Guys,If you are tired of opinions on what works on game and why, then find out for yourself. You can use wet news print and milk jugs filled with water to determine close and long ormaximum range performance. If the first milk jug explodes you have shock. How many explode can give you an idea of actual effective penetration levels. If it just passes through the energy is spent and you will need to kill by bleed out only .... or change one of the variables listedlater on.For some idea of expansion on deer, I use 2" of soaked news print and 5 jugs only caring about the effect on the first two. This simulates deer and the rest is just to trap the bullet. 2 ft of additional news print may be needed to stop larger bore diameter or heavier bullets. If you can't expand here and stop the bullet with this set up, you need to take some logical step to correct it.That is if expansion is your goal. Even if it isn't then you see how much shock is obtained at various ranges. So this pretty much works for everyone. For those seeking expansion, you can cut back on bullet weight. Increase meplat size, soften the mix, or increase velocity, or shorten range. All of these will increase expansion and cut penetration.The reverse is true if you need more penetration or have too much expansion up close. If you penetrate more than this set up detailed,then you needset your distance .... closer. If you want to simulate bigger game, just increase the news print infront of the jugs. You can go to local butcher shops and get bones from pigs or beefat low to no cost to simulate hits in that area and see how your mix and bullet shape will hold up. Just wrap that bone inside the front news print and place that in front of the jugs marking it's location for shot placement. Spray paint works fine. Add more news print if the simulated distance in muscle tissue is father to bone like in a bear.After a while, it's gets easier to guess at the ranges for minimum and maximum. But change caliber and it will prevent problems in the field. I no longer need to perform this testing since settling on certain hardness levels. I have even designed bullets with meplats that are of similar size in different calibers to aid in this effort. Then I get 5 opportunities a year on the real thing.I warn you, if you are new to hunting with cast, the minimum distance for the bullet to hang together willbe farther out than you expect, and the maximum range will be closer in than you want, ifexpansion and humane killing effect are important to you.But where do you begin? What hardness and velocity do you use for testing? Simple .... but time consuming, so start early before season. Before I start, I mold up a batch of bullets using ACWW and use a few bullets each day to find the maximum velocity at each hardness levelbefore leading or accuracy loss. Then I mold up another batch of bullets to begin actual testing. Since the bullets harden every day up until 14 days, I can pick the time and load two bullets with each loadand shoot that mix at my simulated targets. I do thisevery tick up the BHN scale and look at how that mix performs / deforms. (Here is where a hardness tester is invaluable if you want to later duplicate this hardness by mix.) As the bullets get harder, I use the next higher load to raise velocity and continue testing. Adjusting my distances, if my "guesses or desires"simply aren't achieveable. Or if I think I have that flexibility.Once this testing is finished and all data recorded, I find the hardness levelthat produced the results I wanted.From this point I have a reasonable expectation of what I can do. Then I need to duplicate this hardness level in another batch of bullets and work up an accurate load with this mix and you are done. If you want to go above ACWW hardness levels, you can mix in some lino. That will make the 14 day testvalid to higher levels. Then if you like the performance of say 16 BHN, you can mix 50% WW and 50% pure lead, plus at least 1% tin and heat treat it to get a"tougher" 16 BHN bullet than you can by mixing alone. 16 BHN is 16 BHN for expansion, but the hardened mixwill hold together twice as well because it will have half the antimony.Using this strategyyouanswer maximum and minimum range expectations. Meplat size and the effects. Hardness and velocity questions. Caliber qualities and options. You answer toyour own satisfaction level, the practical bullet weight. (This is often grossly over estimated for deer.) Especially, if you have certain range requirements you just want to achieve.If you think about this process and see the actual results of "your" testing, you will gain confidence when it is used on game. And thenyou can guess where you want to start with the next caliber or bullet choice. Pretty soon, yougain an understanding of limits and possibilities, and you can predict these things that will work almost dead on. And then,all you actually need to do is verify them on game. This is a great learning tool for any experience level caster to utilize with out going 10 seasons trying each effort on actual game. This strategy can fail miserably because it will always produce a different result because of shot placement, or adrelin level or any of the other variables encountered. That's hunting. But you will prevent the stomach turning feeling of lost or woundedgame.If you don't want to go to this much detail or you don't have a hardness tester, just mold up some ACWW. And after two weeks, load it how you want and fire at this setup. Then just adjust the distances until you lose performance. It's much simpler, but often discouraging once you see the actual working limits on the two ranges. But .... you are no longer guessing or going on someone elses opinion. You know!From this testing, I use 14 BHN exclusively now for rifles. And 10 BHN for handgun calibers or rifles shooting handgun calibers.All calibers run bullets with meplats around .250 so expansion remains fairly constant and predictable. That way, caliber and bore diameter effect changesare minimized and only velocity and bullet weight arechanging variables. That is just for me and a system Iuse on deer. But your bullet designs will set different requirements. Thus, this test.So save your milk jugs and news paper and give it a whirl if you REALLY want to know for sure. Notice that I said it will give you an idea of what you can expectout of that caliber and bullet. I feel pretty comfortable about the specifics of the set up for predicting expansionfor deer. This process can also help you decide on the limits you may have as to certain shot angles. In other words, if you get explosive action from just one milk jug, then you probably need to limit yourself to broad side shots avoiding large bone. If you canbust two after penetrating bone, thenyou have the best of all worlds. Others will have to take this example and develop it further for other species of game. For larger animals, you may not want to burst the first ones, but simply penetrate all equally well. You now understand the process enough to fine tune results for yourself.Hope this helps those that are new, tired of asking, or reading the same old opinions over and over.