Quote:
Originally Posted by Sitting Bull
Hey guys, I have a Marlin in 35Rem that I am thinking of using cast bullets in order to bring the cost of shooting down. I have never shot cast and really know nothing about it other than it's not healthy(poison) and what I have read on the net. I will not be casting my own but rather buying pre made gas checked. Jet bullets in Wetaskiwin has 225gr. RNFP gas checked for $68.00/200 .
a) What can I expect with cast as far as performance, issues and maintenance?
b) What about lead contamination in the meat?
c) What are your thoughts regarding the use of cast in general?
d) How do you decide on the hardness of a bullet?
Thats for the help.
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35rem seems to be a favourite hunting cartridge among long time cast shooters as it handles bigger game better than the 30's
Looks like you already have a lot of good advice, but one thing not mentioned is to bell your case mouths, either with a lee flaring die, a lyman M die, or even just a set of needle nose pliers, this prevents your case from shaving lead and effectivly making your bullet under sized.
Softer bullets expand, hard cast do not preform on game as well in my experience even with a larger meplat. I have had faster kills and better terminal preformance with acww+2% tin (~12bhn) at 1700fps with my 3030 than with water quenched (~22bhn) at 2000fps given similar shot placement and range, but they all died reasonably quickly and left good blood trails.
When i first started casting i had a bunny load and a deer load using the same lee 170gr bullet, i kept them seperate by using different headstamp brass for different loads. Long story short i put a 170gr acww bullet behind a deers shoulder at 30 yards that had the wrong headstamp, it was moving 1100fps and it was not recovered, the deer left a good 25y blood trail and died. i ordered a 125gr mold the following day so i could tell even by feel which cartridge i was holding and prevent that from happening again.
What i am trying to illustrate is that a flat nose cast bullet works great even at below acceptable velocity levels, if you find great accuracy at anything over 1700fps you will be able to effectivly kill any game animal not wearing kevlar out to 200 yards with that big 225gr slug as long as you know your trajectory and are handy with range estimation. I am more confident in a 2moa load at 1700fps than a 4moa load at 2000fps