Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles 6.5 grendel to 357

Why not 35 caliber and use pistol bullets?

Are you asking Spook about his .375, or just a general question for the forum?

If it's a general question - my 358 Herrett can use pistol bullets, as well as most other 35 cal rifles. The problem is in the construction of most pistol bullets, and how they behave at rifle velocity. Some will actually come apart in the bore, as evidenced by severe lead and copper fouling. (When you get lead fouling from a jacketed bullet, you know something aint right!) Others make it to the target just fine, but blow apart on impact, which can be great if you want a varmint bullet but useless for hunting anything bigger than a coyote.

I used to load 38 Spl 158gr JHP bullets in a 35 Remington lever gun for trimming tree tops in the valley in front of the house (don't worry, safe shooting direction and all that). They were pretty impressive on impact fragmentation; two or three rounds would cut down a tree or branch the size of a normal man's leg; far more damage from those than any varmint rifle.

Last weekend I worked up a load for a friend's 358 H (one of my barrels) in a 10.5" AR with the 140gr Hornady FTX bullet, the one intended for 357 lever action rifles. A relatively mild load to just cycle the rifle was ~2250 fps, and the bullets fragmented on impact as expected. I wouldn't want to rely on that for any penetration. At 1600-1800 fps they seem to work pretty well though, and cycle my subsonic-only barrel with the big gas port; that load is basically a duplicate of 357 lever gun ballistics and is very mild to shoot.

Yeah, I thought I quoted Spook. The question was for him. I'm a 35 caliber fan and have a 358 Winchester. There's a 125 grain pistol bullets load at 3300 fps, I bet it's like a hand grenade.

So what do you think of the 358 Yeti? It's looking like it's finally going to be available in more than limited runs.

I think it'll be severely limited by the lack of currently available .473" bolts for the AR15. Until that situation changes, I don't personally have interest in something of that size, and most others won't either without being able to buy a matching bolt.

It's been interesting to watch that's for sure. I like the idea on the brass vs the Gremlin but......

For varmints around the house why would you not go 223? Easy, accurate, flat trajectory, bullets that will disintegrate on contact with animal on anything else (no pass through or ricochet )

Spook that 375 round looks wicked!