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Animal Specific Ammunition
Ivan9686
Member Posts: 38 ✭✭
What is your experience on the effectiveness of using animal specific ammunition such as Winchester's Whitetail and Razorback or Remington's Hog Hammer? I used the Whitetail in 30-06 and found that it destroyed too much meat on South Texas whitetails unless you used a head shot. It did plant them in place however with a heart/lung shot. I have not used the two designed for feral hogs yet and wonder if they're worth the expense. Any suggestions?
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That said, there is nothing wrong with the core-lockt, or just plain old JHP or JSP or whatever that have been killing deer, hogs, etc. for a hundred years.
You've been had by the marketing department....
Remember, that if you choose to shoot a deer or any other animal ON the shoulder, that when the shoulder is shattered, it will ruin a lot of meat. Just like when someone punches you real hard in the arm, and your arm turns black-n-blue. Yes, a shoulder shot can be used to try to anchor, and disable game, which I have seen it work, and not work, but you are going to destroy meat.
Hunt in NY, we have bigger deer![:D][:D][:D]
Best
There is no such thing as "animal specific" ammo. There are bullets designed for "classes of game" such as light thin skinned, heavy thick skinned, and dangerous game that bites back. There are also some very compromising bullets that offer expansion with deep penetration which can span a wide variety of game sizes/types.
It's marketing to a segment of the hunting/shooting world. "New box art, new excitement."
Now the Razorback loads are a bit different, in that it's not a rebranded product but one with a newly-designed all-copper bullet for the .308 and .223 that was (allegedly) intended for tough wild boar hunting. The advertising stuff I've seen includes the nickel cases for reliable feeding, etc. shows that Razorback's marketed to the semi-auto Ar-15/Ar-10 hog hunter first. (Of course they'll work in bolt, other semis, pumps, etc..) I have not used it on a boar however.
On a side note, I replaced all 300 of the 15-year-old .223 Federal 68 gr Match JHP that I had loaded in my defense gun's magazines recently with the 62 gr Razorback loads. It sure cost me a few $$, but I've shot a few of the bullets at some barriers and found them to be dang good at doing what I want them to do if the chips are down.
But without having tried them, I can tell you that probably 85%+ of the hunting type ammo sold in the USA is designed for medium sized game including whitetail deer and will work perfectly fine to take them down. It doesn't need to say "deerslayer" on the box for this to be true. Its also not clear to me how "special deer" ammo is any different than 20 other brands that are also meant for deer but just don't say so in the product name.
I can also tell you that ANY bullet that's good for a whitetail, is going to be plenty good on a variety of other animals of similar weight/size, including antelope, goats, sheep, black bear, yes and even most hogs.
If you're talking about African elephants which are a sort of unique type of game, then maybe you *DO* want an "elephant specific" load, but in the case of whitetail deer, there is quite a bit of stuff that can work.
Echoing what's already been said, the main thing is putting the bullet where its supposed to go. If you can do that, you can humanely take a hog or deer with a pretty wide variety of bullet types. If you can't put the shot were it needs to go, there is no "magic" bullet that's going to help you.
Ultimately, the differences in bullet design mostly come down to how fast the bullet opens up and how much weight they retain along the way.
To the extent that it matters, what you want is bullet expansion matched to your particular game animal. Bullets designed for really small game will fragment or explode quickly in large game, and not make a good wound channel. Conversely, bullets designed for large game won't open up quickly enough in smaller game, again wasting most of their potential.
Anything more than that, IMO is mostly academic.
Several years ago I conducted some research for an article in Handloaders Digest (see Some 30s & how they hit). The bullets tested were those intended for big game (not varmints or dangerous) mostly 180 gr with a few 165s. The data showed that if the bullet had an impact velocity of up to 2700 fps that the conventional bullets (CoreLokt, PowerPoint, Nosler Solid Base, SpirePoint, Sierra, Speer, etc performed very well. Only when velocities exceeded standard and the impact would have amounted to close range (3000 fps) did the stresses on the bullet exceed the bullets integrity. The bullet that really shown in the testing of the conventionals was the Speer MagTip, but it doesn't have the hype of the more expensive bullets so it tends to be overlooked by the writers of the printed page.
Is there any way of reading your article on the internet? Thank you.
Is there any way of reading your article on the internet? Thank you.
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It would be a little crude, but I can scan the article from the book & post it here or to a different site, if you like. I have a hunter education class that I'm co-teaching today through Saturday & I'm pretty remedial at scanning/posting things, so it may be a couple days before I get it figured out. (I'm a lot better with steel& wood, and brass & lead than I am with scanners and computers).