Give up on subsonic 300AAC for HD and go supersonic?

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ThreeHundredTraveler
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Re: Give up on subsonic 300AAC for HD and go supersonic?

Post by ThreeHundredTraveler »

Dolomite_Supafly wrote:Expansion or not I would push the lightest bullet that will cycle as hard as you possibly can. The temporary wound channel created as the tissues stretch will be as devastating as a slower bullet that expands. Remember velocity increases the energy by a factor of 4 while weight only increases it by a factor of 2. Because of this I ALWAYS try to get velocity over weight.
Agreed, and high velocity is more likely to cause hydraulic shock a very useful thing in making animals stop doing whatever it is they were doing.
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Re: Give up on subsonic 300AAC for HD and go supersonic?

Post by rebel »

Expansion test in wet pack-not scientific but telling- 125 SST at 50, about 16" with great expansion. 220 smk, still going as far as I know. The box was 20" deep,full of wet phone books with a metal trash can full of water behind it. The subsonic went through the trash can sideways and plowed dirt for a while. Never recovered it. It also penetrated a 14" poplar stump, through and through.
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Re: Give up on subsonic 300AAC for HD and go supersonic?

Post by Twinsen »

I have a few thoughts on the subject.

Remington Subsonics in my personal experience are unreliable in function in my rifles that work with everything else I've shot.

Supersonics when shot through a silencer are comparibly quiet in report, and on impact, but far louder in motion. If you're shooting inside of a house, meh. They aren't in motion long. The report is the loud part anyway.

Heavy 308 match bullets aren't designed for terminal performance even in 300 win mag. Hunters report good results, but I can't testify either way.

You have literally exaggeratively billions of options of bullets and speeds. Subsonics are very neat and supersonics are very easy and will not deafen you like an unsuppressed rifle.
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Re: Give up on subsonic 300AAC for HD and go supersonic?

Post by Dolomite_Supafly »

I happened across this at 4:30 this morning.
http://wstiac.alionscience.com/pdf/WQV8N1_ART01.pdf
It is a relevant, and very interesting, read about bullet performance and how it compares to a bullets lethality. I have spent a lot of time reading on the subject and this is the first time I have seen this particular one.

I will say that from all the reading I have done on the subject that there are two different types of incapacitation from a gunshot, physiological and psychological.

No caliber is guaranteed to be an immediate stopper unless it is a CNS (central nervous system) hit and that would be a physiological stop. And a .22 will stop just as well as a .45 when the hit is a CNS hit. And if the hit isn’t in the CNS then it falls into the second category, psychological incapacitation. This is at least the case when talking about an immediate stop of a threat. Beyond that the stop would be caused by a loss of blood which could take several minutes or even longer before the blood loss is significant enough to cause incapacitation.

Now with a psychological stop there are plenty of factors that contribute. Life experience is one of the biggest factors. A person who is a gang banger who has been shot previously or a soldier who has been in a war zone is less likely to succumb to a psychological stop. Likewise a house wife who has never seen any sort of violence may collapse immediately from a gunshot despite the fact it may not be life threatening.

Additionally, a person’s physical well being can contribute to whether they succumb to a psychological stop. If a person has been sick or is weak from illness or injury they may not have the ability to overcome the stress of being shot and this would also be considered a psychological stop.

This is a story I was told by a training officer in one of the courses I had attended. Part of the training involved someone shooting at someone else using a blank firing pistol. None of the participants knew they were going to be shot at. One of the students entered the room and a trainer fired a blank from a 38 caliber pistol. The student immediately fell to the ground and did not move. The student was unresponsive at which point the instructor said he had a sinking feeling that somehow the pistol had been loaded with live ammo. Well after a few minutes the student woke up believing he had been shot. This is an example of a psychological stop. Even though the student hadn’t been harmed he felt he had and this caused him to drop.

We have all read the stories of bad guys being shot dozens of times and continue to fight. These are the bad guys who are able to overcome the psychological effects of being shot and continue the fight. Had those same bad guys been hit in the CNS the fight would have stopped immediately. So shot placement is as important, if not more important, as ammo selection. And this is why training is so important. Anyone who has a gun that is intended to be used for self defense should, at a bare minimum, do some basic training. If nothing else run in place for 2-3 minutes, to simulate the stress, and then engage a target at the expected defensive distances. Most people who go to the range practice shooting in a static position and while this is good it is not very realistic when it comes to defensive shooting. Because of this most people should practice moving while shooting. And something else people do, that I have been guilty of, is only practicing things I am good at. If you are already good at something why not concentrate on those things you are not so good at?

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Re: Give up on subsonic 300AAC for HD and go supersonic?

Post by wass »

rgmeddn wrote:The only reason I bought a 300 AAC BO (DDM4V) and silencer (YHM ti QD Phantom) was to have a large capacity weapon for HD that wouldn't deafen me if used inside my house. "Great!", I thought, "They already make subsonic ammo for it". So, I also bought 400 rounds of the Remington 220gr subs.

Well, these FACTORY subs cycle erratically, I've found, and they over-penetrate, I've learned. Over-penetrate is the other side of the coin from just-pass-on-through-without-dropping-off-much-KE. TWO reasons to look for something else. They may have changed, but Sierra would not publish loads for subsonic.

I'm at a loss why there aren't plenty of bullets that work subsonically for this cartridge. After all, look at all the handgun ammo that works beautifully - and for the most part all of them at subsonic velocities. There must be a fundamental lack of knowledge on my part. And, yes, I have looked at some of the offerings from Outlaw, Woodleigh, lead boolits, etc., but there's still the problem of being right on the edge of subsonic cycling (un)reliability - a Home Defense showstopper.

Now I'm starting to think of terms of suppressed supersonic loads. Supersonic loads have cycled flawlessly in my rifle. So, it's about finding the right bullet that has good terminal performance at the velocity that this gun can provide. I've been looking at the Barnes M/LE LLRP, which is a 150gr projectile. Other bullets of the same weight can attain MV of 1800-1900 fps, but I don't think that is fast enough for these to perform ideally. But is it fast enough to do "enough" I'm wondering.

Anybody know of any talk of this bullet in the 300 AAC?

I know about the Barnes 110gr TAC-TX and may end up loading some of these to test fire with my silencer and with/without hearing protection just to see if it's tolerable. As of now it doesn't look like all criteria of quiet enough, highly reliable, and good terminal performance are available. Of the three only "quiet enough" is the one I can live (literally) without. The suppressed 300AAC supersonic can't be all that much different from the handguns we also have for HD.

Has anybody solved this puzzle?
I have a DDM4 V5 300 Blk with a AAC 762-SDN-6 silencer and have not had any cycling issues with factory subs & supers. I've shot Remington 220 (R300AAC8), Hornady Amax 208, HSM 220 subs, Lehigh Defense 194 ME, Hornady 110 Vmax, PNW 125 Nosler. For HD I keep it loaded with Lehigh Defense 194 ME.
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Re: Give up on subsonic 300AAC for HD and go supersonic?

Post by rgmeddn »

wass wrote:
rgmeddn wrote:The only reason I bought a 300 AAC BO (DDM4V) and silencer (YHM ti QD Phantom) was to have a large capacity weapon for HD that wouldn't deafen me if used inside my house. "Great!", I thought, "They already make subsonic ammo for it". So, I also bought 400 rounds of the Remington 220gr subs.

Well, these FACTORY subs cycle erratically, I've found, and they over-penetrate, I've learned. Over-penetrate is the other side of the coin from just-pass-on-through-without-dropping-off-much-KE. TWO reasons to look for something else. They may have changed, but Sierra would not publish loads for subsonic.

I'm at a loss why there aren't plenty of bullets that work subsonically for this cartridge. After all, look at all the handgun ammo that works beautifully - and for the most part all of them at subsonic velocities. There must be a fundamental lack of knowledge on my part. And, yes, I have looked at some of the offerings from Outlaw, Woodleigh, lead boolits, etc., but there's still the problem of being right on the edge of subsonic cycling (un)reliability - a Home Defense showstopper.

Now I'm starting to think of terms of suppressed supersonic loads. Supersonic loads have cycled flawlessly in my rifle. So, it's about finding the right bullet that has good terminal performance at the velocity that this gun can provide. I've been looking at the Barnes M/LE LLRP, which is a 150gr projectile. Other bullets of the same weight can attain MV of 1800-1900 fps, but I don't think that is fast enough for these to perform ideally. But is it fast enough to do "enough" I'm wondering.

Anybody know of any talk of this bullet in the 300 AAC?

I know about the Barnes 110gr TAC-TX and may end up loading some of these to test fire with my silencer and with/without hearing protection just to see if it's tolerable. As of now it doesn't look like all criteria of quiet enough, highly reliable, and good terminal performance are available. Of the three only "quiet enough" is the one I can live (literally) without. The suppressed 300AAC supersonic can't be all that much different from the handguns we also have for HD.

Has anybody solved this puzzle?
I have a DDM4 V5 300 Blk with a AAC 762-SDN-6 silencer and have not had any cycling issues with factory subs & supers. I've shot Remington 220 (R300AAC8), Hornady Amax 208, HSM 220 subs, Lehigh Defense 194 ME, Hornady 110 Vmax, PNW 125 Nosler. For HD I keep it loaded with Lehigh Defense 194 ME.
So, your HD default is factory Lehigh Def 194. I have some of these bullets as well as some of the Outlaw 220gr that I handload. They cycle perfectly with the A1680 across a wide range of powder loads. By "cycle perfectly" I mean they all leave BHO on a single or last shot.

BUT I have a lot of trouble getting feeding jams, which is undoubtedly a COAL issue that has yet to be worked out as to whether it is related to magazines, too long COAL, or feedramp issues. I recently bought a Sheridan Gage but haven't had a chance to look at the loads from that standpoint. The shapes of these bullets are so much different that COAL isn't as telling as comparator measurements (base to ogive - which the Sheridan will clearly show -- better than even a comparator does).

That said, I would be very interested in knowing what the COAL of your Lehigh's is, assuming you have calipers. If you have a comparator, then that measurement would be of even greater interest.

Thanks to all who've contributed. If I end up giving up on the 300AAC subs and going with supers, I just might give up on the 300AAC altogether and go with a .308 Win.
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