Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns hunting with 38 special or 9mm

I've taken woods hogs with a 9mm

Cheyenne, it would be interesting to note what kind of wound channel those 115 gr Lehigh Xtreme Penetrators would produce. From your findings, they sure do penetrate. That's for sure.

It's not a wound channel in an animal, but that third video I linked above, shows 115gr 10mm Xtreme Defenders blowing up some stuff.

Those leave my DW Bruin at an average of 1,753 fps. My Labradar would not register them until I tried changing the weapon setting on it from "Handgun" to "Rifle."

I think the fourth video shows the 140gr 10mm X Penetrator in ballistic gel. There are a bunch of 9mm videos that are easy to find on YouTube IIRC. I also found some first-hand reports on how the Lehigh bullets performed on actual game, but that was a few years ago. Some of them showed the autopsy results while butchering the deer. One guy blew them through an extra BB skull he had laying around. In one of the vids I posted above, the XP sailed through thick bulletproof glass, whereas a FMJ would not, and the XP didn't lose a molecule of mass in doing so. The faster XP also penetrated further through concrete than the fast HC load did, which surprised me a bit. The HCs went further in water.

Not surprised that the XP went further in concrete that the hardcast. That ud exactly what I would expect

Yeah, the military scientists and engineers seem to believe, and they should know, that the harder the armor, the more speed you need for the projectile. I have read that this similarly applies to hard bone, but that is against the conventional wisdom it seems.

Bone and armor aren't related in those terms. I learned in the late 70's that it takes speed to penetrate steel and hardness to peneyrate concrete. Bone can be broken and or penetrated both slow or fast projectiles and requires a bit of hardness but nothing like concrete. Expanding bullets do not penetrate concrete well at all

Soft bullets will penetrate steal if the velocity is fast enough

Interesting. Thanks JWP.

When I did a mixed media test with 9mm Xtreme Penetrators, the bullet smashed a bone after it exited the 16 inch gel block. It knocked down the rib package on the back so the next two just sailed away. The third round exited the gel block so fast that it ruffled blue jean material that was on the table. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ys0V7kiO7Q
LD, I did not measure the cavity in gel, but you can see that it did not just pencil through,

I got the same results in water from both the 9mm Xtreme Penetrators and the Buffalo Bore hard cast. I only had 8 jugs for the earlier Buffalo Bore test, but I am confident it would have stopped in the 9th if I had placed an extra jug in the lineup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Nj3CTcjAs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ursfz1Wg8hA

9mm is not legal for hunting big game in Wyoming, so it is not something I could test other than in self defense. (10 mm isn't either because of the minimum overall cartridge length requirement of 1.5 inches.)

FYI, I got a flyer from Midway yesterday that indicated that it had Xtreme Penetrator projectiles in stock. I just ordered some 9mm and .380 Xtreme Penetrator projectiles. Lehigh's loading data on its website is spot on and replicates the factory loads in each caliber.

Good stuff Cheyenne. Thanks for posting.

Some of the state laws are incredible. You can use a .357, but not a 10mm that puts out 850 ft-lbs of energy?

He does a very good job on his tests

I shot a small whitetail doe with a 9mm Black Talon. Very short range, maybe 50'. Nickel size hole going in, the petals sheared off and did significant damage to the lungs. The rest of the bullet was imbedded in the off-side ribs. Dead deer, but it took awhile, once was enough, and I wouldn't do it again unless it was all I had and I needed the meat.

Cheyenne, great stuff. And, thanks for the heads up on the Xtreme Penetrator bullets at Midway. Picked up 250.

I'm of the opinion that the goal, when using a 9mm (or similar cartridge designed more for self-defense against people) that the best option is to put a few shots into the quarry, if it is deer or bigger. The lack of velocity means that bullet expansion is going to sacrifice penetration, and penetration will require a narrow wound channel. Physics.

Even with new-fangled bullets like the Xtreme Penetrator or Defender, the bullet only has the energy it has, and can only destroy the tissue that it has the energy to destroy, either through a shorter, wider wound channel, or through a longer, narrower one.

That's why I like non-deforming or minimally-deforming cast bullets for such purposes. They won't fail to penetrate or to break bones they contact, but the wound channel will be narrow, so the more of them through the chest, the better. And breaking shoulder and leg bones is better still.

Jwp4.55, steel cant be generalised. Too many ballistic differences between mild steel and hardplate. Soft bullets will penetrate mild or soft steel. They will splash on hard plate pretty easily. Its why they use it for ranges. Penetrators in bullets is what makes them penetrate steels generally.

Thanks for the replies fellas, and interesting reading on a whole range of subjects, rabbits to armor plate(Not the most expected substance to take on with a 38 special but good to hear about it anyway)