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All this may be old news to some, but is worth repeating! There is a growing interest in hunting with hard cast bullets, even to the point that the ammo makers are adding some to there line.
I started hunting with hard cast in 1956 and used a then new Ruger Flat Top .44 Mag. The favorite bullet of the day was the 250 gr #429421......so I bought a mold from Lyman. Using Elmer Keith's published load, I stsrted sighting in.....only to find the old style front sight was too high! after setting the rear sigt at its lowest setting, I reduce the height of the front sight until the gun was grouping at 50 yards.
I thought I was ready. The first deer I shoot ran off!!!!! I went home a got my dogs and trailed it up......a couple of hundred yards away. The bullet went through the lungs, with no blood trail!
I thought is was just a flute......only to have it happen more times! I know now that the #429421, with only a .280" meplat, just did not cause enough tissue damage! A simple case of over penetration! Maybe if I had used a softer alloy, the bullet would have worked?
Over the years since then, there has beem a great deal of design changes in hard cast! The single most important change has been to increase the meplat (meplat area)!
It is the meplat area and velocity that causes tissue [email protected] Slugs
I started hunting with hard cast in 1956 and used a then new Ruger Flat Top .44 Mag. The favorite bullet of the day was the 250 gr #429421......so I bought a mold from Lyman. Using Elmer Keith's published load, I stsrted sighting in.....only to find the old style front sight was too high! after setting the rear sigt at its lowest setting, I reduce the height of the front sight until the gun was grouping at 50 yards.
I thought I was ready. The first deer I shoot ran off!!!!! I went home a got my dogs and trailed it up......a couple of hundred yards away. The bullet went through the lungs, with no blood trail!
I thought is was just a flute......only to have it happen more times! I know now that the #429421, with only a .280" meplat, just did not cause enough tissue damage! A simple case of over penetration! Maybe if I had used a softer alloy, the bullet would have worked?
Over the years since then, there has beem a great deal of design changes in hard cast! The single most important change has been to increase the meplat (meplat area)!
It is the meplat area and velocity that causes tissue [email protected] Slugs