Reloading dilemma

Dirty Antler

Active Member
Good Evening y'all. Hope you're all behaving yourselves:rolleyes:

I have a confession to make, I haven't posted for a loooooooong time now. I have been on to peruse over some interesting posts though but been happily keeping busy with Gamekeeping and family commitments. The reason I'm here tonight is to ask for your help based on experience and knowledge. Knowledge is the BOMB LOL

I'm fast running out of heads for reloading and need a suitable replacement. Can't get any more:cry:Tried Reloading Solutions, Sportsman GC and an outlet called Leamon Sporting but all to no avail sadly. I'm currently using Hornady 87gn BTHP with Reloader19@46.6gns in .243. The results with these are subliminal. Great for foxing and at range too. Not taken any deer with these yet but I'm quite certain they won't make a too big a mess of the carcass. This is what I'm talking about, whatever I've aimed at and pulled the trigger, it's dropped!!!
ANYWAY.........Back to the task in hand. I need to find a suitable replacement. Another bullet of similar characteristics, boat-tail and roughly same B.C.
Your help and opinions would be very much welcomed.





Jase
 
Good Evening y'all. Hope you're all behaving yourselves:rolleyes:

I have a confession to make, I haven't posted for a loooooooong time now. I have been on to peruse over some interesting posts though but been happily keeping busy with Gamekeeping and family commitments. The reason I'm here tonight is to ask for your help based on experience and knowledge. Knowledge is the BOMB LOL

I'm fast running out of heads for reloading and need a suitable replacement. Can't get any more:cry:Tried Reloading Solutions, Sportsman GC and an outlet called Leamon Sporting but all to no avail sadly. I'm currently using Hornady 87gn BTHP with Reloader19@46.6gns in .243. The results with these are subliminal. Great for foxing and at range too. Not taken any deer with these yet but I'm quite certain they won't make a too big a mess of the carcass. This is what I'm talking about, whatever I've aimed at and pulled the trigger, it's dropped!!!
ANYWAY.........Back to the task in hand. I need to find a suitable replacement. Another bullet of similar characteristics, boat-tail and roughly same B.C.
Your help and opinions would be very much welcomed.





Jase

easy 87gr Hornady soft points,I don't know if you knew that the bullets you used to use have now change to Varmint,which mean they do leave a lot of damage to deer,I knoiw this due to having a batch of the old BTHP and then changed to the new barnded version the difference was ureal,hence the change to there 87gr soft points
 
No, I didn't know that at all. None of the shops knew this either by the sounds?! I don't want explosive heads, I want to use an all rounder head, good stopping power with as little meat damage as possible on deer yet destructive enough to drop foxes out to 200-250yrds instant. Do you think the SP Hornady's would be similar to powder weight and dimensions of the O-give and length?
 
A little cofused now, I've read here that the Vmax are varmint bullets?? No good for deer then?! Though, saying that, could take neck shots I guess if they are a little explosive???!
I'm using Lapua brass with an RPA Woodland Stalker if that helps
 
Before I moved to 7mm08 I used 87gr Hornady soft points. They do the job and expand nicely but I didn't like the calibre. I wouldn't consider V max for deer although some on here might disagree.
Hope that helps.
 
are the hornady 87 grain soft points , boatail or flat base ?????
 
No, I didn't know that at all. None of the shops knew this either by the sounds?! I don't want explosive heads, I want to use an all rounder head, good stopping power with as little meat damage as possible on deer yet destructive enough to drop foxes out to 200-250yrds instant. Do you think the SP Hornady's would be similar to powder weight and dimensions of the O-give and length?

I loaded a batch of the 87gr BTHP for a guy then pulled them and loaded the exact same spec with the 87gr SP,they shot just as well and didn't damage the meat
 
I have been using the 87gr BTSP as well, to good effect.

The packaging does now call them varmint, whereas they were called interlock before. I was concerned there might have been a change in spec, and so I called Hornady and spoke to a customer services guy.

He said it was just a branding change, and the bullets are the same as they ever were. He did say he was of the opinion that for deer he preferred to keep the speed down a bit.

Of course to keep them deer legal we have to run them up over 3000 fps, but that's our rules, not theirs.
 
Before I moved to 7mm08 I used 87gr Hornady soft points. They do the job and expand nicely but I didn't like the calibre. I wouldn't consider V max for deer although some on here might disagree.
Hope that helps.

Well, I'm thinking of adding .30-06 to my ticket or a variation from .22wrm to take larger fallow, possibly reds?? But where I am, I think it's only a matter of time before we see Wild Boar roaming around the grounds. Then there's a deer park being setup by BASC where members can gather evidence toward their Dsc2 Portfolio over a number of days?!
Thanks for your experience though dodgyrog
 
I loaded a batch of the 87gr BTHP for a guy then pulled them and loaded the exact same spec with the 87gr SP,they shot just as well and didn't damage the meat

That's what I've been looking for fella, a bullet that matches the BTHP and in weight too. When I first started out, I was using Factory Sako 90gn SP and believe it or not, these and my HL are identical zero?! I may have been able to source some Hor 87gn BTHP in the last hour from a shop in Huddersfield called Kirklees Guns? We shall see tomorrow :lol:
 
Hmmmmm, same bullet but different branding?? Daft ain't it?!! But still, these HL's are running around 3100fps so doing the maths, they're generating somwhere around 1856ftlb of energy at the muzzle. I'll have to dig deep on this, don't want to be ruining meat with varmint rounds. :doh:
 
87gr hornady vmax shot through a sako 243 cloverleafed all the time.h414 powder.foxing only,the damage to them is perfect with this bullet.
 
a lot of the smaller calibre Hornady bullets are branded "varmint" but are often just standard soft points
bear in mind the calibre in the country of origin is used predominantly for "varmint" rather than deer.

I use the .222 Hornady "Varmint" which are a standard cup and core flat based bullet and expand as they would in any other make. carcase damage and terminal effects are perfect for small deer and they are not messy or frangible at all

I also used 87gr Interlocks Flat based in .243 which is the perfect weight IMO

choose the bullet construction for the target you wish to eat, the ones you don't wish to eat will still die quickly and humanely
soft points run fast work just as well on foxes as they do on deer
 
87grain vmax gets another vote from me. used them out of 6ppc, 6br, 243 etc. suitable for everything imho. good bc for what it is too.
 
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