I have been hunting deer in east NC for 35 years and have a friend that has a gun shop in the area. He has probably sold more Hornady 154 gr Interlock and now the 154SST 7mm Rem mag ammo than any other 100 to 1. The 154 gr Hornady Interlock bullet is what I had the best results with on deer when I was testing the 7mm Rem mag with MANY different bullets for deer doing crop damage control. My buddy and I took 100 deer a year off a big farm for 15 years so we learned a lot about different calibers and bullets. If you are going to hand load and you will be only shooting out to 200 or so yards I will pass on something we learned. Slow your bullet down, which ever one you choose, to have an impact velocity in the 2700 to 2900 fps range and it will kill a deer dead in it's tracks better than running them a max velocity for some reason. I can not explain it but when you shoot 50 deer with the bullet at max muzzle velocity and 90% of them 100 yards or so before they go down and then you slow that same bullet down to impact between 2700 and 2900 fps and 99% drop in their tracks there has to be something to it.