MY AMMO EXPERIMENT

griffshrek

Well-Known Member
hello all
i have always wanted to see how bullets perform upon striking the target over the past months i have run through my mind diffrent ways of testing the performance of bullet heads to see how they will expand , depth of penetration ,retained weight of bullet and size of the wound channel created.

i managed to get a free afternoon in my busy dance card so this was it, i'm checking what happens to the heads after they hit the target.

i choose 4 diffrent types of head one of which is standard factory ammo all in .243/6mm

1/federal 100gr soft point factory ammo
2/Hornaday SST 95gr home load
3/Speer Hotcore 90gr home load
4/ Nosler Partion 85gr home load

i choose to shoot targets at 100 and 200 meters and see what happens. first problem of the day i checket the cupboard and i am all out of ballistic gell (i knew there was something i forgot in tesco).

i used the next best thing to military grade ballistic gell "ARGOS CATOLOGS" i soaked the inside pages first with the sprinkler on the hose pipe then let the catologs soak for five mins under water. what you get is a very expaded catolog i sqeezed out the excess water and the books were now approx 4" thick.

i wrapped two catologs toegther with tape to make one block then wrap that in cling film to hold the moisture in. one block is approx 8" thick and with squeezing out the excess water still very firm and tough.

i set these blocks out at 100 and 200meters , the results are as follows

1/federal 100gr soft point factory ammo
@ 100m bullet stayed within first block (2 argos books) penetrated to 6-7" the head of the bullet expanded to 12mm in a classic mushroom shape and the bullet retained 68% of its original weight, nice big wound channel (50p peice size)
@ 200m again the bullet penetrated to 6-7" expanded to 15mm in a classic mushroom shape and retained 69% of its origional weight, nice big wound channel(50p peice size)

2/Hornaday SST 95gr home load
@ 100m bullet stayed within first block (2 argos books) penetrated to 6-7" the head of the bullet expanded to 11mm in a classic mushroom shape and the bullet retained 54% of its original weight, nice big wound channel (2p peice size)
@ 200m again the bullet penetrated to 6-7" expanded to 12mm in a classic mushroom shape and retained 58% of its origional weight, nice big wound channel(10p peice size)

3/Speer Hotcore 90gr home load
@ 100m bullet passed through first block (2 argos books) penetrated to 2" into next block 10"of penetration. the head of the bullet expanded to 10.5mm in a classic mushroom shape and it retained 49% of its origional weight nice wound channel (2p peice size)
@ 200m again the bullet penetrated to last page of the first block expanded to 12mm in a classic mushroom shape and retained 66.5% of its origional weight, nice wound channel(2p peice size)

4/ Nosler Partion 85gr home load
@ 100m bullet passed through first block (2 argos books) penetrated to 4" into next block 12"of penetration. the head of the bullet expanded to 12mm in a classic mushroom shape and it retained 75% of its origional weight nice wound channel (bit bigger than a 1p peice size)
@ 200m bullet passed through first block (2 argos books) penetrated to 4" into next block 12"of penetration. the head of the bullet expanded to 11mm in a classic mushroom shape and it retained 82% of its origional weight nice wound channel (bit bigger than a 1p peice size)

i discovered the penetration at 200m was almost the same as @100m but the wound channels were slightly smaller, the bullets also retained far more weight at 200m poss due to less velocity violently expanding the bullet.

i dont know if this will be of any use to anybody but it was good fun to do and it now out of my system.....neil :D
 
Well done Neil, that took a fair bit of time and effort on your part, thanks for sharing it with us. To me this go's some way to proving what I have always held to be true, quickest is not always the best. I have never understood the need for speed in a hunting bullet, and your experiment shows this. If all of your shots are 200yards plus, then obviously you need to get out there to get the job done humanely and efficiently. You have demonstrated this with the argos books you killed at 200 yards, all of them, baring the Nosler, mushroomed bigger and all of them retained more weight. Indicating a better performance than at 100 yards.

I never get the opportunity too shoot much above 100 yards, 150 yards is a long reach where I shoot, so I do not need to reach out there. This is why I never load my rounds hot. My thinking is that if the impact velocity is too high at too close a range then the effect of the round is less controlled, with the round fragmenting and dispersing around the carcase via the wound channel, or just zipping straight through with no significant wound channel. However a slower round arriving at a reduced speed, as per a longer shot, produces a more controlled effect following impact. Going slower at the closer ranges gives the round an opportunity to do it's job properly.

Another benefit of homeloading, you can tailor the load to suit the conditions, it does not have to be one size fits all.

Well, that's my opinion.

John
 
Well done, that's a fantastic write up, well thought out experiment, back to basics but does the job perfectly,

I use Federal PowerShok 100gr in my .243 and 150gr in my 308, although I am loonking into Home Loading.

Cheers for the write up, as said, taken a fair bit of time to do, thanks for sharing with us.

TJ
 
nice one neil
always wondered what to do with all these argos books :lol:
thanks for taking the time to share this with us
as penetration and expansion is something i like in a bullet head especialy now as i homeload and use hornaday sst , great bullet head works well for me
stone
 
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