Shooting Illustrated.
Remington Ammunition is expanding its Core-Lokt Tipped ammunition line to cover lever-action rifles and carbines with the new Remington Core-Lokt Tipped Lever Gun product line.
“Big Green is excited to be bringing the Core-Lokt Tipped family into the world of lever guns,” said Jon Langenfeld, research and development engineer at Remington Ammunition. “The resurgence of the lever gun was a welcome sight within Remington. We knew it would only be right to allow every lever-gun shooter, whether novice or expert, the ability to utilize the trusted performance of Remington’s Core-Lokt Tipped in a variety of lever-gun calibers.”
Most lever-action firearms use a tubular magazine, which places cartridges in front and behind each other in the magazine. For safety reasons, lever gun calibers are not loaded with pointed, spitzer-type bullets due to potential danger of a bullet’s point sitting right behind the next round’s primer, which may result in an accidental discharge. Blunt-nosed bullets are used in these magazines to prevent this, but the trade-off has always been less efficient ballistic performance, especially at longer distances.
All Remington Core-Lokt Tipped Lever Gun bullets use a green polymer ballistic tip which reduces each bullet’s “blunt” profile to boost its ballistic performance in a way that’s safe for the inside a lever-action firearm’s tubular magazine. However, the Core-Lokt bullets still expand into their classic “mushroom” shape to stop game.
It’s about time. I’m surprised it took them this long. Here is list of bullet weights and muzzle velocities.
- .360 Buckhammer, 180 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,400 fps
- .30-30 Win., 150 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,390 fps
- .35 Rem., 200 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,080 fps
- .45-70 Gov’t, 300 grain: Muzzle velocity 1,900 fps
- .444 Marlin, 240 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,350 fps
- .32 Win. Special, 170 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,250 fps
This is a little disappointing. To be quite honest, I’m not sure why they’re not loading them hotter than this. Picking up a box of .444 Marlin jacketed flat nose by Hornady, I see it has a bullet weight of 265 grains with a muzzle velocity of 2400 FPS. That’s a heavier bullet moving slightly faster than the Remington bullet. But then, the Core-Lokt cartridges have always been a bit slower than the competition. It’s the expansion guys love, and too much velocity can actually hurt the ballistics by “penciling” through the game. We’d have to see a gel test to quantify the difference between these manufacturers.
There’s also the issue of sighting in your rifle. The sight-in procedure is good for only a single bullet weight, and so if you’re testing ammunition from a different manufacturer, while the point of impact during testing won’t matter, the final ammunition choice will require sighting in the rifle with whatever you choose.
As to the issue brought up a few days ago by a reader, I still see very high usefulness and viability of the lever action rifle. As I’ve said, this .444 Marlin round will easily put down hogs with a single shot without any movement at all after impact (I’ve seen lesser rounds take longer to accomplish the job).
Also, there’s the issue of cool factor. Lever action guns are just cool to own and shoot, and a .444 Marlin or 45-70 doesn’t exactly go into an AR pattern rifle (it’s short action, including the AR-10s).
I think the lever gun will be around long after I’m gone, as it should be. Every American boy should own a lever gun, or several.
