For deer sized game, I think this is the real take away. Good shooting solves most problems.

I shot a buck with a Sierra match HP 168gr

lung cavities shredded

it died from blood loss

it's a hunting bullet

Same but on two hogs.

When everything goes right, bullet choice not such a big deal, especially when you're parked in a blind somewhere. When things don't go so right....bad angles, animal moving, etc, bullet choice can be a really big deal.

For hunting I'm a huge fan of bullets specifically designed for the job and I think I have been well rewarded with the performance of them. I've shot more doubled hogs than i can count with through and through penetration. Few years ago my wife shot her first nice buck and hit the cattle panel feed pen square on, that 150 grain partition busted the panel and flew straight enough to hit dead on its mark and still provide lethal power and a small exit. Would other similar weight bullets have don't the same? I don't know, but looking at the condition of the jacket and rear core that were recovered from the deer, I am lead to believe not. Never found a 223 partition in an animal we have shot with it always had 2 holes and a blood trail, only one lost was a 400 +/- yard hail merry at a hog we found blood and bone but no recovery, it was a low hit, found chunks of leg bone.

For the more target/less hunting intended bullets i really like to stick to the heavy for caliber end of things. If you put the bullet where it needs to go, just about anything will work. That said there are many ways to skin a cat. I like exit wounds and penetration, but for every deer I have killed with a heavy for cal partitioned/bonded bullet there is someone who has killed one with a 50 grain hollow point out of a 223/22-250 etc. that were all just as dead. Pick your poison and be proficient with it.

Which caliber are you looking for? I've found the .308/168gr Amax are still available and bought a few hundred when they came back in stock. I think it might be the last one they are still making as theyre still cranking out factory ammo with the 168gr AMAX.

Jason, I have quite a few sst, Sierra pro hunters, and eld-x's to get me through quite a long time, so I haven'tcelt the crunch. But, I would have a hard time picking a bullet that is made for targets when I have a similar bullet that is designed specifically for expansion and hunting. I can't argue that some bullets such as smk and amax work for hunting, but why would you chose them over a bullet designed specifically for penetration and expansion? Or are you choosing it because it's the only thing available?

Bout time Johnny...grin...

You have to remember, people bring me their rifles for load development and ammo. My personal ammo making, I'm stocked up enough until I die, for hunting bullets. An example is if someone wants some ammo made for .308, and I can get an A-Max, it's worth bending their previous rules.

No kidding, huh? Most of those were with the CTR I bought from you....suppressed. I've gone to the dark side.

You can never go back.

I will concede that target bullets can double as hunting bullets. Although I have never used them, SMK has a reputation for doing that very well. But, if you had the choice and availability, would you choose an SMK or Amax over an SST or gameking?

162 7mm would be sweet. I actually ran across some 168’s recently in 308 and had a buddy order a couple thousand for his 308 pig gun, they were cheap too.

Depending on what we are doing. Close range, this order, Game King, SST, A-Max, SMK. The potential for 300 yard or farther shots, A-Max is my first pick. It's just done a good job for me in so many scenarios, both close and far shots. But, when we can't get the Game King or the SST, other options need to be explored. At least for some that may doubt how things are going to turn out.

A 7mm-08 I loaded for a few weeks ago, the guy didn't like the 150 ELD-X. I told him he would like the 162 ELD-X much better. But, in the end, he really wanted a Berger. I loaded him a Berger 168 Elite Hunter. He has a 1:8, so I knew that twist was going to do best with a 162 or 168. I'll load whatever someone wants, provided I can get all the parts.

Midway has 143’s as of 5 minutes ago,

Not now

I was able to pick up some Hornady Interlock Flat base in 30 and 6.8 calibers from Midway recently. Sometimes the plain Jane bullets come available and they work fine.

I sure hope so

Lately in the local stores, I'm beginning to actually see reloading bullets on the shelves. It appears to be a trickle right now, but at least the shelves are empty. Give it time.

^^^I concur with this. I think this is a good thread for some but I do a lot of hunting and very little shooting so I dont foresee ever needing to use a target bullet for hunting.

I do both...ALOT...

Moral of the story? Pick your shots better (IE broadside, slightly quartering) on un moving animals...🤷🏼‍♂️
I spend about 10% of my hunting in a blind over a feeder and it works both ways.

I agree with that as well. However with that said, I have shot a lot of different bullets in 6.5 Grendel, in to hogs, usually not just one or two, but 10 or more and sometimes a lot more than that in order to form opinions about how the bullets performed. Most of the time, I then necropsy the hogs, well, those I recovered.

What I have found is that how bullets are marketed does not always tell the whole story about how they can perform. AMAX is a classic example, originally designed and marketed as a match bullet, found by hunters to be a great deer round, and later marketed for hunting as well as target shooting...but not originally. I have shot varmint bullets into hogs that did great, and some not so good. I have used some target bullets as well with reasonable results. I have used some hunting bullets that really didn't perform that well.

So just because it is a target bullet, doesn't make it wrong for hunting. It may not be a great hunting bullet, but it may be pretty good or may actually be just fine, but the manufacturer didn't market it as such because they were already marketing what they thought was a good hunting bullet.

You also have to keep in mind that there are two major camps (by my appraisal of the situation) of those who want rounds that overpenetrate the body so as to have a better chance of leaving a good blood trail and those who want the bullets to NOT exit, thereby "dumping all the energy" (whatever that is supposed to mean) inside the animal. If you are an overpenetrate kind of guy, you may not like a lot of target ammunition that is apt to come apart in the body and not exit. You get the proclaimed energy dump, but you also get a lot of bits of metal in the meat and not always just in the narrow wound channel.

Me? I like a bullet that does a lot of tissue damage going through the body and I don't care if it exits or not (but it is better for pics if I can recover the bullet).

The worst thing that can happen other than a bullet never working well, which is a problem for non-hunting ammo (more so than hunting ammo) is that is has inconsistent performance. Sometimes you get target rounds that will expand and come apart while penetrating nicely, much like some varmint rounds. Then you find on the next animal that it didn't expand and just penciled right through (NOT GOOD). The same bullet may also sometimes just mushroom like a soft point, but maybe not consistently...like maybe it was well on the way to penciling through before the tip gave out and started to compress. So maybe you shoot two or three animals and get good performance and think you have a winner and then you shoot the next two or three and the bullet doesn't perform the same way. This is really frustrating.

I think people get too hung up on claims of what bullets are designed to do or marketed to do. That doesn't matter nearly as much as what bullets actually do on a consistent basis. The trouble is that you often need to shoot a bunch of animals to figure out if they are consistent performers or not.

Just shoot them in the neck or head and it doesn’t matter what bullet you use they’re going to lay where they stood.