308 Win 180 grain Norma Bondstrike

[Alaska]

Similar performance to 180gr AccuBond

 

[badaxeriverman]

Most the deer I shot with them were 250 plus field dressed. I don't see how shooting a bigger or smaller deer is going to make it act differently.

I do understand with a poorly placed shot that you're busting through bone and going diagonally through a deer or shooting it from end to end you're going to get different results because you're hitting hard bone. I'm shooting 99.9% broadside like I would do an archery shot so I'm not connecting with large bone. The one deer I shot that was a little over 250 that I hit in the shoulder blades all it did was poke a "full metal jacket size hole" in and out with no expansion. Which explains why the deer laid there and I had to go up and slit its throat while it was trying to get up. To me they're made for cape buffalo. Either way I'm one person with one opinion and I'll never use them again. I leaned my lesson on many deer. Good things there's hundreds of other bullet choices out there. If you love them, then use them, but I sure won't.

 

[SJB358]

Yep that's way too hard of a test versus an animal. I used to do the same thing when testing cast bullets for different Alloys to see how the hollow points would expand. The ones that look like a beautiful mushroom wouldn't even open up an animals with heart and lung shots. They would act like a shot them with a full metal jacket and run over a hundred yards before expiring with no blood trails. The super soft Alloys I used that literally would flatten out to the size of a penny shooting in water and only got through three or four jugs at the max would drop deer in their tracks and I would get an exit every time. That held together in my opinion way too well going through water. It probably would be good for shooting through a cape buffalo but not a black bear or whitetail deer.

There's a monster difference between a Partition and an AccuBond. I've shot deer with both and black bear with both. Accubons act like full metal jackets at 30-06 velocity. At least with a Partition it's soft lead and it opens up and smears so you get a good expansion with the first half of the bullet and some kinetic energy dump. Most deer i have shot with accubons look like they were shot with a full metal jacket...
besides running a country mile before expiring. The partitions put a nice hole in and out where you can actually see it expanded.

Never had a problem with excellent expansion on deer/ elk with a few Accubonds. Typically they’ve been much quicker killers for me. It’s good to have choices.

 

[WILLIAM W]

I hunt deer with a 308 Remington 700 which I have had everything replaced except the action. I bedded it myself and changed the internal magazine to a Badger system and a Triggertech trigger. Thanks to Nosler’s seconds program, I moved to the green-tipped 180-grain Ballistic tips, which I send from a 24-inch barrel at 2640 fps by 45.5 grains of VV550 and a magnum primer. In the last few years, thanks to the TV shows, I moved to the high shoulder DRT shot. I hunt public land, that thanks to the fools at Tennessee Wildlife allows rifle shooters a season that starts 2-weeks after being spooked by muzzle-loaders - well into the rut and at the start of Thanksgiving week. My last deer was a 60-yard shot which was delivered in my dead calm “deer assassin” mode. After the smoke and recoil cleared, my self-satisfaction was mortified to see it run off. My hunting buddy helped me track it from the blood-hiding moist leaves where I shot it onto the dry leaves and we found it - mercifully 50-yards closer to my truck. It was heavy-bodied, but with a small 6-point rack. The point of all this is that, apparently, the bullet had hit a small branch, mushroomed, deflected and totally opened up the lower stomach area, without an entrance hole. Thanks to the bullet construction and a high aimpoint from my usual heart shot, I salvaged a hard-find public land deer, that might have been painfully lost, into table fare.

 

[badaxeriverman]

I hunt deer with a 308 Remington 700 which I have had everything replaced except the action. I bedded it myself and changed the internal magazine to a Badger system and a Triggertech trigger. Thanks to Nosler’s seconds program, I moved to the green-tipped 180-grain Ballistic tips, which I send from a 24-inch barrel at 2640 fps by 45.5 grains of VV550 and a magnum primer. In the last few years, thanks to the TV shows, I moved to the high shoulder DRT shot. I hunt public land, that thanks to the fools at Tennessee Wildlife allows rifle shooters a season that starts 2-weeks after being spooked by muzzle-loaders - well into the rut and at the start of Thanksgiving week. My last deer was a 60-yard shot which was delivered in my dead calm “deer assassin” mode. After the smoke and recoil cleared, my self-satisfaction was mortified to see it run off. My hunting buddy helped me track it from the blood-hiding moist leaves where I shot it onto the dry leaves and we found it - mercifully 50-yards closer to my truck. It was heavy-bodied, but with a small 6-point rack. The point of all this is that, apparently, the bullet had hit a small branch, mushroomed, deflected and totally opened up the lower stomach area, without an entrance hole. Thanks to the bullet construction and a high aimpoint from my usual heart shot, I salvaged a hard-find public land deer, that might have been painfully lost, into table fare.

Sounds like you got a pretty nice rifle there that you dumped a lot of money into that didn’t need to be dumped into. I stopped doing that about 25 years ago and started investing in the smarter things like land for deer hunting. I got more rifles and I know what to do with anyways they stop wasting money on what I consider foolish purchases and started investing into things that will yield high profit and an investment that would set me for life with the increase in value over the years. Sure a gun might double or triple and price so a $500 gun might be worth 1500 bucks or $2500 at some point but the land value I bought has already gone up over 500% in value since I purchased it about 18 years ago or so. Just had to give up some valuable hunting and fishing time and work an extra job to get it paid off in five years.