Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum Hornady American Whitetail vs Core lokts

Couldn't find any Core lokts for the 7mm-08, so I bought 3 boxes of the American Whitetails.

Am I messing up changing from the good ole Core lokts?

I am assuming that they will shoot good out of my savage & my stepson's savage.

I shoot them in all my rifles. You will be happy.

Killed my first two deer with these, but in .308. Neither ran out of view...

We (State of AL) bought American Whitetail this season because we got them at a pretty good buy, to do our deer collections with. I am not impressed, and I am not alone. I don't think I'll shoot them anymore. We shot hundreds of deer, so we had a lot of samples to base our opinion on.

Great accuracy, terrible wound channel. Or should I say...no wound channel.

With that said, they shot .25 MOA out of a cheap youth mossberg.

I'm likely going a different route on ammo this year.

This ^^^^^^^^^

What exactly didn't you like?

Shoulder shots dropped all 5 deer last year.

I changed for the same reason last year and all of the deer we shot were every bit as dead.

What 3FFarms said. The damage I wanted to see from a killing bullet was not there at all. Terrible blood trails, no blood trails, no exits, minimal damage, etc. They shoot great. They do NOT perform like that of a Core-lokt, or even the cheap Federal power shock. It out performs the Hornady by a long shot. At first I thought it was just coincidence, but after it happened dozens of times it was no longer coincidence.

Try Winchester power max. In 5 years I have only had to track one deer shooting them and I would say 90% of the deer didn't go another step!

I have enough SSTs for 2-3 seasons but have planned on either going back to core-lokts or am. White tails. Glad I saw this thread.

Matt - that's great information with hundreds of samples. what caliber was your experience in? Any experience in 308?

Thanks,

David

Do they have the Hornady Interlock bullet in them?

I'm probably about to get flamed for saying this, but I have had terrible fortune with the Interlock 7mm bullets. I shot them in a 7 mag for over a decade. I was younger and dumber then and didn't realize I was suffering from poor bullet performance.

If they have the Interlock in them, based on my experience I would be hesitant to hunt with them.

I was shooting them in a 7 Rem Mag. I was hand loading and using them. I worked up a load that had great accuracy, consistently running .75 MOA out of a Ruger M77 MKII. I lost several deer (10 or more) with them and blamed it on buck fever, but it all wasn't buck fever.

I shot a doe one morning. She was standing broadside in a food plot about 150 yards. I shot her dead center of the shoulder. I watched her run off, turn and run down in a drainage ditch. I walked to where I shot her and found hair and no blood. I was able to follow her tracks in the sandy food plot on my way to the ditch. She ran about 70 yards and was dead. There was a pencil sized entrance wound in her left shoulder and a pencil sized exit wound in her right shoulder. She never bled a drop.

The next season I shot a nice 8 point late one evening on a food plot. He was quartering to me and I took a neck shot so he would drop. I shot and he bolted. He ran in my general direction and I saw the general area where he went into the woods. I got down, found where I shot him. No blood. I trailed him by following large running tracks. He ran about 100 yards and piled up. Never one speck of blood.

When I cleaned him the bullet had gone in at the base of his neck and went stem to stern. The bullet path went exactly between his two hindquarters. There was a small bruised line on the inside of each hindquarter. The exit hole was about 6 inches below his bung hole and was the size of a pencil.

IMO those bullets are too hard, or something. For them not to expand when shooting through both shoulders on a mature doe at 150 yards is not acceptable. I was also surprised and disappointed that it didn't expand when travelling the full length of a 200 lb bucks body. That one didn't hit bone, but it should have mushroomed.

I add this to a bunch of threads.If you guys don't atleast give Winchester bonded powermax bullets a try you don't know what your missing.I have shot many a deer in my life with every kind of bullet imaginable from high end to off the shelf at k-mart and the bonded hollow point is the most devastating bullet I have seen yet.Even with the two I shot that ran a blind man could have blood trailed them.

Actually, now that you mention it, we did not find my sons Buck until the next day because there was ZERO blood trail with .243. It only ran 50yds with a quartering towards shoulder shot. I chalked it up to being a bad angle with a .243.

Winchester powermax....throw everything else away

I've killed 2 deer and a dozen or so hogs with them and one deer made it about 20 yards. Everything else was drt. (Dead right there)

Beer Belly, I cannot speak to the accuracy of the American Whitetail bullet. But, I have a couple boxes of them. I've just never run them through my .270 I use Core Lokt bullets as my back up because I know they're very dependable for accuracy and make a healthy wound channel. I primarily shoot Hornady Superformance because I just like them better. But before Hornady, I shot all Core Lokts.

Only problem with the 7mm08 Core Lokts is that I seem to can't find em anywhere...