I have a suppressor so I stick with subsonic ammo and i'm a believer in hollow point ammo .
I killed thousands of ground squirrels in Idaho using a fixed barrel .177 1000fps pellet rifle . Round nose pellets didn't kill them anywhere near as well as the flat RWS pellets - no comparison between the two types of tips . Not exactly apples to apples but you can see the parallel for comparison. In bullet testing the Military calls it ''tear'' a RN pushes flesh out of it's way were-as a HP or flat type projectile tears it's way through causing more trauma and energy delivery .
22lr same same round nose ammo vs hollowpoint - HP all the way .
I've got one of the HP dies that will make huge HP's on 22lr ammo , the bigger the HP the harder the smack .
RWS SV HP lead is very soft and expands extremely well , caught a coyote in a snare and the dispatch with the RWS SV HP took a few shots , the soft lead HP didn't want to penetrate the skull bone . BUT that same ammo knocks a squirrel off a tree down and dead . I've opened up the HP HUGE on that ammo and on Norma Tac SS and have had bullets that didn't even exit on small grey squirrels - delivering 100% of the energy into the squirrel . With the Suppressor it's easy to discern the sound of the smack -- you know it connected hard and squirrels drop everytime at the shot .
We have squirrel infestations around the hog feeders - I've sat in a blind and shot 6-8 in an hour - leave go to another feeder - repeat - come back to first spot 2 hours later - repeat - they never stop coming . But go squirrel hunting 200 yards from a feeder and you'll be lucky to see one in a days time.
