BTHP

Theoretically 0.5 inches at 100 yards works out to 2 inches at 400 yards but if you actually did 400 yard shooting, you would know it's not always that way in real life. If you get 0.5 MOA out of your 257 Roberts I would say you're doing well and I wouldn't change anything either. Accuracy means a lot more to me than how a bullet is made or how fast it's going.

Do you believe everything a bullet manufacturer tells you? If you do, then U. S. snipers use the "wrong bullet" since they use Match Kings. Of course you may argue that they just want to wound and not to kill. Yea, right.

According to H&H, the heavy, big-bore solids are intended as bone-breakers, as stoppers, so Mr. Great Big & Mean doesn't stomp on you. It's a whole different deal from our US hunting of deer and elk.

Do you believe everything a bullet manufacturer tells you? If you do, then U. S. snipers use the "wrong bullet" since they use Match Kings. Of course you may argue that they just want to wound and not to kill. Yea, right.

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Uh? Military are limited by convention to NOT use expanding bullets. They use FMJ in all firearms for that reason. I reckon Match Kings, being basically a FMJ non-expanding bullet with a hollow cavity in the nose, is perhaps legal. This does prove to ME that Match Kings won't expand. Plus, the military wants armor penetration in as much as it can get that. They couldn't if they used "dum dum" bullets.

kind of hard to compare bullets for killing men and bullets for killing elk. two different anatomies.

kind of hard to compare bullets for killing men and bullets for killing elk. two different anatomies.

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Yeah, and elk don't have access to kevlar vests and ceramic plates.

would you want a bullet that expands when shooting a kevlar vest? How many Taliban are wearing Kevlar?

Taliban hide behind walls. The military has an emphasis on penetration of armor. Primarily, they cannot by international law use expanding bullets, so this tells me that if they are using match kings in any way, they're not expanding bullets.

I'm not going to lose a deer finding out, just sayin'.

I just purchased 1,000, Sierra .277 caliber, 140 grain, HPBT Gamekings, and 500 Sierra 130 grain SP Pro Hunter projectiles. I never have fired either of them in my .270 WIn, and so testing should be fun. Since projectiles of all sort seem more limited right now, I figured they couldn't be worse than nothing. Reviews on both are positive, but that's marketing, right? I still have a couple hundred Hornady 130 grain SSTs, and wow do they work great. Back to the point of HPs, I think it depends as much on construction for intended use as anything. Matchkings are for target.

About 3 or 4 years back, I mistakenly loaded some Sierra 168 HPBT Matchkings in my .300 Win Mag. The first couple of hits on a deer had zero effect. The next round hit the shoulder and shattered it. I suspect they either blew-up, or passed completely through uneffected. I didn't realize my mistake until I returned home and looked at the box. The 165 grain HPs, were in the wrong spot. My mistake was not checking my box of projectiles twice.

All that said, my uncle uses exclusively Sierra 168 grain HPBT Matchkings for deer in his .300 Wea Mag and his .30-378 Wea Mag, and he swears by them. I'd never use them for hunting again, not by intent. A HP, yes, a Matchking HP? No.

Geno

If those Sierras don't do right for you I could give them a happy home My 270 WSM loves the 130 SGKs into tiny little one ragged hole groups with a mild charge of 4350, only bullet that it shoots better then a ballistic tip.

MCgunner said:

Uh? Military are limited by convention to NOT use expanding bullets. They use FMJ in all firearms for that reason. I reckon Match Kings, being basically a FMJ non-expanding bullet with a hollow cavity in the nose, is perhaps legal. This does prove to ME that Match Kings won't expand. Plus, the military wants armor penetration in as much as it can get that. They couldn't if they used "dum dum" bullets.

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Just curious, have you EVER seen a wound caused by a bullet that didn't expand or come apart (i.e., a solid)? In case you haven't, the hole in is about the same size as the hole out. Now take a look at the photos I posted. Do you think the hole in is the same size as the hole out?

It DOESN'T MATTER if the bullet expands, tumbles or comes apart. Tissue damage in each case is extensive with a high velocity projectile. Berger bullets which have similar construction to Sierra Match kings have been tested on all sorts of stuff including Red Deer (i.e., Elk by a different name) and were shown to be very effective.

In addition, the Geneva Convention does not mandate that FMJ bullets be used in all firearms; if it did our snipers wouldn't be shooting Match Kings.

I nearly lost an animal because of a too tough bullet from lack of expansion. It WAS a hunting bullet, but I think just too tough for the velocities at which I was driving it. Great shot, though, took his heart out. I didn't go more'n 75 yards, but I had to skin him to find the exit wound. I'll use what I know works and I won't touch a match king for hunting. Simple as that. You do what ya want. Me, i'll do the same.

I've been hunting deer for 50 years. Yeah, I've seen it all. And, I've heard they can't post anything that's not true on the internet. Call me a skeptic. I really don't see the point in shooting game with match bullets, anyway. I mean, there's so many good hunting bullets out there, WHY?

Mcgunner I was under the impression that the USA did not sign the Hague Convention act that banned expanding bullet, we just (normally) abide by it to play nice. The Army does in fact issue expanding HP bullets to MPs and for good reason.

MPs are law enforcement. Still, I was unaware they had JHPs. Back in the day, the standard .38 load for the Smith M&P (model 10) revolvers was a 130 grain FMJ. Never saw a .45 military round in a JHP. Never saw a 9mm military round in a JHP. But, I'm not in the military.

From Wiki... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907#Hague_Convention_of_1899

Hague Convention of 1899
Nicholas II

The peace conference was proposed on August 29, 1898 by Russian Tsar Nicholas II.[4] Nicholas and Count Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov, his foreign minister, were instrumental in initiating the conference. The conference opened on May 18, 1899, the Tsar's birthday. The convention was signed on July 29 of that year, and entered into force on September 4, 1900. The Hague Convention of 1899 consisted of four main sections and three additional declarations (the final main section is for some reason identical to the first additional declaration):

I: Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. This section included the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
II: Laws and Customs of War on Land
III: Adaptation to Maritime Warfare of Principles of Geneva Convention of 1864
IV: Prohibiting Launching of Projectiles and Explosives from Balloons
Declaration I: On the Launching of Projectiles and Explosives from Balloons
Declaration II: On the Use of Projectiles the Object of Which is the Diffusion of Asphyxiating or Deleterious Gases
Declaration III: On the Use of Bullets Which Expand or Flatten Easily in the Human Body

The main effect of the Convention was to ban the use of certain types of modern technology in war: bombing from the air, chemical warfare, and hollow point bullets.

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I can't find where the US didn't sign it. I can't find a list of signatories on that page, though, either. My understanding is that we signed it and I know we abide by it. It also concerns the treatment of POWs, that sort of thing. We've always abided by that while most of our enemies in history didn't.

Note, I read through it and the "bombing from the air" that was forbidden was actually expressed in the treated as "bombing from balloons". Planes weren't invented until 1903. I guess that one was read literally.

Ooops, here's a list I found of signatories of the 1899 and 1907 conventions. You'll note the US signed BOTH agreements.

http://www.pca-cpa.org/showpage.asp?pag_id=1038

The warfare deal is for bullets which do not expand. My understanding is that MatchKings don't expand. End of that story.

So, back to the topic of the thread, okay?

A reasonable generality is that BTHP hunting bullets do not have as heavy/strong a design as the flat-base of equal weight. For Sierra bullets, that's direct from a Sierra techie in a discussion at TFL some years back.

In the FWIW department, I found that a 180-grain Sierra SPBT makes a deeper dent in steel that a 165-grain Sierra HPBT. I would thus expect better penetration on a larger animal. Roughly equal sub-MOA group size.

Yep Match Kings (can) Yaw but they do not expand at the tip as the Berger VLD Hunting bullets do, look the same but very different construction. Seen SMKs shot into all kinds of stuff, phone books, water tanks, milk jugs....etc seen them dinged up all kinds of ways but never seen one mushroom.

mencius,

if it ain't broke, don't fix it. stay with the core lokts.

murf