett 45 colt hardcast. The garretts were just simply better than the hardcast i used. I have a few garretts now as well! As far as pass thru's with expandables, i got a pass thru on a one shot cape buff with my 6" 454 casull with 325 a frames. I wouldnt have consider that with an xtp and wouldve shied away from a hardcast as well. not that it wouldnt work, theres just better choices. Im not against hardcasts by any means and use them, alot them but i feel, depending on the caliber, theres bullets that do more damage and penetrate from any angle as well. Just my 2 cents and since this was a discussion post, my opinion ✌️

The A Frame is an amazing slug especially when moving at a rapid pace

Our man Darrell prefers the A Frame for his hunting guns most of the time as well I think. I do like cast on some occasions but I do like expansion on soft skinned animals which is about all I will encounter

[tradmark]

I think darrel and i began to really use the aframe alot around the same time. I started to use it on bigger and bigger animals culminating with the capebuff. Theyre more expensive but imho worth it on anything bigger than deer.

[tek4260]

It's certainly up for discussion lol. I haven't seen any consistent difference on deer in any caliber, be it 45 ACP, 44 Mag, 45 Colt, 454 Casull, 480 Ruger, 475 Linebaugh, and 500 Smith. What I have noticed is ease of trailing when there is an exit, which is why I prefer cast, or at least a heavy jacketed bullet that will exit. It also seems that a hard cast, sharp cornered bullet such as a SWC or an LBT WFN cuts blood vessels and promotes more bleeding rather than pushing them aside which is what I believe a JHP does once it transitions to that pretty mushroom that everyone loves to show off in their advertisements.

I've never shot a 460 S&W, but unless it magically breaks 2000fps, I can't see it doing much better than any of the other calibers I've tried. I say that with sarcasm because "everyone else's" 1400+ fps load seems to run about 1100 across my chronograph. Maybe my chrono is slow, my powder is underpowered, I'm just slow, or they don't actually own a chrono and actually check such things.

I'm suppose in the end what I am championing is something, anything, that passes through and leaves a blood trail to help me find the animal.

My very first handgun deer was with a 44 Magnum. It was a 5.5" Bisley Vaquero that I'd traded into and laid aside as I usually do. I found a good spot in the woods behind the house and put up a ladder stand with a Tinks scent bomb hanging at 20 yards in an old logging road. A buck came up and was smelling it when I shot him behind the shoulder with a factory 240gr HP. The deer ran about 75 yards and piled up by a tree. Dad came to visit a few days later and brought his 500 Smith with some JHP over LilGun loads. Book max, I'm sure. I put him in the same stand, hung Tinks in the same spot, and about an hour later, I heard the shot. Then, 3 more shortly afterwards. He missed a buck that came up and was sniffing the tinks, same as mine. The buck ran back into the thicket, wheeled around, and came back to sniff the tinks some more. He missed 2 more times as the buck stood there mesmerized by the Tinks, and finally made a perfect behind the shoulder shot. The buck ran and died in the same spot as mine from the 44. His deer was literally laying on the dried blood from mine a few days earlier, and his shot placement was the same as mine. There honestly couldn't have been any more similarity in the comparison of the 44 and 500. He joked that his deer was way tougher than mine and that he was shocked that it didn't fall dead in its tracks after seeing the shot placement. I honestly thought it was a fluke as well, but 10 years later, the results still hold true....no measurable difference between any of the calibers I listed earlier.

What does remain consistent is that when there is an exit, there is a blood trail and my chance of finding the deer increases dramatically!

[tradmark]

i'm gonna have to get some pics together and i can show you where the velocity with large calibers gets ya with the right bullet. this year we have great comparisons on similiar deer with 480 ruger, 357, and a 454. the difference is stark, if you're using a 44 mag or larger and it doesn't exit a deer, i consider it a bullet failure.

[Fowler]

I will say that reguardless of the weapon used every animal is rule unto itself, and so the same shot and hit on different animal may or may not get the same reaction. That said I think if we are talking a broadside 40 yards shot through the lungs the different bullets and gun calibers will minimize the differences. I.e. A 357 or a 45 colt probably won't have hugely different reactions.

Now place the animal quartering away from you for a raking shot as Elmer would call it where a bullet need to get through some guts, ribs, chest cavity, break an offside shoulder and then exit is where the bigger calibers and tougher bullets really shine.

I for one have always felt that if a bullet stayed in the animal, at some level it was a failure. We hunt in Colorado so it's not your super tough brush country where deer vanish if not dropped right now so we can follow blood trails here. I want an animal bleeding out as much and as quick as possible every time. You may disagree but every animal that I have ever struggled to recover was bleeding from just one entrance hole.

Personally I like cast bullets because I can control their hardness for the game we are chasing. I will certainly cast a bullet far softer for something such as an antelope and tougher for something such as a big boar piggy.

Just my 2 cents

[jfs]

good shooting regardless......

[sixshot]

Guess I've been using the wrong bullets for over 50 years or else I've been really lucky because I've done very little tracking. Actually if there's a jacketed bullet out there better than my cast bullets I'd have to see it because I don't think it's possible, just my opinion. I can "tweak" the diameter of my cast slugs, I can build them soft or hard, or I can build them both ways in the same bullet. Jacketed bullets have a certain "bracket" where you need to shoot them, get outside that "bracket" & it can fail. Is that "bracket" meant for a broadside 500 lb. animal or an animal facing away from you, do you shoot? I do, and I've never lost one, angles don't bother me one bit. If it's a makeable handgun shot I shoot it. My bullet has a bigger meplat, yours has to expand to catch up to mine, if mine expands at all yours might not catch up anyway. I can easily get expansion that can match or exceed jacketed but I will get penetration most likely exceeding jacketed. Jacketed bullets are wonderful & if you are confident in them use them, I'm confident with cast, not because someone told me they work but because I've proven it over & over & over. If I thought jacketed was better I'd used jacketed. To the light & fast crowd, you are limited to broadside only or it can get messy in a hurry, no one wants that. Merry Christmas!

Dick