165 Grain SSTs on Deer Sized Game

I load them in my sons 300 win mag. We've never had a deer go more than 20 yards and have an exit hole every time. And a cow elk at 365 complete pass through. If they had a higher bc, I'd run them in everything
 
SST worked extremely well for us years ago when we hunted "traditional ranges" 500<IN.

In particular the 123 grain SST out of creedmoor worked wonders. (We still have customers running factory 165 loads out of 30-06 every year)

They're not much more then a tipped interlock - pop the deer's air bags and he aint goin' far!
What velocity were you shooting that 123 at? I was half tempted to try them for myself at about 3050fps. Don't need alot of penetration for deer.
 
I used to run the 165s a lot in 308 win, and if a bullet could be "magical " this was it. Hands down the most DRTs. Even marginal shots resulted in quick humane kills. They have always loaded accurate across a wide spectrum of calibers. Law requires me to hunt with copper now, but the OP is not shorting himself at all with this bullet. I wish I could still hunt with the SST, I had great confidence with it.
 
I run a 123gr SST for 6.5 Grendel, 125gr SST for .308, 140gr SST for 6.5 Swede and the 162gr SST for 7mm Mag. I'm a fan. They kill whitetail, hogs and axis emphatically out of my .308 ranch rifle but I'm running them really fast at fairly close range, usually under 200.
 
Hate to throw a wet blanket on the love fest, but I've had multiple failures with 150sst out of a 308; stunningly inconsistent terminal performance on axis and whitetail, I've stopped using sst for hunting in every caliber, still use hdy line quite a bit, just not sst for hunting
 
I've used the SSTs in a 7mm Rem Mag. They are some of the best performing bullets on whitetail that I've seen. They hold up well, mushroom appropriately, and are very accurate. Can't say enough good things about them, except they were hard to find for a while.
 
After doing extensive load testing with 30-06 and 165 gr Sierra I found that for me H4350 performed the best. Many deer went down to the 06/165/H4350 combo. I eventually went 270WIN/Hornady 140SST Superformance. The 277/140 SST worked great on deer and thinking the .308/165/SST will be awesome deer combo.
 
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