# Hornady SST vs A Max



## jk3hunter

Is there anybody who has had any experience with both of these bullets? Is there much difference between these two in accuracy and killing power?


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## KurtR

i have shot both and they both kill. But now the 168 amax is the go to round accurate and the bc i want and seems to have no problem killing deer. When put in the right place any bullet will kill.


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## jk3hunter

That is very true. I was just wondering of the A max held up against big game.


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## xdeano

I've shot a couple of deer with the 178g a-max last year with the 308 @ 2650fps and they really put a hole in them. It is a 30cal in and about the size of a fist coming out the off side ribs. It kills them, but it ruins a lot of meat in the shoulders, a lot of hemerage. I did small several small fragments of lead and jacket throughout the shoulder on the off side. So i'm guessing that they didn't hold together to well.

The SST should hold together a bit better, with the cantilure on them stopping the jacket from ripping to far back allowing the bullet to mushroom out a little better. If i remember they are more of a bonded bullet. Probabaly a bit better suited for killing deer. I have a box of 150g SST loaded up, just haven't used them at all. I could run them through a few coyotes and tell you what they'll do, but that's not a deer.

xdeano


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## KurtR

Complete different for me running the 168 amax out of the .308 small entry and about the size of a quater going out. I have had two 95 grn sst blow up on the shoulder of deer out of the 6mm and not close about 150-175 yds. If you look hard enough you will find bullet falure with any bullet be it partion tsx or any thing it is the law of average. Up to elk i would not hesitate to use the amax as i have seen they work for others but have also had others have them blow up. if it was me i would pick the more accuarte of the two and roll that way


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## xdeano

personally for deer I like the 155g Lapua. They work like very well for a match round. I shot two deer last year, one at 420 and the other at 425 with the lapua and they entered with a 30 call in and about a quarter size out the off side shoulder. Kurt is very correct about the outcome of any bullet, it's the law of averages, they will fail giving the number of tries. Each shot is different.

xdeano

Here is an exit with the 155 Lapua at 425.


Here is an exit with the 178g Amax, I don't remember the distance off hand, i believe it was in that 150yd range. I can't remember which deer this was. 


hope this helps.

xdeano


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## Savage260

I have not shot any game with the A-Max, but I won't use the SSTs on deer any more due to exactly what xdeano said about the A-Max. The 3 deer I shot with SSTs had HUGE holes blown in them. I like the 175 SMK in my .308, very good performance and nice sized exit wound.


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## Plainsman

Like they say never say never, but I think I am done with using match bullets for deer. I have had Scenars go through lengthwise, and come out with no mushroom. I know because my son found the bullet laying on the ground (photo in my album on this site). I have only used the SMK under 300 yards and at those distances performance was OK. The Scenar through the deer was at 500 or 550 yards (don't remember anymore). Xdeano is going to give me a bad time on the memory thing again. :wink:

If your like me and want high ballistic coefficient there are other options. Recently I have been shooting the 140 Berger VLD in a 6.5X284 Norma. I have already shot deer with the Berger 150 VLD out of my 270 and they performed well. So after shooting the 6.5 and the 270 I have switched from a 165 Ballistic Tip to a 210 Berger VLD in my 300 Win Mag. To get top performance I need to load single shot, but that's ok with me. It is pushing that 210 VLD at 2920 fps. Run that through your program and see if it or a lighter 185 VLD will work for you.

Oh, the 165 Ballistic Tip has a coefficient (advertised) of .475 while the 168 Berger VLD has a coefficient (advertised) of .473. Although it has a lower ballistic coefficient when both are loaded in Black Hills match brass with 43 gr of TAC the VLD hits higher at 800 yards. That's out of a 308 700P with barrel shortened to 24 inches.


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## xdeano

Plainsman, I know you have a good memory. I can't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, so i'm not one for criticizing. 

I have some co-workers that run the Berger vld's through their rifles and they've had some nasty results, they open up every time, no doubt about that, but they leave some huge holes in the deer doing so. They make them dead, and that's what most guys are going for.  close range work they are explosive.

I can attest to the long range opening of the 155g Lapua, at 700+ yds on coyotes they just pencil through so what Plainsman is talking about can definitely happen. For those ranges i really think the bergers would be a better round. Even the amax at those range would be a better round, because they open up consistently.

xdeano


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## Plainsman

> Plainsman, I know you have a good memory


  I wish you were right.  I remember ballistics and bullets, but I often forget people names. I can forget people names of those I have known for 20 years. I never forget their face, or their personality, but the names get away from me. Ticks me off too.


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## teamflightstoppersND

Here is a coyote I shot with a 117 SST Super performance hornady ammo 257 roberts @150 yards

I have shot a few deer with this load. I would avoid shoulder shots because they do not pass through but they sure put the deer down. All my deer shots were under 200 yards


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## xdeano

my 22-250 will do that to if i hit it in the guts. Any soft tissue like the abdomen will split and look a lot worse that if you were to hit it through the boiler room. It's all about shot placement.

xdeano


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## Savage260

That is pretty much what the off side of both the white tail does looked like, and they were both heart/lung shots! Huge exit holes, with tissue and bone fragments every where!


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## omegax

It's interesting to see the feedback on the SSTs. Last year, a friend of mine shot the Hornady "Super Performance" commercial load in .30-06, with the SSTs. He wound up losing a very nice buck that he figures he hit in the shoulder blade (which probably shouldn't have happened). The most interesting of his experiences with the SSTs was his doe, though. I don't recall the range, but it was a slight quartering toward shot. He hit her right behind the shoulder, and rather than hitting a rib and continuing through, it started tumbling and took out all of her ribs on the same side.

Before I ran into this thread, I was going to chalk that up to a bad batch. They seem to get good reviews on Midway.


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## jk3hunter

The SSTs we usually use for 243 work real well I just started this thread because I was wondering how the A max compared. If i recall correctly I think the A max has a higher BC but i could be mistaken.


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