Thread: .223 for the Roar

The 70gr is too soft for 100% reliability on big stag shoulders @Hunter_Nick, that’s my take on it. The softness is a positive for engine room shots angled in, avoiding the heavy muscle and bone, but even after avoiding all but a rib bone or brisket the bullets I’ve recovered have been in bits ‘n’ pieces and just the shank remaining.

Technically, according to Speer, its a varmint bullet, these days it’s sold as the “Varmint Soft Point”. But its definitely stouter than a V-Max and Speer say it is “controlled expansion”. (It’s not, it’s just a bit harder than a proper varmint bullet.) So I sectioned one for a look see, whilst the jacket is thin the lead compound is harder than a V-Max, at least in my rudimentary scratch test comparison. So I wouldn’t call it controlled expansion, whereas the bonded Speer Gold Dot I definitely would.

It’s an old school bullet that has been around for years. My yankee cuz put me onto it, he told me that originally it was a popular whitetail bullet before the days of “controlled expansion” and maximum penetration become the fad and everyone wanted bonded bullets and monolithics and big exit holes. I switched to it because it was cheap, available in decent quantities and unfussy, and I prefer softer bullets that mushroom easily and partially fragment.