Lil'gun and SS 150 gr SP's

[44Man]

I'm a happy man! When loading the 300, I wanted a hunting load and of course started with 125 gr NBT's. Then I wanted a plinking load and looked at the reloading bench for components. I had a box of 3 or 4 hundred leftover 150 Soft points from my 30-06. These were bulk unbranded Midway re-packaged cup and core bullets....in other words the cheapest I could find at the time. So I thought, why not. Loaded over 15.3 gr of lil'gun, they shot well and at 2.08, fed reliably. I figured about 1900 fps or so from my BCA 16" upper.
Out of curiosity, I fired a few into a combination of water and books. I didn't expect the results I got.... I have three beautiful mushrooms from bullets I didn't expect to even deform! I have a new favorite load that I feel I can use for hogs or anything else! I'll get some pics when I figure out how to post them.

[plant.one]

by "water and books" do you mean the wetpack method?


cuz i seriously doubt a bullet designed to work at 30-06/308 velocity will open up at 300blk speeds.. at least when metal meets meat.


most of those standard cup and core soft points are engineered to work at 1800-1900+ IMPACT velocity - not MV

[44Man]

First bullet went through 8" water, 1" plyood, then two 8" jugs of water and stopped in the second.
#2 did 16" of water, then stopped 2" into DRY, tight packed magazines.
#3 did 16" of water then barely through the plywood.
I thought that was a pretty diverse test. As I said, bulk packed bullets with no idea what velocity they were designed for. I'm thinking they may not stay together in the 30-06.... maybe I should pull them.

[Sig220]

Water seems to always form great mushrooms!

Just my opinion but I think your target medium was a little on the hard side. It will give you a good comparison to other bullets fired into the same medium, but in no way will predict how it will perform on flesh and bone. The FBI and later others spent a fortune in ballistic gel to try and get a realistic medium that compares and it often fails.

I don't mean to rain on your parade, we all probably succumb to testing our bullets. These days there is so much information available that we can use that will be pretty reliable on our bullet choice. Plant mentions one....the manufacturers designed expansion velocity. Then we can use a chrono to make sure our velocity is up to snuff!


Would be really interesting to see the velocity you are getting from your load, I have tried Lil'Gun with lighter bullets but was not happy with the results.

[dellet]

44Man,

Don’t listen to the naysayers, hold the course and test the bullet.

You absolutely need a chronograph, or be able to test the bullet at distance. Expansion at 1900 fps is meaningless. You need to find the lower threshold for reliable results. This means you either download the cartridge to 1600 fps and shoot close where you can control the impact, or set up the target at 200 yards and guess at the velocity.

I generally set up the chronograph about 3 inches in front of a gel block at 25 yards, I know exactly the impact speed.

Most 308 hunting bullets will work well at 1800fps, many down to 1600. A flat base 150 grain bullet generally can be safely loaded to over 2100 fps in a 16” barrel, it will depend on the profile. Even wit a lower expansion threshold and a bullet with a poor BC, you have an effective range of 100 yards. Farther than most people shoot deer. Hogs that might not be enough.

Read up on external Ballistics. You mentioned that you weren’t sure if those bullets would hold up in a 30-06. Take a look at the actual bullet rpm. 12/twist x velocity x 60 =rpm.

300 blackout 12/7 x 2100 x 60 = 216,000 rpm

30-06 12/10 x 3000 x 60 = 216,000 rpm.

Most bullets easily hold up to 250k. So 2500 fps in a 1/7 really isn’t an issue and that’s about the same as 3700 fps in your basic 10 twist 30-06.

Over the years here, I have done and proven many things that people said couldn’t be done, only needed a little imagination. I have also probably sent more bullets back to the manufacturer telling them why they won’t work than most people have on their shelves. I don’t believe hype, and there is almost always a way to make something work. It might just be a very small window of effectiveness.

There might be better ways to test your bullet than you did, but it’s a start.

[44Man]

Yes, I don't expect the same performance in flesh. I was just surprised that the bullet expanded at this speed. Since this was just set up in the yard, I didn't think about distance BUT it turns out that it was at 25 yards. I threw the plywood in for possible bone strike on hogs. I doubt any shots here for deer or hogs would exceed 50 yds. If I get an opportunity to shoot a hog soon (we've got way too many hogs here!) I'll be sure to tell you how it turns out.