Now, if you wanted to use a bullet intended for varmits for neck or ear hole shots, it'll work good. Especially if you don't want a missed shot or pass though to ricochet. A quickly fragmenting bullet would be ideal like a Varmageddon, vmax, or Sierra blitzking type bullet's.
I will see if I can locate some of my recovered TNT bullets from deer and hogs.
I use that bullet exclusively in black out and in 30 Herrett, my blackout rifles have muzzle velocity of 2200, 2400 out of my bolt action, and 2600 from the herrett.
I shot a doe lengthwise from the brisket with my 300 blackout SBR with muzzle velocity of 2200 ft./s and that bullet did not expand at all, other than losing its jacket the lead slug was complete and only deformed.
Jump up the velocity to 24 or 2600 and that bullet expands nicely. In fact I’ve got a perfectly mushroomed jacket still intact bullet recovered from a hog that I shot with my 30 herrett. I found that bullet lodged under the hide.
You may remember the Remington core-lokt commercials in field and stream magazines from the 80s, their slogan was the deadliest mushroom in the woods in the bullet that I recovered looks just like the bullet they used in that illustration.
If I’m not mistaken that recovered bullet weighed in the 90 or so grain range so it did lose some of its weight. But it performed beautifully and dropped a hog in its tracks from a shot to the vitals at a quartering angle shot.
Incidentally, my 165 grain SST‘s that I use in my 308 at 2700 ft./s tend to lose a similar percentage of their mass in bullets that I’ve recovered.
In my experience, varmint bullets when fired from cartridges that start out with slower muzzle velocity‘s tend to act more like big game bullets.
Speer TNT being my favorite but I’ve also had good results with the Sierra 110 grain hollowpoint and the Sierra 125 grain varmint bullet, whose name currently escapes. Being my favorite but I’ve also had good results with the Sierra 110 grain hollowpoint and the Sierra 125 grain format bullet, whose name currently escapes me.
I’m not saying everyone should do what I do or that these are a good choice for anyone else and I’ve got no experience with the caliber Brian uses or the bullet he’s referring to but for what I do with my varmint bullets I wouldn’t dream of changing anything.
I really enjoy and appreciate all the testing Brian does. Most of the time I don’t even want to touch these hogs.