Heck no! If by premium you mean 90% plus weight retention type bullets. I believe, given equal shot placement, that the Ballistic Tip typ bullets are superior for deer. Having killed over 140 deer in 2 years, plus being a part of another couple hundred by other researchers, I am a big believer in light for caliber, high velocity, rapid expanion, 50% weight loss type bullets. Things like the Barnes X are great for penetration, but that is not needed on deer, and I believe that if doing a simple double lung, behind the shoulder shot, it will result in longer tracking jobs. Most of my shooing was done with a .280 and 140 Ballistic Tips, and while I rarely got double shoulder pentetration, I would get single shoulders to exit, providing very good blood trails. Monometals have their place, especially with really light for caliber, hyper velocity stuff, but not with more or less standard cartridges and bullet weights on deer.

There seems to be a fad to shoot game animals with small bores. For such small bores such as .224" it seems that a better bullet would help.

I don't like this trend. To me they are just bragging, showing off or don't care when they shoot large animals with small bullets.

Another thing is that when a bullet fails the animal can run off not to be found. Seems this is what saves them the facts.

Reaally want to get a war going, when someone say's they shoot a 223 at deer, tell them it's irresponsible. BTW, I think it is!

Well i have to disagree with you guys here. I love to drop the hammer on deer with my 7mm RemMag and 300WSM. I take pride in practicing shot placement out to 500 yards, So when i harvest a deer or hog out past 300 yards, i confidently know i have plenty of power and accuracy to punch thru both front sholders and have little to no tracking. I guess i'm at a different stage in my hunting career, i'd rather shoot my bow at close range than use a small cal. rifle at close range.

I would say it depends on what caliber and cartridge that you are shooting. Unless I am in a hunt for a trophy type animal where I will use a high power rifle and what you would call a non premium bullet I usually use a pistole for deer size animals. Here you want the penetration and if possible a through and through bullet wound. If it just goes in one side you may have a long track to follow. The round that I have been using lately is the 7-30 Waters in a Thompson Contender. My load consist of a 120 grain Barnes XBT at around 2200 fps. This will take a deer size animal out to 150 yards very cleanly and I have. I even dropped an spike elk a couple of years ago at a little over 100 yards with it with total penetration and no bullet recovered. I doubt that I would try a shot over 50 yards with a standard jacketed bullet on a deer, coyote yes but not a deer with this round.

I guess it really depends on what we call premium bullets and which bullet type is the cut-off line. The cup and core was the premium bullet of its day so is it to be included in the premium side or the now "normal" side? For normal velocities (an argument by itself) normal (again, we need clarification) bullets work great and probably superior to the modern premium bullets. At the newer higher velocities that some cartridges sling bullets, I think the newer premium bullets shine.

You don't need them for deer. You don't even need them for elk, but some hunters for some reason (maybe fallen victim to marketing hype) feel more confident I guess if they use them. Pronghorn, deer, elk can all be taken with a standard jacketed soft point of appropriate caliber and bullet weight. When you go after big tough muscled, thick skinned animals like Rhino, Hippo, and Elephants then you want something pretty premium.

Even on North American biggame like deer and elk, if one of my bullets happens to break up once it passes the vitals I don't care as long as the goal of a clean humane kill was reached. I've seen it happen once or twice with standard soft points on elk, but as long as it held together long enough to reach the vitals it really didn't concern me at all. I don't consider it bullet failure if a clean kill was made. I've been reloading Speer Grand Slam for a while now, which I consider to be a bit tougher than most standard jacketed soft points, but it's still a jacketed soft point bullet. Never seen any of my Grand Slams break up, haven't recovered many though.

Where i live in central california those lead bullets are band (illegal to hunt with), so i have to use Winchester E-tips or Barnes tripple shock. Dont you worry its comming your way and you will have to start reloading those preimum bullets you hate instead of those upgraded jacketed soft points. It might take a few years but if you start reading in the regs. volunteer basis, get ready their just lubing you up, but they will give it to you dry.

So Kalifornia is trying to spread it's poison to the rest of us eh? For what reason? Simply because it's lead? Why am I not surprised? I knew the day was not far around the corner. At least we have fair warning enough to fight it. I see no reason to have to give up using lead ammo just to help fulfill some crazy agenda.

It's the same with waterfowl. That federal law banning the use of lead shot makes no sense and serves no purpose for the safety of habitat. As it stands now I have to use non-tox when hunting waterfowl, but can hunt the exact same area for upland and use lead even at waters edge. Some of these laws exist simply for control and serve no real purpose except to satisfy the left wing liberals. Sorry to get off subject.

You bring up a good point of the DOW requiring a lead free bullet witch equals out to a premium type of bullet. I am not sure if Arizona requires it or just recommends it for the North Western part of the state, but I do know that Utah does recommend a lead free bullet for hunting in the South Western part of the state. They are doing this because of the problem that lead causes the California Condor. You can read about it on Arizona's DOW site or this article.

http://azgfd.net/artman/publish/NewsMedia/Recent-condor-mortalities-used-to-expand-conservation-efforts.shtml