Mark Conner
Bullet alloys and Mule Deer.
Wednesday, October 19, 2022, 08:54

Over the past year or so I've been playing a lot with different alloys for a hunting bullet in the 455 GNR. The mould is a LBT LFN that was hollow pointed by Eric. The original weight of the solid bullet was 310 grs., after H.P'ing bullet weight was 290 grs.

After trying several different alloys I came back to my good old standby of 50% wheel weights and 50% pure. I shot them both air cooled and water dropped. The A.C. gave more expansion than I really wanted and was leaving some lead in the barrel, not enough that accuracy was ever affected, but more than I wanted.

Combined with the too much (for me) expansion and the little bit of leading I tried W.D. I water drop most of my bullets anyway, they just seem to shoot better in the 455 and the H.P. was no exception. But was it going to make them too hard for reliable expansion?

After recovering numerous bullets it looked as if they were going to do what I was looking for. The top row is obviously the original bullet, middle is the A.C. and bottom is the W.D. Of all the bullets recovered the average weight loss was about 5 grs.

Now for the real test. Deer season in Eastern Washington opened last Saturday, so my Son, G'son and I went out. I did draw an antlerless tag this year but all the does we saw had fawns with them and I really did not want to leave any orphans going into their first winter.

Monday, Jason and I went back for an afternoon hunt. About 4:00 pm the does and fawns started coming out to feed, then about 5:45 this young 4x4 came out. He was at 46 yards when I shot. The 455 and it's cast bullet did exactly what I was hoping they would do. The hole through the lung was a bit over an inch.

Jason did take a very nice 4x4 with eye guards the next day after a 2.25 mile hike into a draw that seems to always hold deer.