They work very, very well. Shot a lot of deer and hogs with 200g rems, and federals over the past 3 decades and they always worked.
The hornady FTx is a different animal, it's faster and does seem to have more devastation on the internals. Shot some big hogs with it and it's always passed thru and let air out of there tires quickly, were as with the conventional 200 rn they ran a little farther.
Still dead though. Do you need them no, are they great on game, yes. And they do give you more range.
That said they don't group the best out of my 35, but I still use them. Maybe my 2nd .35 will like them better.
Maybe someone out there has shot an elk or something bigger can give their experience.

 

The numbers look good enough to try and all I have read says they are great. I will tell you after this year god willing. :biggrin: Widow

 

Each one I've used resulted in meat in the freezer. That was in 30-30 and 45-70, but the 35 rem should be similar.

They provided no advantage for me over conventional bullets so I switched to handloaded ammo and saved some money. Some here can use the potentially better trajectory at longer yardages.

 

See ... that longer range thing, for me at least, only applies to the first shot.

Here's been my experience with the gummy tips.

You load them in the tube and they deform. We do not have, well, very rarely do we have extremely cold weather down here. We've got palm trees in our yard. So when we hunt, if it is in the 50s, or even the upper 40s, it is rare this time of year. But those gummies do not spring back in a hurry. They deform and they actually negatively affect/effect (not sure which one applies here) the flight of the projectile on the second and third shot.

I know this because a couple of years ago I was zeroing one of my 30-30s in cooler weather and having fits with the second and third shots. They were flying all over the place. What I finally figured-out was that the one in the pipe has time to reform to a proper pointy tip - but the ones in the tube, when you rack them after firing the first shot - they remain deformed for some time - especially in even cooler weather. (I later tried the same thing this past summer and they do bounce-back faster in hot weather, but still not fast enough for accurate followup shots IMHO.)

My point is, at least IMHO, that the first round may allow you to realize some increased distance/accuracy to target advantage, but that's all negated by how crazy those deformed tips make the pill perform on follow-up shots.

It's not incredibly noticeable at 50 meters where a 5" spread is maybe considered pie-plate accurate at 100 meters ... but when you actually try to put three consecutive rounds in a pie plate at 100 meters - it's a whole 'nuther ballgame.

Gummy tips were first developed to aid expansion of HP pills outta pistols. But neither pistols or their mags require:

1 - A pointy tip for increased ballistic coefficiency (sic: sp).
2 - Pistol rounds are not stacked end-to-end in their mags which might deform the tips as happens in a tube fed firearm - ie: Marlin Rifles, etc.

So I'm not a huge fan of the gummy tips. The one rifle I've actually stocked quite a few gummy tips for is my 338 MX. But I look at that this way. I gotta make that first shot count. The remaining rounds in the tube are for emergency purposes only - like a bear is charging or something. Because if I miss badly, (knock on wood, that's not happened often in my life), on say an elk at 150 meters ... he's probably going to get shot in the gut on my follow-up because those danged deformed gummy tips are so unpredictable.

All of this applies to my approach with my 35 Rem. I just prefer the old fashioned 200 gr SP Core-Lokts. I may even have some 150s in there for local whities. But I mean any of them are fine for 35 Rem ... the Federal Power Shock stuff, the Winchester PP stuff, whatever. LEVERevolution is by no means must have ammo for the 35 Rem, not IMHO anyways.

I'll tell ya where I think the LEVERevolution stuff really shines from what I've heard from a friend. He hunts with a scoped revolver, 44 mag, one of these dang long-barreled ridiculous looking S&W Magnum Hunter things - but he is good with it and he sure has killed a lot of deer with his outta of his stands. He just loves the stuff. He says it tightened his groups, added 25 yards to his max range and he says they perform flawlessly bang-flop every time. I can see how they might do that for wheel gun hunters.

But I think they are overrated for lever guns. Just my 2 cents.

 

I had a bad experience with the 35 Rem gummy tips and went back to the round nose Rems. I shot a buck at 15 yards in the shoulder and the bullet just penciled thru the deer. The hole in the off side would just fit the tip of your little finger. The deer ran 100 yards with his left leg sticking out to the side and ducked into a tangle of vines and got hung up in them and died. It was not what I was expecting at all from the bullet. If you look closely at the nose on the LE, the hollow point is a little small to suit my taste on the 35. I may give them a second chance.

 

I tried the Hornady ammo with the soft tip, but I've had two bullets separate the jacket from the core. I dug those out of a couple of whitetails. I went back to the Speer 180 grain flat nose and haven't had any problems with that.

 

I had good luck with them.

I hate to contradict anyone but I shoot up my deformed bullets out of all my rifles at the end of hunting season. Have shot some small groups with really goofed up bullets.
Having only shot deer with these 200 gr FTX factory bullets I don't know what they'd do on a hog.
I will say they knocked the poop out of 3 or 4 deer for my kids. I found the Rem 200 to be a good bullet overall though. The 200 Hornady round nose seems too hard and deer run more when shot with it.