Loading for Revlovers....Hunting Loads
Well I'm pouring my own cast bullets for several different calibers of revolvers. My loads are worked up to match the charistics of the alloy. As with most things cast bullets for hunting or even target shooting are a balancing act where you have to keep the pressure in balance with the alloy to gain optimal performance.
For hunting loads using cast bullets you need to have a realative velocity of around 900 - 1350fps at impact depending on the diameter of the bullets. With revolver loads most who shoot cast look towards a wide flat nosed,(WFN) type bullet as you not relying on expansion to do the work and the wider frontal area will displace as much or more tissue, depending on the velocity, than when using a hp. This said with cast bullets you can also get expansion from the WFN which will also aid in even more displacement.
OF course you can also use a cast HP as well and get even more of a good thing depending on how you approach things. With the same velocities, and impact ranges, using a 280gr WFN, I get plenty of expansion with both of them as can be seen below.
These examples were all shot into the same media at roughly the same velocities, as all loads are using the same charge weights and components other than the actual bullets. The bullets only vary in weight by about 10-15 grs one way or the other averaging around 275grs.
The differences your going to see with jacketed is that you have to load them to higher velocities, for the same weight if using cast bullets, if your wanting to get them to expand properly. I will not argue one way or the other about how much things have changed in even the past 10yrs with regard to jacketed bullet performance, but handgun bullets don't seem to have come as far along as rifle bullets have. While there are certainly some good ones, and some really great ones out there, what might work great for a BG in the dark at 5-7yds isn't necessarily as good on a critter at 20-40yds. It stil will take higher velocity to initiate expansion. That is what is reported to be so good about the WFN designs, they are already starting out at almost full caliber on the meplat, and the wider surface area will disrupt most tissue as it passes through. They are however not the end all savior of handgun hunting bullets as even they need a specific velocity impact speed to perform this function.
I have been hunting with handguns for close to 30yrs, used all manners of "THE" greatest thing since sliced bread. Loaded them from mundane to blistering velocities, and not until I started thinking ion a whole new direction did I realize how much different handgun bullets vary and perform from rifle bullets, and how much differently cast vairied from jacketed.
While there are months worth of reading material in printed pages as well as in cyber space, it still all boils down to putting the most accurate load where it needs to be, and then having the proper balance of velocity to initiate expansion, (if so desired), or to disrupt the material in front of the meplat. Most of what has been added here is along the lines of rifle loads where velcity does indeed play a vital role, but even running a 125gr 357 bullet at 1800fps, your still not even in the ball park of the destruction deliverd by a cup and core lead tipped rifle bullet hitting even a mundane 2300 - 2500fps. You cannot compare rifle loads to handgun loads in the same arguement, as it isn't apples to apples. While you can compare a RN revolver load to a WFN even there things get a bit twisted in that the RN can in most cases tumble upon entry, where in most cases the WFN will simply bore a straight hole until ir either hits something substantial enough to stop it or it exits.
None of these examples however will ever put an end to the debate of which is better one hole or two. In the one hole theory one would have to have the velocity perfect each and every shot in order to stop the bullet each and every time from exiting. This simply isn't going to happen unless the animal is in the exact same position, same range, and of the exact same build, time and time again. The absolute best one could hope for is that the bullet does all it can do in a 14-18" spread, and if or when it does exit, it simply falls out on the ground on the offside of the critter. If it doesn't then it hasn't performed to it's full potential, as vied by plenty. Whereas if it does expand to full diameter and blows out the backside leaving a double or more sized hole, it can easily be said it delivered all that could be expected of it.
This is a picture of a 300gr WFN bullet, shown in the middle, which left the muzzle at 1550fps. It was recovered after plowing through over 24" (2-5gal buckets pictured below), of water filled buckets and nearly penetrating the third.
This is the same bullet shown in the middle captured at the moment of impact with the bucket. It is pretty obvious there is plenty of energy, knockdown, or whatever you want to call it being delivered to what ever is on the receiving end of one.
I can also say that with several hogs, and one deer, this was about the same result when the hammer was dropped. This bullet literally will roll them over from flipping them forwards ro sideways. At impact there is absolutely no doubt that something drastic just happened.
