Help with bullet weight and uses.

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ironhead7544
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Re: Help with bullet weight and uses.

Post by ironhead7544 »

Your rifle will tell you what it likes.

The Speer TNT is popular for an all around bullet. Can be had in 500 round boxes. Good place to start.

I picked the 147-150 grain bullets as some are available in bulk. Speer makes a 150 gr Gold Dot 300 Blackout bullet that is reportedly good for deer and expands at the lower speeds. I get good accuracy with WW296/H110 powder with the 125 and 150 gr bullets I have loaded. For the Gold Dot, I picked up a pound of Lil'Gun that is supposed to get 2150 fps. Havent tried it yet.

Bullets are a bit hard to get right now. I just received a box of 1000 Berry's Plated 150 gr 30-30 RS bullets. Plan on pushing these at around 1800 fps for a practice load.
gregoblv
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Re: Help with bullet weight and uses.

Post by gregoblv »

First let me say thank you for your responses. Know it or not you all have helped me with the start of this journey.

I had read the the 125-135 range bullets were good for hunting, but little about the game, so thank you there.

I picked up some Hornady 110, the only 308 bullet below 200 gr when I got them. It really is empty out there. And when I found others online I was not able to buy do to an impending move to a new home. Got to save the money. Hopefully that will be done soon and the finance will loosen up.

From what you all said/did not say, I going to go toward the light side and leave the heavies alone for now. That said, other than using a can, what are the heavies, above 150 say, good for? Obviously they should hit hard and kill, but is there a benefits to using them over the lighter, faster bullets?

Thanks again and see you later.
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dellet
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Re: Help with bullet weight and uses.

Post by dellet »

Time spent with a ballistic calculator is helpful. It gives an idea of how different bullets will fly and impact.

In reality under 200 yards, there is not enough difference in the trajectory and energy of 110-150 grain bullets to use that as a reason to pick one over the other with a 16” barrel. A 110 grain bullet with a muzzle velocity of 2400 fps. Or 125 at 2250, Will be roughly the same as a 150 at 2050. Drop is comparable, drift advantage goes to the 150. There is a bit of a void between 150-175, but there a few that will work 100-150 yards. The advantage of the heavies starts around 175-200 yards. They tend to have less drop, drift and more energy retention past those distances.

That scale will hold true for almost all weights of bullets up to about 180 grains at max velocities. The problem is finding 308 bullets that expand at 1600 fps.

When you get to subs, or faster 175 grain and up, you are basically looking at handgun performance, with better ballistic flight. Any 300 blackout bullet will have a better flight and more retained energy on target than any similar weight bullet and velocity than say a 44 magnum. As long as the bullet will perform on impact.

Many subsonic bullets can not be shot more than 12-1400 fps, the bullets open in flight. So choice is key if you want to shoot the higher speeds.

Now the dirty little secret about the cartridge. It’s not really a good choice for many or maybe most of today’s hunters. It excels on game 300 pounds or less. Has a good record on heavier animals in the right hands. But it is a shot placement dependent cartridge. Marginal shots just do not have the shock power to allow people to shoot something in the butt, expecting the energy dump to knock the antlers off. Shot placement with the 300 Blackout is much more important than bullet choice. Way too many people don’t stop and think about that and early on the cartridge had a reputation for being inadequate for hunting due more to poor shooting skills than cartridge performance.

Almost any varmint bullet is a good choice. The VMax for example does not have the explosive impact that it would have if shot from a 308, but it expands very well at 2000fps and less. A good rule of thumb is that if it works well in a 308, it will work just as well in a 300 Blackout, as long as you’re about 300 yards closer to the target.
300 Blackout, not just for sub-sonics.
BJK
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Re: Help with bullet weight and uses.

Post by BJK »

Dellet, you beat me to it and I was asked if I wanted to post this. Much of what I wrote is written differently but we pretty much write similar things. I'm posting. (That's obvious)

Greg, there are 2 extremes in schools of thought when it comes to punching holes in a living target, and cartridges that mix those schools of thought somewhere in the middle. One school says fast and lightweight for lots of ft/lbs, and the other school says big, heavy, and relatively slow moving bullets that just make holes. They both work if the "gotchas" for both schools of thought are worked around. But you asked about slow and heavy.

In general, light and fast means less penetration, make the bullet expand and penetration goes down even more but energy transfer increases. To increase penetration add bullet weight. For maximum penetration take that heavy bullet, and construct it so that it doesn't deform at all.

In my experimentation with subsonic Sierra 80s in 5.56 many years ago, the slow and heavy bullets drive deep since they don't waste a lot of energy deforming the bullet (expansion). A by-product, and this can be a negative, is that they don't kill as quickly so shots much be accurately placed on target. Of course they are also much quieter. But sit down and figure out the energy in a heavy slow mover and you'll find it to be in the realm of .45ACP, to put energy into perspective. It's not a great deal of energy is my point, but what it has isn't wasted in expansion. I've never sat down to figure out energy retention at range, but I'd be willing to bet that it doesn't lose much from the end of the barrel to the maximum usable range. At this time, due to trajectory, I see that as 100-125 yards unless one wants to mortar bullets in far more than I do. For very quiet game getting it would work pretty good. That's what prompted me to develop a subsonic 5.56 in the first place. The fact that it turned an AR into a single shot rifle wasn't a big deal. The sierra 80s would flip ends and a few inches in would be cutting a wide swath through my test hemlock boards. If I remember correctly I got 13" of penetration in those same stacked boards. So in a deer for instance it would be through and through penetration. Put one in the heart and it won't go very far. I'd need to test heavy bullets in the 300BO, but if the bullet had a heavy rear end in relation to the nose I'd expect similar results where at some point in it's terminal ballistics it swaps ends and at some point is cutting a wide swath. Slow movers mean that in a food animal you can eat all the way to the hole. That bullet put through a deers heart? That heart would still be edible. There is no meat damage. Compared to an extreme lightweight bullet, for an example I'll use a .17 Remington shooting a 25 grain needle @ 4100fps, hit an animal with that and where it's hit, and much of the surrounding tissue, is turned into jelly. The same thing happens to a lesser extent with deer (for instance) with suitable supersonic bullets.

I see the biggest advantage being noise with subsonics, and the fact that it will do what it does as a self loader. I don't know of any bottleneck rifle cartridge available to us today that can't be subsonic, but to get it to function in a semi-auto is the trick. We've had pistol cartridges that can do it for over a hundred years that's why I specified bottleneck rifle cartridges. That same firearm can, just by changing magazines, fire supersonic loads without any major changes. Now I'm giving arguments for 300Blackout, sheesh! :D

It would be great for use inside a dwelling with a can and subsonics IMO. Then move outside and reach out and touch, if need be, with either subsonic or supersonic loads. Of course a PCC in 9mm or .45 ACP can do the indoor role, but not so much the outdoor role, max' range being near 100 yards due to the terrible BC of the bullets they use. Would I want to be hit with a 230gr .45 @ 100 yards? No. But my point is that it's stretching the range of the cartridge IMO. There are better choices for the job.

A bit more off topic, but back then in my testing I mused about loading those 80s backwards as a sort of properly shaped subsonic bullet with a rounded nose (loaded backwards) and a long sloping tail. Accuracy was terrible and that experiment quickly came to an end. Maybe a bullet with a shorter tip would work better, but I didn't have any with a good boattail to give me the shape I wanted.

But back to the 2 schools of thought, they both work. Choose the characteristic you want. One just needs to keep in mind the limitations of each and work around those.
gregoblv
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Re: Help with bullet weight and uses.

Post by gregoblv »

Thank you Dellet and BJK. Together you have made a great deal of sense out of a not to talked about subject.

I used to read articles in Guns & Ammo years back that stressed shot placement and have always worked for the best placement with any gun I shoot. So your points about the heavies and not expanding makes perfect sense out to the need to place that shot.

I have always leaned toward heavier side of the bullets with my hand guns, but with a few, 38 snub nose and small 9mm I went for light bullets to get them out of the barrel faster so all the powder ads to their velocity.

As I said I don't have a can at this time and I don't have a chronograph yet either. I think that is going to be my next buy. Anyone got a favorite?

Thanks again to alll who have responded.
BJK
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Re: Help with bullet weight and uses.

Post by BJK »

Today my choice would be a Labradar, at least I think that's the name. Yup.

https://mylabradar.com/

It's one drawback? With my IR chrono' I can use it in the shop @ zero dark thirty and not bother anyone using an indoor bullet trap. The Labradar needs to be used outside if I understand it correctly.
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dellet
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Re: Help with bullet weight and uses.

Post by dellet »

The 208 Amax and 220 SMK both fly pretty well backwards. I think gds has taken a couple deer that way.

A lot of the heavy subs will tumble, but you can’t count on it. There was a video a few years ago with someone kind of mocking 300 Blackout subs. As more of a joke the guy shot a piece of “bullet proof glass”, bullet passed through. Bullet choice with subs is probably more important than with supers.

As for chronograph choice the competition electronics pro chrono is a good value and can Be found on sale regularly. Mine matched the accuracy of a Lab Radar.

Lab Radar indoors depends on the construction and clutter. Radar bounces off hard surfaces. I have also had movement down range set it off outside. It can be used in all weather and light conditions, so there are trade offs.
300 Blackout, not just for sub-sonics.
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