what is your favorite cartridge and bullet weight for Texas whitetails and pigs?

I've been shooting Federal Premium 130 gr Trophy Bonded Tips in my 270 here lately and have zero complaints. They seem to perform like Nosler Accubonds, but retain more weight....about 80-85%. They open well when bone isn't hit, but keep on truckin' when you do. Probably not needed for WT, but they shoot well and I like the performance

[quote=Drop Tine]I've been shooting Federal Premium 130 gr Trophy Bonded Tips in my 270 here lately and have zero complaints. They seem to perform like Nosler Accubonds, but retain more weight....about 80-85%. They open well when bone isn't hit, but keep on truckin' when you do. Probably not needed for WT, but they shoot well and I like the performance[

^^ these. I've preferred 130's in my 270 for years. Only thing I ever liked any better were the "old school" 140gr win silver tips.

Unless you are going to be shooting longer ranges its really hard to beat a 130 Core Lokt.

This^^^^^^^ I have not had a dead deer complain yet.

I use 130 Sierras and a stiff dose of IMR-4350. Simply hard to beat.

My savage loves 140 Bergers with 4831

Anything that will shoot well out of your 270 will do the trick for deer and hogs. It is not necessary to use premium ammo.

This is very true. But I enjoy trying different things. This year will try 110gr TTSXs at about 3250fps. No doubt wt will drop them just like 130 gr Core Lokts or Power Points.

I say it depends on where your hunting and how big your "average deer" is; I hunt in Southern Oklahoma(I know its not Texas) but its not uncommon to run across 150lbs doe and bucks that go well over 200lbs.

I have shot deer with LOTS of .270win hand loads as well as factory ammo and for me the best all around load is 140gr. Hornady BTSP loaded with RE22 1 full grain under max; as well as the 140gr. Nosler Accubond with the same charge of RE22. I found that this powder charge with both bullets and same OAL gives me the same point of impact; so its nice to be able to switch from cheaper Hornady bullet for practice, hogs and shooting doe then have the option of a bonded bullet without having to re-sight my rifle.

Other good "on game performing" factory rounds I have found are in no particular order are.....

Federal Fusion 130gr
Winchester Power Max bonded hollow points 130gr
Hornady American white tail & Custom load 130gr & 140gr BTSP
Federal - Nosler Accubond and Partition
Even the cheap Federal Blue box 130gr lead tips

The only bad experiences I have had or seen first hand(guiding hunts) were with the 130gr. sierra game king and 130gr. Winchester Balistic Silver Tip 130gr.

Some people swear by both of these rounds; but I'm just speaking from personal experience that I don't care for them.

130 gr Nosler Ballistic Tips over 59 grains of H4831 sc and CCI BR2 primers. Been using that load, or with plain old H4831, for decades and for a couple hundred deer and pigs of various sizes.

If 140's are preferred, I'd suggest the Sierra 140 gr HPBT.

Just curious, what were the bad experiences with these two bullets?

@ TTH_40 - In regards to the bad experiences they were.......

Ok, first of all don't mean to hijack this thread; and its gonna be a long read......

Sierra Game King - had 3 instances in the same season.

Shot a 140lbs doe at 120yds in the shoulder broad side dead center in the middle of the front shoulder; she ran off and left very little blood behind so after looking for upwards of half an hour we finally realized that she had actually gone into the creek 100ish yds from where she was hit. I figure "all is well that ends well" and when we got her back to the barn to skin her out it turns out she didn't die from blood loss - the bullet broke her front left shoulder blade then skidded along the side of the ribs leaving behind shards of copper and lead before exiting the front of her neck. My buddy who is a doctor was skinning and cleaning this doe close to me while I was caping out a buck for him and he calls me over to show me this and says "This isn't really a mortal wound" to which I can only ask "how did she die then?".....He continued gutting the doe and as it turns out her lungs were full of water- so she drowned in the creek.

No other damage was found on any vital organs - heart, liver, and lungs(except for being full of water)were all fine.

Thanks giving morning 1 week later I am hunting with the same rifle and 130gr. Sierra Game king and a LARGE buck appears; the kind of LARGE buck that you don't have to ask your self "Is it a shooter?"...you just reach for the rifle.

Shot him in the shoulder at 150yds and he did the "front end hop" like when they are hit good and his chest went to the ground and he was pushing himself with his chest on the ground and pushing only with his hind legs for 30ish feet while I was reloading and I thought "He's down, just pushing with his hind legs....he's done!"

Much to my surprise he never stopped pushing with his hind legs and made it back to all four feet and made it to the treeline; I still believed he would be dead just inside the tree line......WRONG!

Inside the treeline there were two 3' long and 2" wide sprays of blood about 15 feet apart; the blood was bright red with no gut smell and I knew I hit him good because I didn't loose the sight picture in the recoil....That's why for the life of me a couldn't understand why there was a nearly non existent blood trail after to 2 first "sprays" of blood.

I tracked him literally on my hands and knees for hours marking one drop of blood to another with sticks for 400yds+. I actually missed Thanks Giving with my family and was still looking for blood on my hands and knees when I hear 3 men screaming at each other in the distance close to the county road and I mean they were SCREAMING......"You sorry mother F&^%#$" "F*&% you A$% HOLE!" and on and on.

So I start making my way over to where the commotion was(another 300yds through HEAVY brush from last blood I found on my hands and knees) and find a small pool of blood the size of a dinner plate, two empty beer cans that were still cold and a drag line to the road where I can only assume one of the screaming men if not both had dragged that buck to the road and loaded it up. I think either they got in a fight over it or someone came along and saw what they were doing and gave them a piece of their mind.

I back tracked from the blood pool by the road, once again on my hands and knees only finding a few drops of blood every 20yds or so until I ended up right back at my last blood marker from where I was blood trailing.

To this day it's the only deer I have shot and not recovered; People can say "bad shot placement" all they want, but the following Saturday I shot another doe at 100yds, with the same load and it knocked it straight down. The doe never took another step but laid on the ground violently shaking its head for several minutes and seemed to be rather healthy other than being immobilized, so I shot her again(still 100ish yds) while laying on the ground on its side; hitting it right in the sternum.

When I cleaned that doe, the first shot seemed to splatter on the shoulder blade shattering it and a couple of ribs with only a couple of small holes into the chest cavity. Now the second shot that hit her in the sternum penetrated the sternum but EXPLODED in the chest cavity liquefying the heart and the lungs looked like they had been shot with #8 bird shot, no part of either bullet bigger than a grain of rice was recovered and no exit wounds either.

Balistic Silver tips....

Guess it was 2008 or 2009 - I was sitting in a blind with a client(I'm the guide) and he is using 130gr Balistic silver tips; a nice 10 point comes out and he hits it square in the shoulder while I look through binoculars and I see the bullet make impact and POOF a massive cloud of hair erupts from the shoulder on impact, blowing all the skin, meat and hair from the shoulder about the size of a clay pigeon. The buck runs off; and other than a broken front leg it appears to be alarmingly healthy......We look for hours and never find blood let alone the buck.

The next day after double checking the rifle to make sure it was on; and it was....we go out and a big 300+lbs hog comes out and the client shoots him in the head and drops him dead. The bullet hit half way up between the jaw and ear and the bullet didn't exit. The hog was dead, but that bullet still should have exited.

Couple of days later my cousin is using a .300win with 180gr. Balistic Silver Tips and shot a BIG 145" 8 point that was probably the largest body deer I have ever seen at 80ish yds and hit the buck in the face just below the left eye ball(head shot was only shot available); I was in the blind watching through binoculars and it dropped into the tall grass.

I thought ".300win to the face, this bucks head is probably blown up like a rip melon".....but we walk up to it and there is simply an entrance wound just below the left eye and NO EXIT. So little damage was done that we had the buck mounted and you cant even tell it was shot in the face with a .300win.

Once again the buck did die.....but there should have been an exit wound; and if the bullet failed to penetrate with a head shot, the outcome if it had been shot in the shoulder probably wouldn't have been on par with what a 180gr. .300win should do.

I don't know why these Balistic Silver tips were performing this way, because I have personally used regular 140gr. Balistic tips in .270win with good success in the past as well as 180gr Balistic tips in my .300wby with great success.

These days I use 140gr. Hornady interlock BTSP & 140gr. Accubond in .270win, 100gr Barnes TSX in .257wby and 180gr. Balistic tips in .300wby and have had zero issues with bullet performance.

Wow.

Excellent descriptive post, deewayne. Great stuff!!

I've been handloading and using SGK's in .277", .284" and .308" for a VERY long time and have never run into issues like you have described. I've also used Sierra ProHunters and Hornady Interlock pretty extensively and have never had an issue with them either. My shots over the years have ranged from 50 yards out to almost 300 yards, quite a few deer and lots of hogs. I do like to hear about all kinds of experiences with those bullets though, good or bad. I still like to know what's happening out there.

I guess everyone has different experiences. It'd be a boring world otherwise.

@tth_40

I hear yah, I started using the SGK in .270win factory loaded in the Federal Premium line because they were so accurate and SGK's were partly responsible for me getting into reloading, when the old man at the local gun store showed me how much I could be loading the same bullets for.

I still use them in in 270 but the PMC version. Still have two boxes.

FIL shot a 100 lb dress doe at 70-80 yards behind the shoulders with a 270 win and 140 grain sierra btsp federal premium ammo. Bullet shed its core no exit wound. She didn't go far at all and no trouble finding her, but I expect a lot more out of a 140 grain 270 than that.