Thanks guys, this one is going on the wall, but in October the owner shot a 14 pt. that scored 187, and I saw about a dozen deer this weekend that would score in the 160+ class, one is pushing 185-190. But when you hunt for free you shoot what they want shot, and in this case it had to be a 3 year old or older with only 8 or 9 points, that's good enough for me. The deer was facing me but pointed to my right at an angle. You can see the bullet inpact on the shoulder, broke the shoulder, exited the other side breaking through a rib on the way, probably a 1" opening on the offside. I was actually worried I had hit him to far back as he hunched up like he was gut shot, he moved maybe 10 feet to the right, turned toward me for a few steps and fell over. Total movement around 20-25 feet I would guess.
WARNING:IF YOU BLOW UP YOUR GUN OR YOURSELF IT"S NOT MY FAULT. THESE LOADS ARE SUITABLE FOR MY GUN ONLY AND MAY CAUSE SEVERE INJURY, DEATH OR A CATASTROPHIC FAILURE IN YOUR GUN.
My hunting load is RL19, CCI LR primer, Federal cases, my gun is also throated long for the 173 gr. bullets. Also note that for my sporter weight guns I just shoot 3 shot groups. I use 48 gr. RL19 for an accuracy load, it shoot's in the mid to high .5"'s pretty regularly with a long term average of .655". My hunting load is 50 gr. RL19, best group ever was .568", long term average is .750". I've been using this rifle for 4 seasons using my handloads and the S&B factory 173 gr. SPCE (a bullet I wish I could buy to reload). The S&B is not the most accurate but certainly good enough and really seems to pack a wallop.
The TSX is a good bullet, but on deer size game at medium ranges (under 250) I am just as happy with the performance of the 154 gr. Hornady that I previously reloaded. With the TSX I can get a usable velocity increase and good accuracy which is why I went to it. As an example one of the spots I hunted this weekend had a watering hole that ranged from 250 - 360 yards away. With the 140 TSX and its trajectory I feel like that is do-able, my load with the 154 gr. Hornady only runs 2550 FPS and velocity drops off a little more quickly.
If you keep velocity about the same I would guess POI would remain the same, but haven't tried it so I'm not sure. My loads aren't really comparable, the S&B and Hornady reload shoot to almost the same POI, the 140 TSX load shoots almost 4 inches higher but is running almost 200 FPS faster.
