I am at a bit of a crossroads early in my experience with cast boolits, and would appreciate some advice. I'm an experienced hunter, including use of commercial cast boolits but have limited actual casting experience.
I hunt with a 1957 Marlin 336RC .35 Remington with Micro-Groove rifling, and I have succeeded in building up a very accurate load with the RCBS 200-35 FNGC boolit weighing 210 grains, H4895 powder, Fed. 210 primer and delivering a velocity of 2150 fps. This load is giving me 5/8" groups at 50 yards with iron sights and to say I am pleased would be an understatement. In fact, I am tempted not to change a thing! Beginners Luck! However, accuracy is only part of this equation and above all, I want to go hunting with the best boolit for the job.
My goal is to produce an effective hunting boolit that will suffice for mule deer and the occasional moose (both in season here at the same time). My boolit alloy is wheel-weight and 2-3% tin, and it was oven heat-treated to a BHN of approx. 25+. It is obviously performing well in the Micro-Groove barrel even though boolit diameter at .358 is the same as the groove dia., not the .001-2 oversize usually required for accuracy in these barrels. I would suspect the power level applied here is bumping up the boolit diameter nicely.
My question is, where to go from here to improve the boolit for hunting? Should I begin changing the alloy by adding pure lead to a point where accuracy begins to fall off, then back up to the proportion that provides the softest boolit while still maintaining accuracy? On the other hand, should I maintain the hardness of the boolit bearing surface and start developing a soft-nose utilizing the double pour method outlined recently by BruceB? Or perhaps just leave it alone, and go hunting?
I have already experienced good success killing mule deer with boolits at the same hardness level, and I'm inclined to stay this hard to keep the meplate intact as long as possible and provide greater wound channel diameter on deer. The greater penetration of a hard but tough (ductile) boolit would also seem to be a benefit when hunting moose, and I hesitate to reduce that factor.
Since I never know what species will present itself while I am hunting, I'm looking to make the decision that would be most effective on both species. Would a softer boolit be just as effective on both? Those of you that hunt both deer and elk with cb's might have a little more insight on this.
What would you do? I would appreciate your thoughts.
BrushBuster