Cast HP vs Jacketed

[Big Bore]

Genuine question here…

Why would someone choose a cast HP over a jacketed HP?

Now a little background…I use to hunt exclusively with cast bullets that had a wide meplat. They worked fine, but the long blood trails got old and eventually I lost a well hit deer with one. I say lost but I actually found the deer the next morning. However, in Texas you rarely get overnight temps that would preserve meat in the field that long. While I missed the heart, the shot caught both lungs. That ended my run with cast and I switched to jacketed.

So I know why something would choose jacketed over a straight cast bullet. At least in your normal straight-wall revolver calibers when hunting for deer, hogs, etc. 

But…the cast HPs I’ve been seeing here are intriguing to me. And casting my own freedom pills also sounds right up my alley. So that leads me to the question above. Is there a benefit or is it just another way to skin the cat?  Do cast HPs act like a typical jacketed in terms of expansion?  And although our Texas deer are more like overgrown rabbits with skin as tough as Kleenex, our hogs are nothing to scoff at. How would they perform on a mid-sized hog (150ish lbs)?

Again, I’m truly asking for advice from experience here. Sometimes the way I write tends to rub people the wrong way. Not intended here. I know the cast vs jacketed debate runs deep and with fiery passion…

[bradshaw]

Randy.... your words haven’t rubbed this shooter the wrong way.
My feeling about cast vs jacketed runs along the rails of double action vs single action fire: Why limit yourself to one when you can enjoy both?

Go where the performance is. When a man boasts he only shoots a DA revolver double action, he confesses he never shot to the podium in silhouette. (It may be time for me to break out a Redhawk----loaded with Rocks & Dynamite----to compare my double action fire to single action @ 100 yards.

You are correct, the issue for all but the largest whitetails is to put the bullet to work INSIDE the deer!----not the landscape behind it! The hollow point was & is meant to go to work on light resistance.

POWDER COAT
It’s time to add a third category to our cast and jacketed handgun bullets, powder coated. While the baked-on powder coating replaces traditional grease lubrication, it is baking which anneals the lead alloy, thereby imparting a plastic dynamic in target. In my limited experience, the effect is huge. While my exposure to powder coat came at the hands of Jeff “Tank” Hoover and Dick Thompson, both avid handgun hunters, my appreciation for the heavyweight punching power of pure lead came as a teenager, swaging .357 and .44 bullets with copper half-jackets and pure lead cores.

Half-Jacket
Sixty years ago, Speer and Hornady supplied copper cups and lead wire for bandleaders to swage bullets. Plastic deformation of the pure lead core in meat had the effect of a left hook coming from Heavyweight Champion “Smoking Joe” Frazier. No hard cast lead ally bullet registered such immediate impact on small game and whitetail deer at modest velocity. No need to push the swaged half-jacket to magnum velocity; in fact, magnum velocity caused leading, as part of the bearing surface is pure lead.

Today, powder coating takes the place of the half-jacket----without the leading problem, which allows the powder coat bullet to be pushed faster. Cast as an alloy, the alloyed & annealed powder coat bullet doesn’t spatter like pure lead at higher velocity. Thus imparting both punch & penetration.
David Bradshaw

[tex500]

To add to what Mr. Bradshaw has stated, the powder coating allows for the bullet to be pushed to higher velocities. (Without Leading ) This can be an advantage to the shooter, depending upon the alloy and the annealing (such as air cooled Vs water quench ). Imagine if you will a cast powder coated bullet, being pushed well past, what is often considered the limit on even "Hard cast" bullets. With no leading.
Invite me to come down or over to your location and I will be glad to display results on one of your Hogs. Hollow point cast in either powder coated or the traditional cast HP without powdercoat. We can do both.

Tex

[Fowler]

For me a there are several things that have drawn me to Cast hollow point bullets. The first in these times of irregular supply chains I can always make what I need when I need it. I know a guy who fell in love with the XTP 400gr bullet for his 475 Linebaugh, well now they are discontinued and where is he supposed to turn for a suitable substitute bullet? Heck even the regular production bullets have irregular supply stocks, when was the last time you saw a 230gr Gold Dot bullet on the shelf for reloading?

I personally like the self sufficiency aspect of it, I making my own reloads, I like fishing with flies I tied. This takes things a step further like shooting the grouse I used for the soft hackle wet flies I was fishing, or the elk that was used for my Elk Hair Caddis. Casting takes things a step further.

It also gives one more control over your bullet so it can be customized for your quarry and your load speeds, smaller softer skinned animals can have softer hollow points cast for them and heavier game can have a harder alloy or thicker nose walled hollow point bullet cast to toughen them. Sixshot has a great recipe that seems to work here based on velo. I have a couple hollow point molds that cast the same weight bullet as a solid I have (cant do that from the same mold) with the theory being the first round is a hollow point and the rest in the cylinder are solids, the first shot will be broadside at the lungs and the rest are set up to handle whatever maybe called upon.

Now all of this said all of the big game I have even shot with handguns were shot with Keith style solids, I have yet to send a hollow point in the direction of a big game animal yet. Too little time spent hunting and too much time spent working here. I have shot a lot of vermin with them, I cast them soft and they are decisive to say the least, my 32 mags do as much or more damage to a ground squirrel as my 22-250 will. Not really what you want on a pig but then I again cast them soft for the task at hand.

I have switched to powder coating all of my bullets not that that has a lot of bearing on this discussion but I like it a lot.

Hope this helps a little, YMMV

[sixshot]

I'm guessing most, if not all of the jacketed bullets being made today are high quality bullets but any bullet can fail, whether it be jacketed or cast. I have friends that take a lot of animals with jacketed & never have a problem. Actually they do have one problem & that's getting bullets when they want them. The last time I used a jacketed bullet on game was 10-12 years ago & I don't remember the reason but it was the Speer 270 gr Gold Dot, now the Deep Curl. I took a cow elk with my Super Red Hawk & a couple weeks later took a nice muley buck with the same gun & load. The handloads worked perfect & I sent the rest of the Gold Dots to Mark Hampton.
For me a cast bullet can be crafted to do anything you want, you can change the hardness & you can also change the diameter, something you can't do with a jacketed bullet, it's a win, win for the cast bullet. Something else you can do, especially now that powder coating has came into our lives is you can go much softer & get away with it, simply amazing. I keep going softer & softer with my deer hunting bullets.
One other thing you can do & I keep forgetting to mention it. First off I'm shooting almost strictly HP's on deer & antelope size game & having great success, but here's a trick you can use to change things up. Instead of using the correct top punch for the HP you are using, use a different top punch to crimp down the HP if you feel it might open too soon & not give you enough penetration. Sometimes a HP can be driven too fast, this is a common mistake, so you have two options, either slow it down a bit, or as mentioned, crimp the HP down a little with a different top punch when you size the bullet and this will help delay expansion. An example would be a 41 caliber top punch for a 44 or a 45. Experiment a bit.
As Bill Fowler mentioned I often carry a HP in chamber #1 & then back it up with solids in case I have to take one of Elmer Keith's "raking" shots as a follow up if the animal runs or turns, works great. There are no bad cast bullets but there can be bad hits with a cast bullet.

Dick

[revolvercranker]

Mr Martin I'm positive you know about the aging process of alloyed cast bullets. With that said I too had wondered when you back the PC on a cast bullet does it anneal it. Yes it does. I will then, after baking, go through an againg process and the bullet will again harden and if you water drop it it will be even harder.

I've tried PCing and I'm not sold on it. To make a state (not you Mr Martin) that you can drive PC faster is not exactly true. If you know what you are doing with cast you can push it plenty fast and without leading. I've devoted almost my entire life to shooting cast bullets and as the Farmer's Insurance ad says "We've seen a thing or two" so have I!

Last, but not least, how about paper patching bullets? This would pertain more to the rifle bullets then handgun, but handguns can be paper patched. You can take dead soft lead and paper patch to magnum rifle velocities. The NRA done just that with a 300 Win Mag and with accuracy.

I do agree with the statement about enjoy both cast and jacketed. If cast didn't have limitations then why do we have jacketed bullets? Tell all the militaries of the world they have to go back to cast bullets and see what they say. Understand what I'm saying?

[bigbrowndog]

My experience with cast HPs is minimal and relatively new. I typically use them for calibers that are difficult to locate jacketed HPs in. I’ve gotten excellent T accuracy with cast however they generally are not ableto be pushed as fast as jacketed and not lead the bore. Kept at 1300 and less they seem to perform perfectly, pushed at SM, Casull, or Maximum velocites they have given poor accuracy after 10 rounds or so. But those ten rounds are damned nice groups. I just shot some of Sixshots .45’s that were PC’d and weigh 305ish and feature a huge HP, I need to chrono them and shoot more but they look like they will be a good bullet for my Forkin 5 shot, velocity should be 1400ish s9 I’m hoping I can Get more than two cylinders through without needing to clean the bore.
Randy, for medium game I’m leaning towards cast HPs because finding jacketed is tough right now and I want to save the premium jacketed I have for game tougher than Texas whitetails and medium sized pigs. Large pigs will continue to get premium bullets, or solid cast.

Trapr

[revolvercranker]

Oct 17, 2023 15:15:28 GMT -5 bigbrowndog said:

My experience with cast HPs is minimal and relatively new. I typically use them for calibers that are difficult to locate jacketed HPs in. I’ve gotten excellent T accuracy with cast however they generally are not ableto be pushed as fast as jacketed and not lead the bore. Kept at 1300 and less they seem to perform perfectly, pushed at SM, Casull, or Maximum velocites they have given poor accuracy after 10 rounds or so. But those ten rounds are damned nice groups. I just shot some of Sixshots .45’s that were PC’d and weigh 305ish and feature a huge HP, I need to chrono them and shoot more but they look like they will be a good bullet for my Forkin 5 shot, velocity should be 1400ish s9 I’m hoping I can Get more than two cylinders through without needing to clean the bore.
Randy, for medium game I’m leaning towards cast HPs because finding jacketed is tough right now and I want to save the premium jacketed I have for game tougher than Texas whitetails and medium sized pigs. Large pigs will continue to get premium bullets, or solid cast.

Trapr

Trapr, I've push heaving 45 bullets loaded in 45 Colt brass up to almost 1700 fps from my Model 94 Trapper with no leading and very good accuracy.  When you've been into cast as long as I have you learn the things to do and not to do  One importat area for no leading with cast is the lube you use. I suffered along with the run of the mill lubes that people sold and companies so until I decided to make my own. I'm talking for high velocity loads. Low velocity one can use most lubes out there. I initially developed the lube for very high velocity cast rifle bullets and tried it for pistol/revolver bullets and it worked the same as for rifle.  Today I only have that one lube for ALL my cast bullet shooting low and high velocity and soft and hard alloy.  If I weren't so old I would have sold it commercially. 

[bradshaw]

revolvercranker.... as one new to Singleactions, may I suggest you not talk down to shooters on this forum? As for POWDER COAT CAST, it steps into the zone between cast and jacketed to close a performance gap between the two.
David Bradshaw

[revolvercranker]

If I have stepped on any members toes I apologize as it never intentional. I have a lot of experience on the topics discussed in this thread and thought I was helping. Again if I stepped on toes I applogize.

[bigbore5]

1) It's cheaper to cast so I shoot more, thus becoming a better shot.

2) I don't have to worry about components being available

3) I tailor my alloy and hp size through changing pins to get the best balance of penetration and expansion based upon what I am hunting.

4) I have a much wider variety of bullet designs and dimensions to choose from to tailor my loads to best suit the task at hand vs factory offerings.

5) I enjoy casting and experimenting with my bullets.

6) It just plain works

[sixshot]

Nothing wrong with not liking a powder coated bullet but if you want to shoot a soft HP it's going to be a trade off. Either shoot it slow, put a gas check on it or do like most of us have found, and that is, take the easy road & powder coat it. Not only can you shoot the HP quite soft but it will surprise you how tough that outer "shell" is. It's taken me a few animals, maybe not as many as you but it still surprises me.
Just a few years ago myself & Tank Hoover were deer hunting & I was snuggled into a little grove of trees & a muley buck started across an open field that had just been plowed. At first it was walking straight at me but as it got a bit closer it started angling a bit to my right but not much. I figured the distance to be about 50 yds. I was shooting my Ruger OM 44 flat top with a Keith soft 44 Penta HP & only 10 grs of Unique. At about the 50 yd mark, estimated, the buck started acting a bit nervous, I'm guessing he was getting a slight wiff of something he didn't like. I was wanting to shoot him center chest but I no longer had that shot so I took what he gave me. I broke the right front shoulder with that soft, powder coated HP, the bullet should have blew up on that shoulder bone, probably would have with a soft, lubricated HP.... but it didn't.
It went through one lung, exited the diaphram, went through all the guts & lodged up against the left hind leg. The buck managed to get turned around & take 2-3 steps before landing on his face. So, I ended up shooting him almost lengthways with a soft, Penta HP, I kind of like powder coated bullets, and my guns stay so much cleaner. The distance ended up being 64 yds ranged, back to my 4 wheeler, after the shot.
Here are a few of well over 100 kills from deer to elk, bears, moose, lions plains game & cape buffalo, everyone taken with powder coated bullets. I had great success with regular lubed bullets but powder coated is a better, much better mouse trap. But again, there is nothing wrong with todays jacketed bullets, it all comes down to placement & penetration.
This is the fork horrn muley taken at 64 yds with the Penta HP & the OM 44 flat top & 10 grs of Unique, almost went through lengthways.
Second photo is a Utah depradation antelope taken with an 8 shot Blackhawk 327 & the 135 gr Ferminator HP at, I think 74 yds with an exit, she just got turned around.
Third is a Utah depradation muley doe with my trusted bisley 41 magnum & a 215-220 gr HP, straight down & out.
Nice muley bucck with my Ruger 44 bisley at about 96 yds, iron sights, punched out both lungs & dropped straight down with the 245 gr penta HP & 10 grs of Unique.
Montana white tail with my 44 special FT & a 245 gr HP, 7.5 grs of Unique as he tried to blow past me, hit him running broadside at about 40 yds, he stopped & I center punched at 55 yds & over he went.
Idaho elk, long shot in deep snow, 184 yds off of my walking stick with my buddy shooting her with the range finder. Double lung with the Keith 260 gr bullet & 23.5 grs of H110, ran about 35-40 yds & plowed a big furrow in the snow.
Idaho muley, 120 yds with the Ruger 357 Maximum, best deer caliber out there, 180 gr HP.
Idaho elk, S&W 41 mangum, 230 gr Keith, about 65-70 yds, shot went almost length ways, ran in a little tight circle & tipped over. Long day.
Lion, S&W model 27, 173 gr Keith at 5 feet, after 11 hours on snow shoes. Have it mounted life size over my computer desk.
Utah antelope, 88 yds, Ruger 357 Maximum & a second one at 99 yds with the same shot. 180 gr HP, didn't see the second one but killed it with a gut shot. Did have a second depradation tag.
Cape Buffalo, bisley 45 & 308 gr LBT solid, shot almost length ways. Bullet still weighed 308 grs after the trackers cleaned it up.














Hundreds more photo's available.
Dick

[45MAN]

2 OLDER GENTS WITH LOTS OF CAST BULLET EXPERIENCE PROVIDING THEIR EXPERIENCE, NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT GOING FORWARD.

[revolvercranker]

Dick it sure looks like what you are using is definitely working for you. Great job on all those animals you harvested. Some big ones too!!

Hey that one PC bullet with the pentpoint hollow point, was that from a MP mold? I have a bunch of his molds and I have some of those pentpoint pins.

[sixshot]

Yes that penta HP was from a Miha mould & was the one that made me realize that there was something to powder coating besides just having a clean cylinder after a pistol match! That stuff is tough, there's no way a soft bullet HP should break a shoulder bone & then travel almost length ways through a mule deer buck. The second convincing shot was the two antelope with one shot in Utah, again with a soft HP from the 357 Maximum. Now the shot was a fluke, but the performance of the bullet was not, I've had other kills with soft bullets with that elastic cover around the bullet that still makes me smile but shake my head at the same time.
I like the looks of a conventional cast & lubed bullet better but I much prefer the performance of a powder coated bullet over a lubed bullet. When you can shoot soft lead at quite high velocity & do it with accuracy you're kind of gaming the system. Powder coating allows you to do that. Some people will never convert to powder coating, I understand that, I never really cared for red headed women.... but, I never told my sister that because she would have pulled all my hair out & slapped me silly, and she was younger!

Dick