Now Hunting with Speer Gold Dot 120 gr. Ammo from CRD

[Double Naught Spy]

I have been watching DNS' use of this bullet to see what his results are vs mine.

I have shot 2 hogs with the Speer 120 so far and both have been runners with no recovery.

The first was over 100lbs and the 2nd maybe 50-60lbs, both shot in the shoulder at ~40yds. The first was probably dead due to vultures in vicinity where shot(heavy brush), the second no sign of.

I am sending them @~2230fps out of a 12in Gr. Thinking to change my shot placement with this bullet.

Not saying this bullet is bad, just that I haven't had the same results I get with Nosler 120BT, where even when they run off, I usually find them close by.

SY

Several observations. First is that you have an exceptionally small sample size. That you lost two hogs, one of which you failed to recover because of brush visibility, really isn't a testament to the bullet. That your hogs ran simply means you failed to do significant direct or indirect CNS damage, plain and simple. If you don't do significant CNS damage, you should expect the hogs to run and they can run as far as 100 yards with a heart shot or a double lung shot, in some cases, farther if the lung shot is peripheral. Often, they run less than that, but they can certainly go that far. When hogs run, they will often try to hide. I have recovered several hogs that have gone into briar thickets and one that tried to go under a large fallen tree truck that was resting atop another downed tree such that there was a gap to get under. Twice, I have had to use loppers in order to extricate hogs that have secreted themselves under brush such that I could not simply drag them out of it.

You may not be getting great performance with this bullet, but I don't know. Compared to my velocities, you are shooting from a 155 yard deficit in velocity, meaning your 40 yard shot is impacting at about the same velocity my shot would impact at 195 yards (~2160 fps). I haven't shot anything that far yet with these bullets to see how they are doing at that low of an impact velocity. Maybe they will open up fully at that velocity. Maybe they are only partially opening? Maybe opening later?

I understand you aren't getting the same 'results' as with the Nosler 120BT, but comparison based on whether or not you can find them isn't really valid. Whether or not you can find a hog that runs is more about the hunter's performance than the bullet's performance, right? After all, the hog in heavy brush was somewhere nearby, you just could not find it. On several occasions, I have managed to lose hogs in heavy brush that dropped where I shot them. It wasn't until the next day that I or the rancher found them. Heavy brush can be a bugger.

I am not defending the Speer Gold Dot. I have nothing invested in it one way or the other. And if you have a bullet that works well for you already, I would stick with it. In my view so far, the Gold Dots seem to be great penetrators, but this comes at the expense of not expanding as much or coming apart with Hornady SST rounds at similar velocity. SSTs with a MV>2500 fps tend to penetrate well, but are usually also heavily expanded and/or fragmenting, making a very large wound channel. The do a lot of damage (usually) compared to what the Gold Dots are doing, but the Gold Dots are not polluting the meat with a lot of fragments.

Even if the Gold Dots are opening up, where they are opening up relative to your preferred round may be significant. It may be at this impact velocity that the Gold Dots are opening up much deeper than your rounds and hence not doing as much internal damage as a result. IDK.

Lastly, despite CJW's optimistic claim, I have my fair share of runners. I actually consider it a partial failure if my stationary or slow moving hog runs when I shoot it. That means I didn't do my job well (except in those cases where I intentionally try shots where CNS damage isn't likely to occur in order to see exactly how a bullet may perform). If I lose a runner that I search for, that means I didn't do my job well, twice, and to be perfectly honest, I am not a very good tracker. :-(