Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 101 Water Jugs --- No Survivors --- pics and video added

Pics and video coming. Rifles, revolvers and semi-auto pistols.

Unfortunately I have to leave the house for a couple hours before I can get to it. It was awesome fun, though.

[Update]

Pics and video are added in my posts below.

Looking forward to pics and vids.

It has been a couple years since I had water jugs at the range but I had been saving up. Today Dave, my hunting buddy since 1998, and I took 101 water jugs to the range with a variety of firearms and loads. The weather was perfect - in the 70's with light clouds and little wind.

We took our time setting up, jugs lined up on the left, sawhorses on the right and plywood shelf on the right.


Ready for the first shot:


We didn't shoot everything we took, either in terms or firearms or loads. Not enough time or jugs. We did, however, shoot a good variety. In particular I was able to compare loads for my .380 ACP, 9mm Luger and .357 Mag. Another fairly direct comparison was a .30-06 with Federal Premium loads of 165 grain Sierra GameKing and 165 grain Federal Trophy Bonded Tip bullets. Using handloads I compared my .338 Win Mag with 225g Nosler AccuBond against my practice load of 225 grain Hornady SST bullets. Dave fired one .30-30 round using a 130 grain Speer FP that we captured and two 140g Barnes TTSX from his 7mm RM , neither of which we captured. Two loads I was particularly interested in included my .300 Blackout with a Barnes 110 grain TAC-TX and my .45 ACP with a Barnes 185 grain TAC-XPD +P load.


First up was Dave with his Ruger MKII 7mm RM and 140 grain Barnes Tipped TSX bullets moving at around 3250 fps. The first shot exited the top of the 5th jug, the second the side of the 5th. The first shot did some damage to the leading sawhorse, the second blew the top out. Fortunately there was a busted up target stand made out of 2x2s and we were able to use part of it to support the plywood. No such thing as 'hydrostatic shock', right? In this case it was more like 'hydrodynamic shock', with water flying everywhere, but I won't quibble over terms. Last time I did this I had my .45-70 and blew a chuck out of the plywood underneath the leading jug with a fast (2181fps) 350g North Fork. Call it what you will, there is definitely very destructive energy transference to places far from the point of impact.

The sawhorses looked like this after the second shot:


Here is a quick rundown of the bullets and loads we were able to capture.




Some photos of recovered the bullets, starting with Dave's .30-30 and 130 grain Speer FP.





Now the handgun bullets except for the .44 Mag 240 grain Speer JSP:


[img]http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/Handgun_Bullets_-2.jpg[/img]

Lastly, the rifle bullets and the .44 Mag 240 grain Speer JSP I shot from my Ruger Super Redhawk:
[img]http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/Rifle_Bullets_-1.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/Rifle_Bullets_-2.jpg[/img]


Near the end we had 4 survivors, which we finished off with my Kimber .45 and 230 grain FMJ bullets.
[img]http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/No_Survivors.jpg[/img]

Some comments:
1. I was very impressed with the .45ACP/185g Barnes TAC-XPD +P. If this load is reliable in my Kimber, I've got a new defense load. Unfortunately I had a stovepipe issue with one of the shots. the 6 jug penetration of this load tied it with my .338 Win MAg/225 grain AccuBond and .44 Mag/300 grain Gold Dot SP from my carbine.
2. The .300 Blackout/110 grain Barnes TAC-TX didn't penetrate as far as I had hoped but for a defensive load this looks pretty good.
3. The .380 performed very well with the Magtech Guardian Gold HP and Hornady FTX bullets. They expanded to .567" and .569" respectively. Both tried to break into jug #3 but only succeeded in denting it.
4. 4 jugs for both the 9mm/115 grain Hornady XTP and .357 Mag 125 grain Hornady XTP. That surprised me as I thought the .357 would go further than the 9mm.
5. The .30-06/165 grain Sierra GameKing's jacket and core separated. Not a surprise, but retained weight was 84.2%. If I use the Federal loads Dad gave me with the rifle, I'll stick with the 165 grain Trophy Bonded Tip for hunting purposes.
6. The .338 Win Mag/225 grain Hornady SST's were the big disappointment of the day. One turned into shrapnel and we were only able to recover 43.6% of it. The second one did better, with the jacket and core separating but retaining 56/2% of it's original weight. The two penetrated 3 and 4 jugs respectively. I think I'll stick with the 225 grain Nosler AccuBonds for hunting. They penetrated 6 jugs and retained62.3% of their weight. I've put them into elk and they've all passed completely through, at ranges of 262 yards and 487 yards.


In my original post I promised a video. So far my upload of the .338 Win Mag/225 grain Nosler AccuBond to youtube has failed every time I've tried it. If I can successfully post it somewhere I'll provide a link.

OK, not the trimmed down version I was trying to load, but here is the video Dave took of me shooting the .338WM and 225g AccuBonds.

Dave mistakenly thought all 12 jugs were destroyed but the bullet was caught in the 6th. The remaining 6 jugs just got dumped on the ground.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIDEk3juSwQ&feature=youtu.be

The Barnes load for the 45 ACP is impressive.

Wow! That's a lot of work...not to mention the typing.

Hope you and Dave had fun and thanks for posting.

donsm70

Very interesting results with the 165 Sierra Gameking.

That 130 30/30 bullet, was what I used in my TC Contender years back, a good bullet, likely dynamite in a 308 to modest ranges i.e. 90% of where deer are taken.

Thanks for the info - how bad is the blast on the 338 20" ?

Results explain Elmer Keith's affinity towards the 44

Its a 22" not a 20". My bad and I corrected the post. Thanks for the question or I probably wouldn't have noticed until too late to make the correction.

In any event, at 22" I don't find the blast to be bad at all. With the fluted barrel and the lightweight boat paddle stock, recoil is such that it will never be a target rifle. Load development benefits from a PAST shoulder pad but recoil really isn't bad for sight-in, checking zero or shooting in the field.

I'll take a Walther any day.
if I need more, I should've been quicker.

Coyo- gotcha, the WM is highly capable, very time proven on a variety of large game as you know.

Thanks for posting the info. Did I miss where you said how far away you fired from?

Outstanding and fun post! I need to play with water jugs with a few of my toys and loads.

Love you comment about hydrostatic shock. Hail YES there is peripheral damage at high velocities! We have known about it for about 100 years now, and still some want to try and discount it or its effectiveness as stay stuck in the 1880's or so.

Thanks for putting in all of this work and sharing it with us.

It varied.

This rest was they furthest. Some of the handguns were about half the distance. We got wet a few times...

Just figured out how to post a video. This is the same as the one linked to as text above. Learn something every day...




If I get a chance later I have two more videos I can upload and link to, both with my .44 Mag Ruger SRH and 240g and 300g bullets.

Nice job.....bye bye.....

Thanks.

Water jugs aren�t flesh and bone but that doesn�t mean, as some would contend, that the results are meaningless. The fact that we had over 60 identical milk jugs allowed us to come up with some direct comparisons without the variation in media that often occurs with other types of targets. While I would have preferred ballistic gel for the tests, water jugs are far easier and cheaper.

The main take-away, as far as I�m concerned, is that some bullets survive well while others fly to flinders. (No surprise there, eh?) Given that information, the ones that hold together well and penetrate deeply get the nod as my choice for hunting purposes. Here are some results from previous tests:




The Barnes MRX result was what gave me the confidence to try tipped X bullets on game after a miserable failure on antelope with the original X design (160gXLC). I never could quite bring myself to try the TSX design due to reports of failure to expand. I don�t know if the MRX and TTSX are expanding in animals or not as we�ve never recovered either type. So far the animals have either dropped at the shot or taken no more than a few steps. I think the longest was probably with the elk I took in 2012 with the 180g MRX at a range of 400 yards. It did a 180 and took a step or three, turned uphill and took a couple more steps before falling over. Maybe 15 feet on the generous side.

Mostly, though, and while useful information is obtained, water jug tests are about pegging the fun-o-meter.

Great job! Not just a ton of work setting up but picking up when done too

Great reports....quick question...maybe I missed it...what was retained wt of 30/30 w/130 speer?

Now I wanna do a deer w/the 225 sst...I swage them down to .330 and run them out of my 8x56r at about 2100.....!might be perfect considering what I see above!

Don't know what the retained weight was on the .30-30. It was the only bullet of Dave's that we recovered. When we got back to my house we took a quick set of pictures and he headed back to his house with it. I emailed him a moment ago to ask, will post it when I find out.

Just got an email from Dave. The 130g .30-30 bullet we recovered weighed 110.5g.