Hornady Interlock?

Gatehouse said:
I shot a deer with the exact same bullet. 150gr Interlock, .270 Winchester.

It was abotu 200 yards, and the deer was hit in the lungs...and died.:)
Click to expand...

same here. 308 150 SST. Bang-flop with deer.
Same bullet type failed to penetrate the front leg of a moose, two days earlier, in a less than smart decision to shoot for the heart in a quarter- towards position.

I never used them again. Why? because the same company makes the Interbond, which seems to fare better.

edited to add : The performance on deer was amazing. No entry sign, no exit sign. No blood on the ground. I thought it died oh heart attack. My next move proves it: I cut the throat:redface:
When I opened it, the lungs were jelly. Bullet exited. Hit the rib, so I had some bone fragments. Awesome for deer. Just not my bag for moose anymore.....
 
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I have had the interlocks blow up at close ranges, I'm talking 30 yards here, and the deer died but left NO blood, only went 40-50 yards. The fact that the bullet blew up didn't surprise me much but the non-existence of a blood trail did concern me. It was a 140 gr interlock from a .270.
 
Hornady inerlocks

I have used these extensively over the years. .338 225 gr. sp. and 250 gr sp. .358 win. 250 gr. rn. 375 HH. 275 gr. sp. & rn. My go to rifle is a left hand rem. 7mm. My first 3 shot group was horn. 162 gr. btsp. 3 shots covered with a dime. Its been my bullet ever since. This combo has taken deer, sheep. goat, grizzly,elk, moose,black bear, and cariboo. Yes I have experienced core separations taken from very dead critters. I have no complaints at all.Great bullets for the price.
Larry
 
You should have no prob with a 150gr Interlock on deer or black bear. They hold together very well. I feel very comfortable using them on anything as long as the caliber and wieght are appropriate for the game, that and I like the impact velocities to be less than 2800fps.FWIW since I do all the load development and loading for our moose crew of 8 hunters I choose Interlocks for all. Out of 7 moose shot with various wieghts and calibers only 3 bullets have been recovered (the rest had exit wounds) and they could have been used by Hornady in their adds.
 
I've driven Interlocks up to 3500 fps in my 7 STW. Admittedly they are starting to get "soft " at that speed, but nothing escaped. Going up to 154 gr bullets slowed things down to to 3300 and things continued to die. Penetration seemed to go up, but that's a little hard to tell when nearly all of the lighter bullets exited anyway. All in all, premium bullets might have some slight advantage at these speeds for bad angles or big animals but it is hard to prove it with my own results.
Once you drop down to the 2900-3100 fps range of most "modern" cartridges things look even better. You know, modern like the .270 that has been around since 1927.;) I killed a pile of stuff with 130 flat-bases in that caliber and have never felt like ANY bullet could have worked any better. Up to three feet of penetration was about the norm there.
Skipping right over 30-06(Where practically anything works) and going down to .35 Whelen speed the Interlocks are still winners. If I ever recover a bullet from that cartridge I'll weigh it. I'm not holding my breath though.
My conclusion from playing with Hornady Interlocks for about 25 years isn't that Premiums aren't needed, but that Flat-base Interlocks are premiums. Call them the cheapest of the premiums if you want but the line has to be drawn somewhere and that's where I put it. Ross Siegfried used to write the same, and he was one of the only gun writers that I had much use for. So far my experience with the Interbonds has been disappointing as far as accuracy so I haven't shot anything with them. There's a limit to how much effort I will put into making a bullet that doesn't want shoot, shoot. At least they aren't as expensive as some of the "Designer" bullets that often don't shoot either.
 
I've shot a deer close in (30 yards) with a 165 grain interloc, expansion was quite agressive but the bullet held together and did the job.

Personally i wouldn't trust them at higher speeds or in a magnum, but a 150 in a 270 cooking along at about 2850 should be just fine.

I DID have a friend who had some fail in his 270, but i believe he was using 140's or so at higher speeds. (can't recall, but it wasn't 150's. )
 
IF you want to shoot small-medium sized meat deer the 130g interlock is realy great, the 150 is about as good to with a little less meat damage. My favorite all time bullet for meat deer is the factory 130g Winchester Power Point, I have shot about 15 deer with this combo and it puts them down better and faster than anything else I have used.

Partitions out of a 270 for meat deer realy are not going to be any better, infact I would take an Interlock over a Partition in this case.

Now if you were going after a huge book deer and were willing to take any shot you could get mabey I might pick a 150g Partiton. This would sacrifice some width of the wound channel for extra penetration.
 
Love interlocks because they work reliably and are economical - shot two deer with 165 plain base spirepoint with my 30/06 and another just last fall with my 260Rem using a 140 plain base spirepoint. All one shot kills and bullet worked great in each case. Killed a bear once instantly with the 35 Whelen using a 250 RN Interlock.
 
Interlocks work very well for me, but I like the Interbond 180 in my 06 a bit better. Awesome in the frozen wet phone book test and the most accurate hunting bullet I've used.
 
It's just real hard on the bullets, cheaper cup and core types will seperate or blow to itty bits. Bonded core bullets like the Interbond will expand nicely and retain most of their weight so they'll cut a nice wound channel through a 7x7 phone book or elk.
 
I have had 100% sucess with 150 grain .312" cal interlocks and deer(out of a mosin m91 7.62X54r, 50grains of varget). Everyone exited, and left large wounds. Also leaves a coyote in quite a mess :)
 
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savagefan said:
It's just real hard on the bullets, cheaper cup and core types will seperate or blow to itty bits. Bonded core bullets like the Interbond will expand nicely and retain most of their weight so they'll cut a nice wound channel through a 7x7 phone book or elk.
Click to expand...

You've been in the army, haven't you//////
Where they show you how well does a 7.62 round penetrate a frozen concrete wall.

So I assume that steel core FMJ s will score really high in your chart....:p
 
Savagefan,
I'm sure that frozen phone books would be real hard on bullets, so is sand, plate steel and any number of other things. What I don't understand is what we can learn from from this one, since animals just aren't that hard. It might be good for testing solids, and is sure to be applicable to your 7X7 phonebook. Those guys are scarcer than 4 point unicorns around here.;)
 
The phone books are good because they catch the bullet, you can easily remove it, see the damage caused, wash the bullet and weigh it to check weight retention. I like Hornady interlocks, great bullet used them for years, I think the Interbond gives you a bit of an edge if your bullet hits a branch on the way to your game animal. eltorro a fumjee would get a low score due to zero expansion.
 
Savage fan,
I like Interlocks too, and have no doubt that the Interbonds will serve you as well. They're Hornadys after all.
My question is about the test media that you are using. To use a non-gun example it would be like deciding between a couple of wood saw blades by cutting steel with them. A few years back a shotshell manufacturer ran an ad showing how their shotshell penetrated sheet metal better than pellets made of other materials. The trouble with that is geese aren't made out of metal.
I still think that frozen phonebooks would be OK for testing solids for pure penetration and durability, but they don't even prove that a normal bullet will even expand on game animals. You probably had fun doing it though.
 
It is fun to compare different bullets within the same medium. I'm not trying to write a thesis for my PHD, it's just a way to compare. The books are frozen because I was doing this in the winter and my range is about an hour out of town. I can't compare how bullets expand on game animals as they always blow right through them so all I've compared is exit holes. For sure, dead is dead is dead ad nauseum.
 
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