Not happy with sst

[Nilehunter]

     Although my son took a buck and I took a cow elk this muzzy season, I am not happy with the sst's performance.  I bought three boxes before reading posts about them.  I was like well we'll try them and see for our selves.  Well we found them to be accurate BUT.  They pass right through and you do not get much of a blood trail.  My son's shot was to the neck so he dropped where he stood and we didn't need a trail.  My elk on the other hand a trail would have been nice.  I'm leaning toward blood lines.  Any thoughts?

[yelp]

I got both but have been happy with SST's.  I haven't hunted with bloodlines for a comparison.  But they shoot well out of my gun.  Maybe next year.  My buck hit the ground and didn't move.  I recovered slug and it was perfectly mushroomed. 

[ribka]

SST's shot great out of my Tikka's but I had the opposite response. Bullet hit and blew up on impact. massive I internal  damage. No exit .

I think ok for deer, not elk.

I shoot the GMX Hornady for elk. Elk I shot last year went 15 yds.

[Huntbear]

SST's shot great out of my Tikka's but I had the opposite response. Bullet hit and blew up on impact. massive I internal  damage. No exit .

I think ok for deer, not elk.

I shoot the GMX Hornady for elk. Elk I shot last year went 15 yds.

That is exactly what happened on the blacktail buck I shot last year... punched paper with the rest of them.. 

[Russ McDonald]

I didn't know Tikka had a muzzle loader.    I hope to shoot my elk in the late season.  I am using T/C's hope they work well.  I love reading all the things you guys write about stuff.  It gives me things to think about before I buy something.

[ribka]

I didn't know Tikka had a muzzle loader.    I hope to shoot my elk in the late season.  I am using T/C's hope they work well.  I love reading all the things you guys write about stuff.  It gives me things to think about before I buy something.

I have some SST's for my knight ml. They shoot well.Have not taken animal withnthem yet.

[Sneaky]

All my sst's have either been pass throughs or exploded on impact with large bone. Both resulted in massive carnage and they fly straight. Not too happy about tiny pieces of bullet everywhere though.

[Sabotloader]

     Although my son took a buck and I took a cow elk this muzzy season, I am not happy with the sst's performance.  I bought three boxes before reading posts about them.  I was like well we'll try them and see for our selves.  Well we found them to be accurate BUT.  They pass right through and you do not get much of a blood trail.  My son's shot was to the neck so he dropped where he stood and we didn't need a trail.  My elk on the other hand a trail would have been nice.  I'm leaning toward blood lines.  Any thoughts?

I think you will find ths SST is very effective at longer ranges and less effective at the closer ranges where they tend to pencil through, especially deer.  Elk with the thicker hide do offer a little more resistance to the bullet and normally you will get better expansion in at elk at close range.

This is really common complaint about the pointy bullets from a ML.  At longer ranges the bullet is really accurate and usually performs as you would expect.

I am biased so weigh my thoughts accordingly.  I have been shooting the Lehigh/Bloodline for several years and am very happy with them.  The bullet works very well from 25 yards to 200 yards.  Prior to switching to the Bloodline, I shot Nosler partitions until they quit making the 44-45-458 Nosler Partition bullets.  All of these bullets have one thing in common - they offer a larger frontal area on the nose of the bullet which allows them to work faster than a Spire point at ML speeds.

Even using a soft lead conical - their is a reason for the blunt nose...

[colockumelk]

We stopped using the SST's when buckmaster_wa on here shot his branch bull in the Peaches Ridge ML tag.  It was quartered to him somewhat hard.  He shot it through the shoulder blade, went through both lunch and ended up in the offside hip.  The bullet had 0 expansion.  I mean 0.  The plastic tip was still there.  You could have literally loaded it back into the gun and shot it again.  Since then we have switched to Speers Deep Curl bullets.  We have taken 7 elk and 4 deer (I think)  None went farther than 40 yds.  6 of the 7 elk were killed with 1 shot and only 1 of those went only 40 yds.  The hydrostatic shock was amazing and the lungs looked like strawberry jello.  And you want to talk about blood.  WOW!!  If we would of needed to follow a blood trail (4 of the 5 elk this year taken went less than 5 feet) the blood trail would have been massive.  We have only recovered 1 bullet from the elk and it expanded perfectly.  It measured one inch in diameter.  Oh and these bullets are cheaper than the SST's.  Here is a link to the thread I started about them.  Oh and the bloodlines are an awesome bullet too. 

http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,107103.0.html

[Nilehunter]

Thanks for the replies.  It sounds like bloodlines will get a shot for next years season (pun intended).

[colockumelk]

From the pictures that Sabotloader has posted I think the Bloodlines will work really well for you.   

[gadwall]

I got both but have been happy with SST's.  I haven't hunted with bloodlines for a comparison.  But they shoot well out of my gun.  Maybe next year.  My buck hit the ground and didn't move.  I recovered slug and it was perfectly mushroomed. 

 

Gadwall

[Jrzbullelk]

All of my sst bullets have mushroomed well and i have recoverd most of them on the other side under the hide and all the animals ha vent gone more than 50 yards

[MountainDevil54]

Affordable, accurate as heck and devastating on game