Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game CoreLokt: what was your favorite?

30-06 and 180 gr corelokt has worked for me

Can ya even find them anymore for reloads?

When I was younger I chased the speed demons and had failures with cup and core bullets blowing up at high speed. Went the premium bullet route and had failures with solid copper bullets not opening properly. Partitions worked great but tore up too much meat. Now I am older and more experienced I am back to round nose cup and core bullets at more sedate velocities and eating right up to the hole. I have found that at the ranges I take game heavy for caliber round nose bullets work just fine. Turns out those old timers knew what they were talking about after all. I now reside proudly in the Elmer Keith camp.

Any time I find old stock round nose corloc bullets anywhere I buy them up. I have a pretty good stock pile now enough to last me the rest of my hunting career. Long established out of the way gun shops always seem to have a couple of boxes in 308 or 257, 270, and surprisingly 303 round noses on their shelves.

That was always my experience with them! Accurate as well!

I don't recall having had a bad Remington Core-Lokt experience. When I was a kid, the 100 grain PCL in 243, 180 grain RNCL in 300 SAV, 308, and 30-06, 170 grain RNCLs in both 30-30 and 32 WS, and 200 grain RNCL in 35 REM were commonly seen during the ME, NH, and VT deer seasons. My friends in NH who track and shoot Remington pump guns in 30-06 are hording their supply 180 grain RNCL factory ammo.

CL’s have been evolving over the years. So one person’s experience with them may be different than another’s.
I’ve used CL’s for many years but they were an older style. I had thousands of them - mostly 30 caliber. I bought out a fellow that had a manufacture of ammunition’s license. I still have a few 170 and 150 grain RN CL’s that I use in 30-30 and 30-40 rifles.
My experience with CL’s has been excellent. Not one failure. I shot a lot of whitetail with them and only white tail, not elk or anything bigger than white tail.

I don't think I can say I had a specific favorite because my experience was that any Core-Lokt made from the early 70s and previously were very good to great. I was in love with the old Core-Lokts below.
The ones I used that set a good high bar were ;

the 25 cal 120 grain spitzers. Always used in 25-06 rifles and one friend I loaded ammo for used them in his 257 Weatherby. One of the best cup and core 25s I ever used if not the very best.
the 270 150 Grain Round Nose, Always fired from various 270 Winchester rifles. Absolutely excellent. Killed several elk and never recovered one. They drop fast and leave a lot of blood. On the ranch I killed cattle and horses with this bullet and from them I'd recover a bullet at times. They held weight super well. Broad side on horses I never recovered one but I did with a few angled shots.
the 150 RN, 180 RN and 220 grain RN 30 calibers, fired from 30-40 Krag, 300 Savage, 308 Winchesters (4 different rifles) 30-06 (3 different rifles) 300 H&H, 308 Norma, 300 Win Mag All excellent and these were far more accurate then most people expect.
the 150 and 180 grain pointed. Again very good but not as good at weight retention as the RN bullets. Probably because RNs slow down more in flight more so impacts were a bit slower and the slower speeds at impact may be the reason the weight retention was higher. Accurate but for some reason the RN bullet above were actually more accurate then the pointed CLs. (not that it mattered)
the 175 grain pointed 8MM, Used from a 100% original military GEW M98 Mauser. Only a few kills on deer and one on an old crippled horse. I recovered the bullet from the horse but not any of the deer. The one from the horse was given to the owner, but it looked perfect.
the 200 grain RN 358. Used from a Marlin 35 Remington and a Remington M141. Perfect results.
and the 270 grain RN375 Used from my 375H&H. Just a death machine. Never recovered any from anything. Boom. Dead animal. Get knife out.
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Below this are the new CoreLokts (made late 1980 and later) and what I have seen from them. Only a few were noteworthy or outstanding.


I have bought and used these which were made around the late 80s and up to about 2008, and was not as impressed with most of them as I was with the old ones.

100 Grain 25 cal from my 25-06. 4 Broke up completely all on doe antelope. Dislike them for anything larger then Coyotes. Varmint bullets. But quite accurate.
120 grain 6.5MM from my two 6.5 Swede rifles. Accurate but broke up to some extent on deer and antelope. OK but not great. Also accurate. I tend to think of them as varmint bullet that I can kill deer with if I have nothing else.
140 grain 6.5MM. In my rifles none of were very accurate, but they did very well on game. So this bullet was a love/hate relationship for me. 3 to 3.5 inch groups in my guns making them 150 yard ammo for hunting at best, but they held together very well and killed like mad. I killed deer and antelope with several and I saw 3 elk killed with them. 2 from a 6.5 Swede and one from a 260 Remington. For hunting in forests or brush they are very good, but for open areas I'd not use them.
130 grain 270s. As good as any standard cup and core 130 grain 270 I have used, but not better. More accurate then I expected with groups coming in at 3/4" and some less. I tend to use Partitions in my 270s now.
150 grain Remington 30-30. Text book expansion and excellent weight retention but every single deer I ever shot with one gave me the bullet back. No criticism at all other then I like like exits, and from what I have seen a 30-30 with a 150 grain often doesn't exit deer or antelope. I wanted to get 170s but it seems they are not for sale by Remington anymore.
30 caliber 150 grain spitzers. Better then Sierra BTs or the Burgers, equal to Hornadys and Speers but not as good as Nosler Partitions. Overall not bad, but nothing to brag about. On a scale of 1-10, for 30 cal 150 grain cup and cores I'd give them a 6.
30 caliber 180 grain spitzers This one is one of the best of the newer 180 grain cup and cores, but not as accurate of some other brands. Not bad at all but 1.3 MOA is what I have come to expect from them in most of my rifles. Other brands can shoot well under an MOA where the Core-Lokts of today do not do that for me. I still favor them over most of the 180 grain cup and core competition for hunting, because in my experience they hold together batter then the Speer Hot Core, Sierra BTs or Hornady and WAY better then the Burger. So I gladly give up a small degree of accuracy to gain a better killer.
.311" 180 grain. This one surprised me at how well it did when used from 303 Brit, 7.56 Belgian and 7.62X54R . This is a newer bullet but seemed to work far better then most of the others. The game killed with them by myself and my brother as well as a friend from Green River have been 4 antelope 6 deer and 2 elk. Only the elk gave us a bullet back and it broke a shoulder bone and still weighs 147 grains. Simply great preformance so far.

I’ve had good Luck with 140 6.5’s. Accurate in my 260 and do very well from close to 375 on whitetail. Have not recovered a bullet.
Shot a lot of the 165 308 caliber in my 06’s. Worked well on deer.
A few hundred 180 as well but only a few deer by my sil. All worked well.