Soft points: tradeoffs?

O

Oleg Volk

Staff Alumnus
I have several questions about soft points in calibers 30 carbine, 7.62x39 and 30-06.

1. Is penetration of cover (car bodies, walls) similar to FMJ or much reduced?
2. Does wounding effect from expansion improve on the effect from a tumbling spitzer? (Not applicable to 30 carbine)
3. Do you have any anecdotale evidence of effectiveness or lack thereof on humans or beasts?
4. Any experience with using Remington CoreLokt or PMP soft points?
 
I don't beleive that penetration of the first barrier varies that much from FMJ to JSP, however after that first barrier, the JSP starts having problems.

Actually a lot of the wounding from the tumbling bullet come when the bullet comes apart. The 5.56 round does this, and apparently west german 7.62 ball comes apart when it starts to tumble too, resulting in greater wounding/stopping power.
If it doesn't come apart, these tumbling bullets still do a lot of damage so the extra damage against people sized targets may not matter that much.

I'd think that depending on the design, the mushrooming of the bullet would effectively be about the same as a shattered FMJ round.

M&S info suggests that HPs/JHPs might have a tiny bit more stopping power, but its arguable whether the difference is statistically significant.

Soft points/hollow points are more reliable ways of causing the bullet to break up than seen with some FMJ rounds. It does appear that a broken bullet will do more damage than one that stays in one piece.
 
I shot a jackrabbit at rather close range with GI Ball ammo in an '06. It punched a pencil-hole through; the rabbit looked rather insulted before he decided he oughta go on and die.

With a 110-grain SP and a rear-ribcage hit, rabbit pieces went in several directions.

I've never shot a deer with GI ammo, but I've seen three-inch diameter exit wounds from SPs, out to 250-350 yards. The 350-yard kill was with the Remington 150-grain Bronze Point, and you could darned near stick your fist in the hole.

A properly designed bullet will have the front part expand to near-double the nominal diameter, with the base remaining intact. You thus have a greater transfer of energy, with the main mass staying together to create both a large wound channel and (hopefully) an exit wound. If the animal is not DRT, you will have a nice blood trail to follow.

On tests with WW II 3/8" armor plate at 100 yards, GI Ball ammo would make a 1/2"-wide crater and a notable bulge. 150-grain SP handloads would blow through, making an almost 3/4" diameter hole.

At 500 yards on my 1" thick mild-steel plate, .308 GI-type ammo splashes on the surface with no dimpling of the target. For the '06, a 150-grain makes a 1/16" dimple. 165-grain, 1/8" dimple. 180-grain, a 1/2" wide crater with splash-back of metal; 1/4"-5/16" depth.

Hope this helps,

Art
 
Ahem...

Weight retention is critical to penetration, therefor bullets that "break up" are not desirable as hunting bullets.
I shot two Kudu in Africa last july using a .308 with Remington Corelokt bullets. Both bullets split around the middle at the canelure and broke in half after impact. Sufficient penetration to kill in the first instance, insufficient in the second instance. That sucks. I hate canelures on bullets that are not soilds.

Properly designed softpoints will give excellent penetration, while expanding to create a larger permanent wound cavity. My personal favorites are the Sierra Gamekings and the Nosler Ballistic tips. Hornady also makes a plastic protected soft point like the Nosler. I have not yet used them, but I hear that their performance is similar.
Happiness is a smoking exit wound. :D

I have shot 1/2" steel plate at 50 and 100 yards with .30 caliber Lake city ball, Matchking HPs, and Gameking SPs, all the same weight +/- 5 grains, and at the same velocity (2800fps). All of them penetrated the steel plate, leaving about a half inch hole.
 
Hmmm. I'm gonna have to find some steel:)

I've been using 180 grain Remington CoreLokt to hunt whitetail deer here in eastern Georgia. Caliber .300 Win Mag. Kills have been at ranges between thirty yards (in heavy brush in a beaver swamp) to 275 yards across open broom sage fields.

I used 150 grain Remington CoreLokt last year and I never will again. Darn bullet blew up, fragments went everywhere and I was left with the darnest mess to try to clean you ever saw.

The 180 grain CoreLokts have performed well. About two third's of the shots were diagonal going from a shoulder diagonally through the thoracic cavity to exit right at the end of the rib cage. On a mature deer, probably as much as a thirty inch run. Exit wounds run from about 2 inch X 3inch to as much as 4inch by 5 inch.

I had a 250 yd broad side shot where wound trajectory traversed the thoracic cavity about two inches below the internal surface of the vertebrae. Two vertabrae were totally pulverized, and one half on another. This was all done by shockwave apparently. The two vertabra that were totally destroy were nothing but bone chips yet the spinal cord was grossly intact in the midst.

The closest I have come to hunting with FMJ was using a Mak90 with "Hollowpoint" 7.62X39. I shot a large doe through the neck at about 75 yards. There was no expansion. The exit wound was the same size as the entrance wound. The doe dropped in her tracks with her rear end dropping first. I mention this because I was really unsure of cause of death when I gralloched this deer. The bullet did no obvious damage to the the vertebra of the neck, the bullet passed about 4 inches under the vertabra nor did the bullet clip the carotids. Based on seeing other spine damaged deer... who all collapsed rear end first, I later surmised that the hydrostatic shock wave was sufficient to lethally bruise the spinal cord.
 
Well, I did my own tests with 7.62x39 today

Shot ball and JSP into water-soaked mud with small pebbles mixed it. JSP produced a 12" x 25" cavity and the only part of the projectile I found was the base half of the jacket. For comparison, a .22 HP from a rifle produced a 3"x5" cavity in the same mud and 7.62 ball a longer track of the same width.

Also noticed that the bullet tips flatten (evenly) against the front magaine wall on recoil. While an undamaged JSP feeds in a Mak90, the flattened tips get further deformed (though slighly) on the feed ramp. They still feed fine but I wonder about the effect on accuracy. For under 100m I won't think it would be significant.

Penetration on metal was reduced. Seems to me that the drastic fragmentation would work well on two-legged deer aka goblins. I also think that the Garand enblock would prevent battering of the bullet tips common in box magazines. Besides, ammo other than Barnaul SP seems to have much less exposed lead.
 
I have verified by test what I've read: Battered noses on soft point bullets don't affect accuracy at 100 yards. I got groups just as tight with the battered-nose stuff as with pristine rounds.

It might make a difference on out beyond 200 yards, of course...

Art
 
I used the 150 grain Corelokts last year on a white tail and the bullet performed perfectly..had a lung shot, the bullet entered and exited leaving a quarter sized whole as an exit wound the deer went about 10 yards max before falling over and dying..I was very pleased with their performance and plan to use that same load again this year.
 
Hey folks,

I may be wrong, but I got the idea that a couple of the folks seem to think that bullets tumble as they go through a body cavity. I have heard many people talk about the M-16 being so deadly because the bullet tumbles when it hits a person.

That simply is not the case. Most full metal jacket spitzer bullets with long ogives will, upon entering a body, turn 180 degrees and continue on with the rear of the bullet leading the way through the cavity. The bullet does turn once, but it does not continue to tumble as many folks think.

I remember reading somewhere about a test where a similar long ogive spitzer bullet with an expanding soft point nose, however, did not tumble upon entering the body. Instead, it expanded as designed.

In conclusion, it seems to me that if you want to produce a large wound cavity, you should be looking to expanding bullets rather than military FMJ bullets that turn rear first after entering the body. Like Art said about the rabbit he shot with a GI FMJ bullet, they tend to just make a clean hole as they pass through. The FMJ bullets will penetrate body armor far better than soft pointed hunting bullets, however.

There are also some big bore folks who shoot hard cast 45-70 bullets and point out that their wound cavity is larger upon penetration than most other bullets make after expanding their full amount. The 45-70 boys do make a point.

Best wishes,
Dave Wile
 
Art is right about bronze points, its like loading your rifle with a hydra shock.. its letahl but the bullet literally explodes, often just leaving the bronze 'pentrator'. I used to hunt with this all the time, thinking it was better for thicker hide animals (elk). After a catastrophic failure (the animals still jdropped like a rock) I quit using it.

I prefer handloaded 165 gr sierra game kings, however in my "trophy box is a 165 gr bullet that partially shed its jacet when it hit a critter. The animal was Dead Right There, but that seperation bothered me. Never had that happen before. You can actually pull the lead core out of the jacket.

Any 'serious" caliber rifle is still plenty lethal after being shot through trees, car doors, fence posts, etc. If it has enough energy to get out the other side it has enough energy to be a threat to anything ON the other side. That garand was made to shoot a long ways and through a lot of "cover", esp with that old black tip ammo.

Modern sp bullets make that garand a better deer rifle, but here is where I want to mention cannelures and semi autos. the cannelure is designed to crimp the bullet in place. In a heavy recoiling semi you can get bullet set back in rapid fire. Crimp those bullets tight if you are using them in a semi. Crimp them if you are loading a "heavy" caliber. ie DG caliber. cannelures are a 'weak point" in a bullet design, even a DG solid can fracture at the cannelure. But you aren't hunting elephants.

On Remington core-lokt, nothing 'special" about it, its a good reliable expanding bullet, but I've seen them shed thier jacket as well. PMP looks similar in construction. Nice thing about core lokt/pmp/federal red box etc is relatively low price and its all very well made. Rem uses a light copper colored lube/sealerer on the bullet/case mouth, seems like they might feed better, but over time that stuff will get into your barrel thraot/chamber etc.

What you want your ammo to do, is as specialized as any other part of your kit. You don't hunt buffalo with a solid as a rule, but if it charges you might want the penetration the solid gives you. Expanding bullets (hunting grade sp's) wound better than fmj. FMJ penetrates farther in MOST situations, maybe not all. Some loads are better than others. All sp bullets get buggered up with handling, until you get out past 200 yards it doesn't matter much.

My soultion? Mark a mag with tape, thats your ap/softcore/tracer whatever specialty mag. Load all your other mags with milspec stuff. Keep it simple.

As for the carbine, I'd load it with sp ONLY if i was going to use it 'seriously' I'd try to tailor a load that was similar to ball ammo so i could practice cheaper.

Ive killed a lot of game/cleaned a lot of game and Ive never seen a bullet 'tumble". Ive seen cleab shoot throughs, secondary projectiles (broken bone) jacket failures, over gunning and undergunning. Never ever saw a bullet , or found a bullet that ended up backwards in a wound channel.

Many new military bullets attempt to work "like" sp bullets by destabilizing after they hit, like the penetrator in ss109, or the hollow air cavity in 5.45mm soviet.
 
Haven't seen any hard data on the tradeoff between expansion and "energy dump" on expanding vs. FMJ, but it appears that all posters agree there will be some loss of penetrating ability when you go from FMJ to expanding. Makes sense.

My experience is limited to shooting plastic gallon milk jugs. Two rows of 5 jugs each.

Shot the first row with FMJ surplus .308. Throught I missed. No sign of a hit. But when I examined, I saw a .308 hole in the front center of just #1, and a .308 hole in the back of jug #5, with water slowly leaking out.

Shot row #2 with a 150gr. Remington Core Lokt. BIG explosion of water. Jug #1 reduced to a flat sheet of plastic thrown 4 feet from original position. Jug #2 split almost as wide, thrown a foot or two. Jug #3 split full length down the front. Jug #4 had about a 3" hole in the front and a 2# hole in the corner. The bullet exited the corner of jug #4 and did not hit jug #5. Did not recover the bullet. Probably veered after impact.

It was a very graphic example to me of the difference in impact using expanding bullets.
 
I haven't been hunting with a .308. I use a .300 Win Mag. The Remington CoreLokt 180 grain has performed superbly against deer. I hit a large buck at 200 yds in the left shoulder. The bullet went diagonally through his thoracic cavity and exited just in front of his diaprhagm. The exit wound was about 3"X 5". Penetration of about thirty inches. I made the same shot the next year on a somewhat smaller buck using a 150 grain CoreLokt. I believe the higher velocity achieved in the .300 Win Mag turned the performance of this 150 gr CoreLokt into something closer to a varmint round. Of course, it is possible that it was just a defective bullet. Apparently the bullet fragmented about six inches into the thoracic cavity. The main fragment deviated from the diagonal. Instead of exiting in the area of the short ribs, it exited from the deer's right abdominal area, along with most of its stomach and several feet of intestine. A large section of the jacket went from the point of separation at an almost ninety degree angle and wound up just under the skin in front of the deer's left hip. If there was an intact organ in front of the deer's pelvic girdle, I sure couldn't find it. Talk about a mess, I had one-pureed guts. I salvaged most of the meat, but cleaning that deer was a chore. For hunting deer with the .300 Win Mag, I'll stick with 180 grain or above.
 
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