Ok you are sighted in with your scoped rifle and ready for your hunt. Are you really ready? I was out deer hunting locally with my scoped muzzleloader using an older scope I had in the closet. It was late September when my older scope was set up. It worked great at the range at 72 degrees. But on my local hunt, it was cold and raining/snowing. I looked through the scope when I was on my stand and saw fog in the scope. Figuring I got the scope glass wet, I wiped the glass but it was still foggy. As it turns out the scope had lost its gas filling.
So I am going on another cold weather hunt but way more expensive, with an older scope.
What to do?
I put my scope in the refrigerator for a few hours, months ahead of time. You should have a clear view through your scope. If not you need to contact your scope manufacturer as many scopes have lifetime warranties. No fridge, or the scope is already mounted? Use ice cubes in a plastic bag around the scope to mimic the outdoor temperature.
The Hornady GMX means Game eXpanding. The bullet is all gilding copper and has a cavity that opens up on contact like the Nosler E-Tip.
The advantage is that it retains 95% of its original weight, has no lead in the GMX bullet and appears to expand and penetrate better than some lead core Hornady spitzers.
I hand loaded the 180 grain GMX using RL 22 and got about a 1.5 inch bench rest group at 100 yards. The velocity should be close to 2800 fps, thus packing a real whallop. Great on Moose, Elk and Deer. Felt recoil is quite a bit more, rightly so, than my 6.5 Creedmoor but for Moose the 30-06 would be my choice of the two cartridges.
On big deer, I think that the 180 grain is a good choice for a 300 pound Northern Maine bruiser buck or a bull moose. it will drop them fast. You just got to make the first shot count with the T/C Encore!
Energy at 200 yards is a huge 2200 ft-lbs. Is it a brush bullet? I don’t really know, but if t hits vitals, that animal is going down. I do like the fact that if it hits bone, it stays together and there is no lead in the meat to cut out. The big difference is that the 180 grain fully loaded, has more recoil than the average hunter would be used to. A 150 grain would recoil less. When dealing with heavy recoiling rifles, be smart, get a new state-of-the-art recoil pad that reduces felt recoil by 50%, like the Pachmayr Decelerator. And don’t shoot a whole box of ammo at the range, get bruised, and complain about your rifles kick. It is the shooter that needs to get smart, not the rifle.
The Nosler Expansion Tip (E-Tip) Hunting bullet is a copper alloy monolithic (solid) hollow point spitzer designed for long range but has both short and long range benefits. No, it does not have surface shock like a round or flat nose but it is capable amazing energy transfer and no lead to deal with.
As I said in my last article that round and flat nose are great brush busters however for bottleneck cartridges they are in very short supply at this time. It just so happens that I own a T/C Encore Pro Hunter Muzzle Loader and a 30-06 Springfield Interchangeable barrel. Honestly, I had it set up for muzzleloader and it shoots real sweet so I resisted making the conversion to 30-06 until now. I gave in to the temptation because in my ammo cupboard I just happen to have some store bought Nosler 168 grain Expansion Tips (aka E-Tips) cartridges. I successfully used them on a 350 pound wild boar hunt a few years back. The shot was 30 to 40 yards max.
I will show you what it did. Here is the entrance wound.
Busting through the super tough shield on both sides, here is the exit wound below! Keep in mind that the boars “shield” forced the bullet to fully expand just on entrance and give up a ton of energy inside the animal before exiting. I would not expect this massive damage in a thin skinned whitetail.
Energy delivered was on the order of 2600 to 2700 ft-lbs. More than enough for Moose but you see the copper alloy stays together up to 95% intact says test data. These images are from the Nosler website; www.nosler.com
Gel test below by Nosler.
Lets take it to the range! I knew that it was likely not going to shoot MOA because I remember mumbling about the 2 to 2.5 inch groups at 100 yards. Yep, that is what I got 2.5 inch groups at 100 yards. I did notice that the cold shot was dead on. Although I prefer moa accuracy, this works well for hunting in the thick stuff like the boar above. If I hand loaded this, I can get it to MOA for sure. The boar certainly did not know the difference!
