I have killed mule deer , elk , black bear and antelope with 150 grainers out of a 308. On everything but the antelope we recovered the bullets under the offside hide. SST is my go to bullet if something needs to be deaded.

I've never personally used the SSTs but many friends do and they work perfectly well.  My answer to killing anything with .30-06 is 165gr sierra gameking HPBT it drops them DRT everytime.

Dumped plenty of deer with the bullet. That is it’s primary job.

I have killed a lot of deer with my 308. All I shoot is 150 gr hornady sst.  It's an awesome round.

Hunting in south eastern US it works great. If I was shooting in heavy brush I might would go up but my rifle really really performs well with the 150s.

That is my favorite .308 and 30-06 bullet for deer.

I shot 2 deer with the 165 grain 308 SST.  They exploded but neither passed through.  I managed to find one, it was just a mangled jacket with no lead.  I suppose this could be a benefit if you don’t get a good shot in. Because I could see fragments peppering the vitals.   I chose the bullet because of its accuracy, but I switched to the accubond long range because it’s more accurate and doesn’t explode

This is strange to me as I have shot probably 15 with 150 SSTs and never  had one not pass through. I am very picky about shot placement and stay in the heart/lung area when they are broadside.

Yea, I didn’t hit any major bone either.  After those shots, I was afraid to hit a shoulder.  Shots were at about 50 yds and about 80yds

Years ago I shot a coyote with a 165 grain SST out of my .30-06 (was the LightMagnum factory Hornady load). At 100 yards the bullet absolutely came apart, in something as soft as a coyote it shouldnt have come apart so violently. I swore off that bullet then and there. Nosler BT's and Accubonds dont blow up like that.

All day, every day, on just about every big game species in continental US.  Proceed with confidence.

These SST'S are "soft" bullets.  They open easily, and fast.  Performance is entirely dependent on impact speed...

If you are using them in a .308 Win, over moderate charges, in a 16 -20" barrel, then both muzzle velocity and resulting impact speeds are mild.  The 155 SST will work great.

Load the same bullet in a 30-06 or 300 in a 24" barrel and push it 300, 400 fps faster.  All bets are off.  It will come apart at least some of the time, especially at short ranges..

This bullet and the similar Nosler Ballistic Tip are fantastic deer bullets, provided muzzle speeds are about 2500-2600 fps, maybe a tad more.  This is not a great choice if your MV is running 2850+....

That’s correct, I agree that speed has a major effect on these.  I was shooting 308 out of a 19” barrel.  Like I mentioned before, ranges weren’t far.  I’d researched the bullet and found somewhere (internet, take it for what it’s worth) that Hornady slightly modified (or not) their match bullet and rebranded it as a hunting bullet. I can’t comment on the truth of that matter, but from me personal experience, I’d believe it.  If you look up bullet cross sections, you’ll see it looks like one of their match bullets.  It’s not bonded, so I don’t know how it’s held together. Maybe the same way a match bullet is?
The ballistic tips are essentially the same as the SSTs, and therefore I use Winchester 150 gr Ballistic tips in my Winchester 94 in 30-30. Because of the lower velocity, I think they’ll be great on deer (I haven’t had a chance to try them on deer yet).  Their accuracy is excellent out of my hunting Winchester 94

The OP wants to shoot these out of a garand so he won't be pushing those type of speeds so he most likely doesn't have to worry about the bullets coming apart.

They've always worked for us.  165, 150, and 125's in 308.  95grn in .243.   Dad successfully used them in his 6.5 grendel pistol this year but I don't know what grain.  We rarely recover the bullets in 308 and only once in .243 on a quartering shot that ended in the rear leg.  The 30 cal sometimes sheds the jacket from the base.   I used the 125's out of a 16" AR10 on a brute of a whitetail at 200.  Bullet went through the lungs and stopped in the hide after going through the off shoulder.  Internal damage was brutal.

A buddy of mine uses SST bullets out of his .308, I prefer GMX. I used the 165gr GMX to take a black bear and several deer. The way they hold together and penetrate deep has me sold. This was the bullet I recovered from my bear. I haven't weighed it, but I'd bet it's mostly all still there.

Attached File

Shooting a 120 grain out of the 6.8spc.  

It does a nice job on deer.  Good size exit wound everytime.

Anyone have experience with the .30 165gr soft point boat tail from speer?

I got them dirt cheap on midway, and at the price I'm ok with blasting, but noticed they shoot great out of two 308s and an -06 in a generic load (just made something safe to shoot and cycle, no tuning). Used TAC in the 308 and h4895 in the -06.

I'd like to be able to load them up as a medium game and anti personnel round.

Fritz:

The Speer 165 BTSP should work very well out of either 308 or 30-06....

The bullet we are discussing in pretty much an "old school" vanilla plain Jane bullet.  It's decades-old technology, basically just a lead core in a gilding metal jacket.  These bullets, and others very much like them, worked fantastically well in all sorts of loads on deer for generations.  It could be 1965, 1978, or 1991, but if you went to Kmart and grabbed a box of Rem Corelokts or Win Powerpoint, the bullets in those cartridges was very much the technological equivalent of those Speer 165 BTSP.

Bullet makers, including Speer, don't know if these will be loaded in your .300 Savage or your .300 Ultramag.  As such they have to accommodate a range of acceptable impact speeds.  They have to make some compromises.   A bullet that is ideal for a slow cartridge will likely blow the heck up at mag speeds.  Both the 308 and the 30-06 are moderate, middle of the range in terms of speeds.  As such, the 165 BTSP will work wonderfully at any speed you can reasonably expect out of either cartridge.

I would probably avoid these as a primary go-to bullet in a very fast cartridge. I expect that you might see over expansion and under penetration out of a big mag at short range.  However, they should be near perfect out of your 308 and 30-06.

There are a ton of "new" harder, tougher bullets on the market.  Barnes TTSX, Hornady GMX, etc.  I'd argue that especially out of the 308, the 165 BTSP is a BETTER choice than the hard deep penetrators.  At longer ranges the 308 in 165 gun loading looses speed.  Impact speeds drop.  Sometimes they drop low enough that expansion gets spotty at long ranges with a TTSX, GMX , etc.  This won't be an issue with the somewhat softer BTSP.

Short form....  If I was looking for a reasonably priced general purpose do-it-all general hunting and defense bullet for loading into 308 and 30-06, a plain old school 165 BTSP would be a primer contender.  My go to favorite bullet  is the 165 Nosler Ballistic Tip but its double the price.  The Speer 165 BTSP , or something similar like a the Hornady 165 BTSP, would offer very very similar performance at half the price.

Thanks. I figure they're meant for the milder cartridges like 308 and 06. Kinda out of weight range for any of the 300s, no? But if they make it out of the barrel if a 300WM, they'd probably do great on varmint.

I finished a basic load in the 06 with them, not going to play with seating depths as I quite frankly don't feel like fucking with it, and know my mauser is fairly sensitive to OAL. They're pushing 2700fps and making about 1½ to 1¾" at 100yds prone with a front bag. WLR primer and 47.9gr of H4895 in a winchester case set to 3.300 nominal or (iirc) 2.665" to ogive from the hornady comparator. Tip variation seems about +/- .002, but they seat to about +/- .00075. Not bad to load at all.

I loaded up 50 to keep on the shelf and zerod the rifle with them.

Hoping someone can chime in with a good report of their impacting deer size game.

My experiences again....

A 165 Nosler Ballistic Tip at these speeds will enter, penetrate about 3 inches.  From 3 inches to about 12 inches deep it will expand rapidly and vaporize a volume of tissue about the size of a small melon (and by vaporize, I mean totally gone, liquified).  From 12" to exit it will rapidly taper to a little 1/2" exit.  Its a dramatic killer on deer.  90% of the time deer drop dead on the spot.

The usual 165 BTSP (I've tried several but not all of them) is not as dramatic.  When hit solidly deer will reliably die, but usually run a good 50-70 yards before dropping dead.  Typically I saw a wound channel that was not as dramatic but still very effective.  Expansion to about 2" wound channel, more or less through and through. More a cylinder of tissue damage.

Fro

Interesting. What were your typical impact distances?

The noslers might be great, but pricey. I'm ok with pricey for hunting. We owe it to the game. I can't use bottlenecks because they scare ohio, so hunting with the speer bullets isn't really going to happen unless we were no longer worrying about license and tags. Slim chances I'll ever hunt out of state.

I'm looking at this as more of a what can it be used for. I got them cheap, and will buy more if the opportunity arises. I like to know what things are capable of. I'm glad to hear that while old tech, they still work. Even if they only functioned like fmj, at the price I paid, I wouldn't care, but I'd want to know they don't expand.

I've shot deer and hogs with the SST in 30/06 and 6.5/06, from 30 yards to 100 yards. I've had one exit out of 8 bullets fired. I think they are too fragile for my uses. I hunt in thick stuff and two holes make for a better blood trail.

I've shot more game with the old Amax bullet, and I've always had an exit, even on tough close shots. I was excited to try the EldX bullet, but it has acted like an SST.

I might use the 308 150 grain in a 300 blackout. In anything larger, I'd rather trust a 150 Interlock.

Use them out of my -06.

Probably have dropped 25 deer with them over the years.

They'll do fine.

My experiences with the SST have been that they leave every ft/lb of energy in the animal.

The bullet fragments are typically found on the backside of the hide or in opposite side bone.

As such, they don't leave much of a blood trail.  Fortunately, animals don't run far when their vitals get turned into jelly by an SST.

Fritz...

Impact distances were usually right between 70 and 110 yards.  Using a modest handload out of a 20" 308, speeds were fairly pedestrian.  I cannot remember the details at the moment, but I believe I was running these at about 2620 or thereabouts...  It wasn't 'fast".  But these speeds and the light construction of the Nosler Ballistic tip worked very very well for me.

I had kills with the Hornady 165 BTSP. Ranges were one kill at about 45 yards, the balance at 100-125.  All cleanly killed the deer.  Unlike the explosive Nosler BT, the Hornady  showed a narrower, deeper, more tunnel-like wound channel.  All deer were very clean 'center of the boiler room" hits.  All of them ran 75+ yards before piling in dead.  Chalk some of that up to the tenacity of the typical whitetail.

I suspect that the 165 BTSP might be a more dramatic killer, with more explosive expansion, if muzzle velocities were dialed up some over the mild speeds I shoot mine.  Take the BTSP and crank it up to about 2850-2900 and these should open harder and faster.

Off the top of my head I was pushing 2700fps with a load of TAC around 41gr in mild weather. Again from a 20" barrel.

Not sure how much faster I can drive them with my stacked powders, probably 2800, which would possibly be pushing it on pressure. I haven't fully developed the load, so I don't really know where my max will lay, for now it's looking like a normal pressure factory loading.

They do blow up, but that does lead to their near instantaneous  effectiveness.

I have used the 150 grain SST in my .308 Bolt Rifle with outstanding results this Feral Pig was taken at 700 yards on a power line right of way at 8 am in the morning here in South Carolina its the longest kill shot I have made on a Feral Hog to date. One-Shot One Kill !

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A pig that far out!   You gotta know your dope and be spot on with the range too.  

Yes, you do and a laser range finder helps I can still do it at 67 yrs old been doing it a long time but that's my greatest long-distance shot on a pig he stayed broadside long enough for my 7 moa adjustment in elevation. I seen the vapor trail of the bullet and knew I had him and he fell. But that round never exited the pig it hit his armor shoulder plate his shoulder bone went thru his heart and came to stop just under his hyde on his opposite side. It blew apart his heart and mushroomed perfectly. The Ballistic coefficient is .415 (G1) for the Hornady 30 Cal .308 150 gr SST  bullet. Remember the 308 drops 389 inches at 1,000 yards and drifts 100 inches in a full-value 10 mph wind. Best Zero should be 200 yards.