Is the 165 matrix too much for a whitetail

[10point]

I have personal experience With the excellent performance of the 165 grained matrix bullet On elk but am concerned that it would punch through on a smaller animal like a Whitetail deer.

 

[TXshooter]

Heck no I've shot whitetail with just about every caliber and bullet even the 300 gr smk but most of the time it's with a 180 grain out of a 300 win mag. I think the 165 is a great weight for whitetail.

 

[TT_270WSM]

I'm guessing it's a 270? I just finished testing some 165 Gr Matrix out of my 270 WSM, penetration was ~3" of water (milk carton) followed by about ~9" into wet newspaper. I haven't cleaned & weighed the bullets, but none of them blew up, they all penetrated similarly, no core separation and near perfect mushrooms @ 25 yards with velocities ranging from 2975 to about 2500 to simulate close & LR shots. Shoot with confidence using these from 0 to 1000 yards on anything with 4 legs. I'll post results when I get through them.

Also, the entrance into the newspaper stack was about the size of a baseball (after ~3" of water in a milk carton), so don't be worried about these penciling. I know these kinds of results are not empirical, nor do they represent permanent wound cavities, but I was still impressed. There were bullet fragments found everywhere starting from about the 3" mark of newspaper (6" total penetration). I wish I would've got a picture of the newspaper stack after 6 shots into it, wowza.

 

[10point]

Thanks, That was an extremely important tests result. You are correct this is out of a 270 WSM. The ballistics and the weight of the bullet shoud be lethal up to 1000 yds if I can shoot it correctly. I shoot it out of a 28" Kreiger barrel at about 3050 ft/sec. wirth 67gr of N570.

 

[highridge1]

Anything less than overkill is under achievement. I like to shoot whitetails with a 338-378 it doesn't kill them too much....

 

[bigngreen]

Between me and my buddy we've taken several truck loads of deer with the 165 Matrix and they are about as ideal a bullet as I've used in anything. The first couple I shot with them I shot one broadside at 200 yards through the heart and she ran like they all do but when I retrieved her the would was perfect, nice clean going in then it looked like you pushed a grinder through her chest with a couple inch exit and heart was MIA. Second doe that night I wanted to hit hard to see if the bullet would open to aggressively so she caught on on the point of the shoulder with the exit right in front of the of side ham, same results as the previous one. I have yet to catch on in a deer. They are the ideal bullet for the ideal caliber for over all hunting from 0-1000 yards, in my extremely biased opinion