Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Sabots from 30 to 22 caliber

Has anyone tried the sabots made for shooting 22 caliber bullets in your 30 caliber barrel? What were your experiences?

What difference does it make how fast something goes....if it doesn't hit the target? My experience however is limited to less than 20 rds of Remington Accelerator in .30-06.

Years ago, when they first came out (maybe '70's???) my brother got some Remington Accelerators for his .308. As I recall, the results were not very encouraging.

Never tried them, but in reading about them……don’t expect any reasonable accuracy! memtb

Seems to have been the general consensus.

I acquired the tools and sabots to try them maybe 20 years ago, but never go to it. My idea wasn’t to make a .308 into a .22/250, but rather to make up some small-game loads at the .22 mag level or so. The commercial loads were all screamers and asked a lot of the plastic sabots IMO. I figger some flat-point Speers over a good cast-bullet powder like 5744 or Trail Boss might work.

Naturally, full-caliber cast-bullet loads or one of the chamber inserts for .32 caliber pistol cartridges can accomplish the same task in a different way.

Still on The List……

I tried some in 30-06 and they were accurate enough to be useful. At over 4,000 FPS they were certainly effective

300 WSM and case full of Superformance with a 50 grain Barnes TSX. My Chrony read 5k.

I shot quite a few in the .307 Winchester and .30-30AI several years ago. We had a good discussion on the old Beartooth Bullets forum.

After trying a number of powders I came back to Hodgdon 4198.
Best accuracy, sometimes 5 shot groups under 1 3/4" , were when we put the sabot against the origin of the rifling. I used a mild crimp.
I tried lower velocity loads looking for accuracy the problem was each time I ordered sabots they were a bit different in slots depth and material hardness. There were three distinct sabots back then. E Arthur Brown which were hard and required a higher velocity to open up quickly and leave the bullet. There was another gray sabot that looked similar but with longer slots. This was a medium hard material that seemed to work well at velocities under 2,500 fps.
There is a brown sabot that is made of softer material and works well at 2.500 to 2,350 fps. Above 2,800 fps everyone who shared results reported plastic fouling that was hard to remove.

This was a lot of fun but did not amount to much. In the. 30 caliber leverguns it is hard to beat the 130 grain Speer bullet for varmints and light bodied deer

Same here when I bought a M94 30-30. The salesman threw in the two boxes of Accelerators he had on the shelf.

What kind of accuracy did you get with your rifle? Did you have to start with a squeaky clean barrel as suggested by the manufacturer? I wonder if some of the inaccuracies are from fouled barrels and/or rough bores.

Thank you for taking the time to share all of your experience. I recently came across a barely used Remington 700 BDL Varmint chambered in 308 Winchester. The gun shop had it listed for a price which was too good to pass up, so I bought it. I don’t have a need for it, so I saw something about the sabots and thought it sounded interesting to try. The bore on this has barely been shot and it should be a tack driver based on previous experience with other BDL varmints. It has a 1-12” twist and I thought if any gun should be accurate it would be this one.

My stuff came from Brown. Good info. Thanks.

If you ever get around to it, I would love to hear how it turned out.

BYW, thank you to everyone who posted.

I tried a box of those 30-30 accelerators in a Marlin 336 probably close to 20 years ago and the accuracy was somewhere between terrible and non-existent for me, too. The "group" was about the size of a basketball at 100 yards.

Well, my memory is faulty. EAB sabot on the right. Unkowns on the left.
The long slot work reasonably well with the Speer 75 grain flat noseat modest velocities.

Remington sent me some 55-grain .30-06 Accelerator ammo when it was introduced in the late 1970s. In the .30-06 I had then, a Remington 760, they averaged around 1.5" 3-shot groups at 100 yards. Shot plenty of jackrabbits and a few coyotes with them, mostly running but some not.

I've got a couple of boxes of the 30-30 Remington Accelerators on a shelf or in a drawer somewhere. Never shot any of them, just one of those too cheap not to buy things that I keep doing. 'Can't resist a deal on something that I might someday have a use for.

Back in 1981 a guy I worked with had a 30-06 and tried the accelerator load on an antelope. Dead antelope. He was worried he might be breaking the law as at the time 22 centerfires were not legal to use on game in Wyoming.