Archive for the 'Ammunition' Category

Andy with practical accuracy sends me a note with a video he did as a challenge from a commenter here at TCJ.

First of all, it’s nice to be in the mix of thing where you can affect outcomes like testing of weapons systems.  Second, his results are interesting and seem to me to put to bed the notion that a 1:9 twist rate can’t stabilize a 77 grain bullet.  This is the same thing Steve Mayer at Rock River Arms told me several years ago.  But it’s nice to see it tested.

By the way, nice shooting Andy.  A 1 MOA group is always good in my book.

And a change in load means that that the 20 gauge (and even 410) is now being used much more for turkey hunting.

Shooting Illustrated.

For us, the main takeaway is that if you have a bad guy hiding behind a common interior wall, concealment is all it’s really providing. With an AR-15 carbine, there’s a high probability your bullet will perform nearly as well after passing through that wall—even if it hits a stud—as it would if there was no barrier between you and that bad guy at all.

We also learned that the 150-grain 300 HAMR load is rather wicked with regard to terminal performance. Though it may provide deeper-than-desirable penetration in a home-defense setting, from a wound-cavity standpoint you can see why this cartridge is one of the best available for big-game hunting with an AR-15. And finally, do not discount the 125-grain hollowpoint .30-30 Win. load for personal protection. It should not over-penetrate, and it creates a reasonably large crush cavity. It’s clearly a great choice for home defense if your life-saving gun is a lever-action carbine.

If I had to pick one of these cartridges/loads for home defense, I’d probably go with the 110-grain 300 HAMR load because of its consistent 12 to 14 inches of penetration and the lack of over-penetration concern associated with it. The Speer Gold Dot load for the .223 Rem. and the FTX load for the .300 BLK delivered similar, but slightly deeper performance. There are, of course, lots of other loads and carbine cartridges to consider. This test is only a glimpse. But, it does give you an idea of what can be expected with carbines, and even the ancient .30-30 Win., if they must be fired inside a home to save your life.

Well, the .30-30 is a venerable cartridge, and stands today as the load that has probably taken more white tail than any other cartridge.  It would be an awesome home defense round.  It’s also noteworthy that lever action rifles are very popular within the AR community, and for good reason.  Every man should have lever action rifles.

The summary is a bit strange though.  The graphs show the 300 HAMR as over-penetrating, and the last thing you want inside a home is over-penetration.  Moreover, availability is an issue, as is cost.

Dean Weingarten.

Tyler had a 10 mm Glock model 20 loaded with Buffalo Bore 190-grain hard cast bullets. The son had a .45ACP with a red dot sight, 15 round magazines, and hollowpoint +P self-defense ammunition. The father had bear spray, with “assault” in the name.

[ … ]

The father had deployed his bear spray. The bear blasted through the cloud with no visible effect.

[ … ]

No shots had hit the spine. The bear had a thick layer of fat, which acted as an armor of a sort. Two of the +P .45 hollow-point bullets were recovered under the hide, in the fat. Several hits were in the top and side of the neck going down toward the shoulders. Tyler believes the .45 bullets had not penetrated into the chest cavity, but most of the bullet paths were not followed to see which came from which caliber. They knew the side shots had been from Tyler’s 10mm. The frontal shots could have been from either shooter. The shot above the eyes had to be from the .45, because the angle would have been different as the bear closed and Tyler joined the son, shooting at the advancing bear.

The bear had been hit so many times, the investigator gave up after counting 16 holes. All of the shots were in the front half of the bear. The bear had a number tattooed on its lip. It had been handled before. It was a grizzly bear, about 500 – 600 lbs, according to the investigator and biologist.

Tyler believes his shots with the Buffalo Bore bullets were the only effective shots. I am not so certain. If the son had not shot, it seems unlikely Tyler would have been able to put shots into the bear before it reached the hunters. Both parties played critical parts. The incident shows the advantage of deep penetrating bullets.

We do not know the dynamics of each shot, because a complete necropsy was not necessary. Some of the son’s shots might have penetrated to the chest cavity. We do not know. Penetration of 11-13 inches is common with aggressive, self-defense hollow-points in a .45. A bullet into the side of the neck, from the front, angling down toward the chest, could have to travel through many inches of fat to reach the chest cavity.

And of course, an argument ensued in the comments.  10 mm is best.  No, .44 magnum is best.

I don’t take this instance as justifying any conclusion of the sort.  I take it as “shoot hard ball rounds when in bear country.”  The father should have forced his son to carry ball ammunition rather than carrying personal defense ammunition.  Penetration is king with large animals.

.45 ACP (or especially 450 SMC) should do the trick as long as it’s hard ball.  10 mm should do the trick as well, and .44 magnum should do the trick better than either of the two.

YMMV.  Shot placement is important too.

For the reloader, it was his first time shooting a lever action 30-30.  He did well (missing only once), and that’s expected.  I find the 30-30 easy to shoot, easy on recoil, and powerful enough to take anything I want to take.  I think the rifle and cartridge are a pure joy.

OL.

For years now we’ve heard from rifle and ammo manufacturers that the 6.5 Creedmoor is their most popular cartridge. It’s an excellent round for open country, and it’s found its way into plenty of Midwestern and Eastern deer camps, too. But there’s one consideration that’s become a head scratcher. A whole bunch of deer hunters are reporting sub-par blood trails from deer—even well-hit deer—shot with their 6.5 Creeds.

Just ask full-time Wisconsin blood-tracker Dean Muthig, who has put his Bavarian mountain scent hounds on 230 deer tracks so far this season. Many of his calls over the years have been from parents who need help recovering deer during the youth rifle season. Not because their kids are making poor shots—Muthig says younger hunters seem to shoot just as accurately as adults. Instead, it’s because they tend to use smaller calibers like a .243—and the 6.5 Creedmoor. It’s not that these kids aren’t killing deer. They just can’t find them.

Consider the 9-year-old boy who shot a nice buck on a Wisconsin food plot this fall. The 8-pointer fled into a stand of pines, which his family searched without finding a speck of blood. When Muthig arrived, his hound lead him directly to the buck. It had run 175 yards before piling up from the double-lung shot. The bullet had not exited, and there was no visible blood on the entire track.

“The kid made a great shot, but it’s just one of those things where the deer didn’t bleed at all,” says Muthig, who’s been tracking for 17 years. “The 6.5 Creedmoor is like a .243 where—they kill deer, don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of people who kill deer with them. But they just don’t leave a blood trail, hardly ever. And it’s just because it’s such a small entry hole … It’s the size of a pencil, and a lot of times the bullets go in and expand and there’s no exit, and nowhere for the blood to go. … Or if it does exit, there’s not a lot of room for blood to get out. Running deer cover a lot of ground fast, so you can end up with really minimal blood in the course of a few hundred yards.”

[ … ]

But even if you have a higher sectional density with the 6.5 Creedmoor, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get a heavy blood trail on a pass through. So what does this mean for hunters who don’t want to wade into ballistics, and just want to recover their deer? It means they need to choose the right bullet for their desired outcome.

“If you like two leaky holes, and there’s a lot to be said for that, you’re going to want to shoot something like a Nosler AccuBond, a Barnes Monolithic, or a Hornaday GMX,” Snow says. “If you want lots of internal damage but not necessarily a pass-through, look at the Hornaday ELD-X or a Nosler Ballistic Tip—any of those lighter, polymer-tip bullets should fit the bill. Just know that there’s still a chance that it’ll blow through the deer.”

I guess that’s one knock against the bullet.  But it seems to me that you want both – expansion and damage + pass-through.  Of course, I spoke to one old hunter one time who told me “I shoot the 300 Win Mag and I don’t have to chase a blood trail.”

Video courtesy of reader Ned.

Interesting experience he has with Louisiana floods and what it does to guns and ammo.