.357 cal. sabots

T

Toad

Inactive
Quick question; I have an abundance of .357 caliber handgun bullets in .158gr and 180gr which I load in my Marlin rifle. I thought it would be fun to try them out of a .45 caliber blackpowder rifle. Has anyone any thoughts on this idea? Anyone ever tried this? :)
 
The Hornady prepackaged 158 grain .357 XTP bullets with sabots didn't shoot well out of a 1 in 48" twist rifle. But I think that it was more than just the twist rate. The old Hornady sabots were made of an inferior plastic and design IMO, and they wouldn't release the bullets until they hit the target board.
Plastic and sabot technology has greatly improved.

http://www.mmpsabots.com/
 
The standard sabot bullet for the .45cal rifles when they came out a few years ago was .357 bullets in the sabot. Unfortunately they were all way too light to get accuracy from if the velocity was pushed by the "magnum" loads the manufacturers were advertising.

Your best bet would be to try the 180 .357 bullets with a powder load of around 80 to 90gr. Anything much hotter will ruin accuracy more than likely.

Sabot quality CAN be an issue like articap says - get ahold of some MMP sabots and you take that problem out of the equation.
 
i shoot them all the time out of my hawken that was made back in the 70's by my dad. hornady 158 jhp/xtp , I took my frist buck ever (8pt iowa buck) with this .357 slug!! it was a 45yd shot and he took one step and down he went!!! :eek: it harder to find them, beacuse every one likes to go big now.
 
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