I've read your testing of your custom 380grain hawk bullet you tested Relfex, over and over. Can you tell me anything more about hawk bullets and or your experinces with them. Seems to be a hellova good bullet company.

I sent an email to Hawk asking what jacket thickness, and overall weight for good performer on Elk, Moose and Bears, (grizz too) out of my 1895G 45/70. They leaned towards a 400gr fn with a .035 jacket. What do you think? I figure when pushed between 1700-1900fps it would make a hellova good thumper eh? Not that it would be my main goal but do you think they would expand on deer?

Also, what was the jacket thickness with your 380gr Hawk? .050 was it? Do you think it or a .035 jacket would expand between 100-200 yards?

Don't worry about giving too much details, I'm thirsty for knowledge.

Thanks for your time

Cheers

Seabass

Seabass

Roy is in the rut right now.

The old Barnes Original bullet aka Barnes O has a jacket thickness of .032 as a comparison. Reflex chose .050 as a jacket thickness for his and ran into pressure problems in working them up.He can elaboration on that.Your wanting a bullet to kill Grizz with and pop little Deer at the same time much the same as my dilemma of an Elk bullet as well as a Deer bullet all wrapped up in one..Good luck...There is the old Nosler/North Fork and Swift A-Frame that have been proven to do just that or get some good cast and forget about it.

Hawks don't have a very good reputation for whatever reason and when we already have bullets like the ones I just mentioned,I see no need to experiment.You can push 350 grain bullets faster therefor shoot flatter to the 200 yards you mentioned and the quality 350 grainers penetrate as far or farther than the 400 grainers.Weight does not dictate penetration as much as bullet design as seen with the 300 Nosler and 300 Barnes XFN both out penetrating the 350 and 400 grain bullets....

Jayco

I meant to come back and elaborate after Seabass and I PM'd on this. The Hawk I had custom made is a great bullet but................. in a 45/70 when you are trying keep pressures to a max of 38,000 which is where I drew the line for producible loads the Hawk nearly ran me crazy. Its terminal performance was awsome but velocity and pressures were eratic. As soon as I got the test mule .450 I worked up loads till the CHE matched factory levels and velocity spread was good and sent the to the lab. Perfect. At 43,000PSI everything worked perfectly. If I do jump back on that wagon I will go to a .040" jacket and everything should fall into place. reflex264