Horndy sst junk?

[minelabbob]

i also have had poor results with SST but ,every hunt is different like every gun . what works for you is the bottom line.

 

[Clairebear]

For 20 years I've shot Hornady 240 gr. HP/XTP in 44 cal .430 diam.
Lots of knockdown power for me and only had to track a few. Many where DRT.
Just bought a brand new CVA OPtima with Nitride barrel and will see how they pattern in it.

 

[fourbore]

I am shooting cva accura Lr been using horndy sst I come to idea they are trash i had 4 deer get away from me lack of blood cant be expanding I shot a deer just above the shoulder dead center didnt fine and blood for 150 yds in backed out went track it next days 14 Hr later deer was still alive. what is a good bullet to use that fully expands gonna casues some major damage take deer out?

I was told these Hornady bullets had a reputation for breaking up and going off course internally and resulting in some wounded and lost deer. The guys at my club told me this acted like it was common knowledge! Lots of explicative deleted emphysis. I posted here a few weeks ago and was quickly corrected and had to admit I was only passing on what I was told with no first hand experience. I also mixed up sabot slugs with ML bullets when relating a friends experience. Now, I am reading the exact same story!

These same guys all of them to a man, use Barnes EZ-T. Not me, I have been using Hornady XTP hollow points, cause that is what I got and I know they are ok.

I feel more comfortable with tried and true old bullets. I was slow to the scoped inline game, but; I probably not going back to a traditional gun. Eventually I get the message. I am slow and that has its advantages. Lead jacket hollow points, big lead round balls, Brenneke slugs - all know quantities.

 

[hawki]

If that deer was alive 14 hrs later, it was a poor hit. Bullet design doesn’t change placement.

 

[minelabbob]

i also have used XTP with good results . I shot double lung with the hornady SST and deer troted off across a 100yd
field like i never hit the deer. laid dead inside woods with very little blood. after that i started using xtp . HP bullets
250gr.

 

[mckbcat2000]

Either Barnes TEZ or MZ in that gun. Figure out an accurate load with one of those.

 

[fourbore]

If that deer was alive 14 hrs later, it was a poor hit. Bullet design doesn’t change placement.

YES, it does. If , IF, a bullets breaks up or in some cases marginal stability the bullet or pieces will go way off course. A bullet can do all manner of weird things as it encounters bone and changes in tissue density. And small pieces even more so. I am not speaking to SST, but; making a general statement. Placement is ZERO if the bullet fails. You actually maybe way way better off with any kind of random body hit with a 69 cal ball than a perfect heart shot with a bullet that fails in the worse way. I get the 14 hrs point, but; just dont discount how poorly a bad bullets can behave.

Bullet accuracy and trajectory are a distant 2nd to bullet performance. Unfortunately performance is very hard to test and is known to vary a great deal. So; hunters focus on what they can measure.

 

[451whitworth]

i've killed dozens of deer using the excellent 250 grain Hornady SST bullet, mostly in the crush rib sabot. Most were hit in the heart lung area. Never lost one, many were bang flops.

I don't use SST's but my two friends do. I have seen them kill dozens of deer with that bullet on deer drives over the years. Four so far this year and I don't think one went over 30 yards.

 

[fourbore]

I think we all believe the good results some have had. If they failed all the time, they would be quickly discontinued. There are a lot of variables that can influence how a bullet performs.

I think a new guy and I consider myslef in this group, inline w/sabot newbie, can read or listen to in person some number of unhappy SST users. And take that into account. I never actually read or heard in person of a EZ-T complaint. The OP is complaining, granted he maybe doing something different. It is a pretty easy to swap bullets and see if the problem goes away. Maybe not easy for me, but; the OP hit 4 deer already in one season.

 

[fourbore]

I been thinking. Dangerous thing! I am perplexed and unhappy about the rise of thee 6.5 creedmore. Noting wrong with it but; when I see a shelf filled with this ammo, I know that is so much less 7mm08 available to me. In fact none right now. These cartirdge wars do matter. The buyers are a fickle crowd and a really great product can fade away to make room for something that is no better. Hornady sells a lot of SST, centerfire rilfe, pistol, shotgun and sabot. I steer clear of all of it. Many happy users maybe right to worry and try and get their opinion out. Or you wake up one day and SST is gone. Or shoe on other foot, how would I feel if the whole XTP line went away ?

 

[451whitworth]

I think we all believe the good results some have had. If they failed all the time, they would be quickly discontinued. There are a lot of variables that can influence how a bullet performs.

I think a new guy and I consider myslef in this group, inline w/sabot newbie, can read or listen to in person some number of unhappy SST users. And take that into account. I never actually read or heard in person of a EZ-T complaint. The OP is complaining, granted he maybe doing something different. It is a pretty easy to swap bullets and see if the problem goes away. Maybe not easy for me, but; the OP hit 4 deer already in one season.

If it was me the first thing I would do is shoot some of the remaining bullets from that box into wet paper and water jugs to recover some samples. Maybe it's a bad batch. The fact that 4 deer were shot and none recovered makes it impossible to know what happened. Sure the OP thinks he hit them correctly but without recovery that can't be verified. Anyone who has hunted for a while has shot deer with arrows/bullets has thought the deer was standing such and such a way and upon recovery discovers that their eyes didn't see what they thought. I had a tracking dog for deer recovery and the amount of people who would tell me what happened as they saw/remembered it vs. what actually happened when the deer was recovered was amazing.

 

[rangerod]

For my money solid copper is the way to go. This means Barnes,Thor, and the controlled fracture bullets by Lehigh and Knight. I like bullets that hold together and expand. The Thor's out of the Optima have been totally devastating on the whitetails.

 

[WV Hunter]

I been thinking. Dangerous thing! I am perplexed and unhappy about the rise of thee 6.5 creedmore. Noting wrong with it but; when I see a shelf filled with this ammo, I know that is so much less 7mm08 available to me. In fact none right now. These cartirdge wars do matter. The buyers are a fickle crowd and a really great product can fade away to make room for something that is no better. Hornady sells a lot of SST, centerfire rilfe, pistol, shotgun and sabot. I steer clear of all of it. Many happy users maybe right to worry and try and get their opinion out. Or you wake up one day and SST is gone. Or shoe on other foot, how would I feel if the whole XTP line went away ?

Hornady's most popular bullet is the SST. They load it in all types of ammo, including the new super performance line. I've seen alot of deer killed with SST's, 6 this year. Not saying they are the absolute best bullet out there (if there is such a thing), but they are proven for sure. There are alot of good bullets, however if people can't make accurate shot placement - blaming the bullet is a weak excuse.

SHOT PLACEMENT IS EVERYTHING

 

[Pathfinder60]

I am shooting cva accura Lr been using horndy sst I come to idea they are trash i had 4 deer get away from me lack of blood cant be expanding I shot a deer just above the shoulder dead center didnt fine and blood for 150 yds in backed out went track it next days 14 Hr later deer was still alive. what is a good bullet to use that fully expands gonna casues some major damage take deer out?

Fury Star Tip 2P 320 grain. I size mine and shoot bullet to bore but he also makes a universal fit model of the same bullet. The bore on my Accura V2 was too tight for them which is why I went the bullet to bore route with a Walters Wad .060 thick .512 poly wad I got from Buffalo Arms. These bullets shoot incredibly well and the terminal performance is violent. So much so that I would not take a shoulder shot because of meat loss. I took a big bodied 6 point on Ohio's opening day broadside just behind the right shoulder. There was more lung on the ground than left in the body cavity. Tangerine sized exit hole. Not a bang flop but he only stumbled 20 yards through the trees before expiring. Stevie Wonder could have followed the blood trail. Very happy with those results.

 

[DANNY-L]

Any bullet can fail with bad shot placement. If you'd hit the lungs you'd have the deer.

 

[michiganmuzzy]

I shoot the sst in my shotgun with outstanding results. Its the only thing i shoot in that gun. But i havent hunted with it in a few years. Killed many deer with them, awesome blood trails that Stevie Wonder could follow. That ammo is listed as being 2000fps muzzle velocity. Speed matters

 

[dwm]

If it was me the first thing I would do is shoot some of the remaining bullets from that box into wet paper and water jugs to recover some samples. Maybe it's a bad batch. The fact that 4 deer were shot and none recovered makes it impossible to know what happened. Sure the OP thinks he hit them correctly but without recovery that can't be verified. Anyone who has hunted for a while has shot deer with arrows/bullets has thought the deer was standing such and such a way and upon recovery discovers that their eyes didn't see what they thought. I had a tracking dog for deer recovery and the amount of people who would tell me what happened as they saw/remembered it vs. what actually happened when the deer was recovered was amazing.

You are spot on

 

[Pathfinder60]

I shoot the sst in my shotgun with outstanding results. Its the only thing i shoot in that gun. But i havent hunted with it in a few years. Killed many deer with them, awesome blood trails that Stevie Wonder could follow. That ammo is listed as being 2000fps muzzle velocity. Speed matters

It seems like that's the deal with that bullet...if you crank them up they do the job well. Kind of like Powerbelts in reverse...move them too fast and they disintegrate and don't make it out the other side. Slow them down? They do just fine.
Shhhh...don't tell anyone that **** though. There's so many Kool Aid drinkers on this forum that think PB's are made of tin foil and toilet paper.

 

[MrTom]

I think any bullet has a sweet spot that has to be found when it comes to penetration, decent expansion and exit wounds. Some need to be driven fairly hard and fast while others not so much. The distance the shot is being taken will come into play too as well as bullet weight. All of this takes an incredible amount of actual hunting and shooting animals. Years ago I shot a sabot/bullet combo from a Canadian maker that used a swaged 180 grain Spitzer type of bullet. This was shot in a .45 cal inline that was 150 grain capable. I hunted this combo at 115 grains of loose T7. Accurate as all get out. On deer under forty yards it was a gernade disaster. At 75 yards it was a miracle worker that dropped deer like athey been hammered. At 125 yards I'd better have planned on tracking as the bullet didn't seem to open up much and while the animals bled they did so poorly. I was hung up on the accuracy and learned to adjust to the terminal performance until I was no longer able to locate the bullet combos. I tried the sst's and got the same kind of performance. I switched to XTP's and found heaven.

The moral of the story is that every bullet will have a distance or a load level where they function on animals just like we dream of them functioning. Some bullets don't work so well on bone shots. Some don't work so well on soft tissues shots. Some work better on big animals and not so well on smaller ones. There isn't a one-size-fits-all kind of bullet and everyone has to determine what is the best bullet for the way he hunts and what his expectations are when it comes to terminal performance on live critters. Pathfinder alludes to the powerbelts can doing just fine: that is likely true as long as the shooter isn't bent on shooting the 150 grain loads that seem to be synonymous with powerbelt. The same is likely true of sst's too. But before those bullets get used on live game go find out what they're doing at various load levels using the water jugs or clay. If you bullets aren't working, go find out why.

 

[Hatchet Jack]

I hunted with 250 SST's for years. Always very accurate and no problem taking down whitetails. Later switched to the SST 300 grainers because I got a good deal on bunch of them. They were just as accurate and just as deadly. They would exploded a little more than I would like when bone was encountered. I think mainly because I pushed them too fast.
Started using all copper TEZ's a few years back. So far I am liking them.