Tag: lead-free bullets

Joining the Creedmoor Club

Okay, I finally did it! After punching paper and ringing steel with at least a dozen rifles chambered to the 6.5mm Creedmoor, I finally got around to taking an animal with this amazingly popular little cartridge.

Actually, my wife, Donna joined the Creedmoor Club on the same hunt a few days before I did. We shared a Mossberg Patriot in stainless and synthetic, wearing a Riton 4-16x50mm scope. I chose Federal Premium’s 120-grain Trophy Copper load because we’d be hunting blacktails on California’s Central Coast, near our Paso Robles home. We call this area the “condor zone,” long mandated as a lead-free area for hunting. As the Creedmoor’s popularity continues its upward spiral load offerings continue to multiply, but as Opening Day neared, Trophy Copper was the only homogenous-alloy load I could get my hands on.

Creedmoor Club, bench shooting, Mossberg Patriot
On the bench with the Mossberg Patriot 6.5mm Creedmoor in preparation for the California deer season. Unleaded bullets are required for hunting, so the Boddingtons used Federal Premium 120-grain Trophy Copper…with good results.

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Hunting Bullet Basics

Autumn is approaching quickly, which means hunting season is coming soon! Actually, depending on where you live, it may already be here. Rifle deer season starts in August in Alaska, parts of South Carolina, and right here in coastal California, where I’m penning these lines. I’m in a “lead-free zone” for hunting bullets, so my choices are limited. More about that later, though! Let’s start with an inviolable premise: It’s ultimately the bullet that does the work. So these later days of summer offer a good time to select the load and bullet you’ll be hunting with this fall.

A huge-bodied Alberta mule deer, taken with a .270 Winchester with 130-grain Barnes TTSX. The homogenous-alloy bullets are very tough for deer-sized game and will almost always exit. This buck was shot quartering away through the opposite shoulder…three jumps and he was down, and the bullet may still be going.

There are dozens of cartridges suitable for deer-sized game, and only a slightly smaller universe of cartridges acceptable for larger game such as elk, moose, and bear. Choice of bullet makes a greater difference than the specific cartridge, and choosing wisely can take a borderline cartridge to a larger class of game.

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