Was rare to have jams in matches with them.
Have shot a few deer over the yeras with them. A few more with Garands.
Heavy. Especially our NM versions. have gone through a number of barrels on each of ours.
For giggles the load work at the time was seat a 165 ballistic tip on top of our 168 smk loads, standard around 41 of 4895 generally and never had an issue. BTs were slow enough they were not overly destructive.
Personally there are better options for what you are doing, IMHO, than an open topped M1A. BUt it wouldn't keep me from using one.
