Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Hunting with Mk262, 77grn SMK, OTM

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Reading the reviews at the bottom I was surprised to see mention of hunting with this load. The one fellow chrono'd the SSA and it was a tad slow.

I always grab my 06 when deer season rolls around, but I do find the effectiveness of the 77 quite interesting.
As I understand it, they tumble fast in flesh and break.... cuz they be stern heavy.

Lots of good deer killers out there in .224", that don't need to "tumble"..

Dunno about tumbling. Do know that 77s adn 75 bthps, not factory ammo, what is factory ammo anywayy....
has killed everything its been pointed at around here. So has 69 bthps.

I"m constantly amazed that folks are amazed that these types of bullets work.

Would not be my first pick, for game, but for varmints and 2 legged critters it would be about all I choose. And if its in the gun when a deer or such walks by... no big deal. Bang. Dead.

BTW the slow part.... folks get way to hung up on speed.....

Don't take much to kill deer..

I still need to put the 70 VLD's into the game.. After the 62 fusions and 55 TTSX's and.. and.. and..

Dude quit worrying about it, shoot the deer (any deer) in the front end with a good bullet (TSX, SwiftS2, fusion or any other good bullet). Dogzapper was once asked "how do you shoot a deer with a 223" his reply "just like you would with any other rifle". tumbling is BS.

People forget that what is best for the military isn't always the best for civilians. They have to follow the Hague Accords, you don't. There are several expanding bullets that are better.

Hague... GAFB. If you think that 77s dont' expand you got another thing coming... every last SMK I've shot will expand, well actually probably not the 240 30 cal in the 300/221 but never shot those....

77s meet it because they are ballistic HPs. But its this "what I heard" crap that goes around..

Sure there are other bullets, but most folks couldn't begin to believe how many deer etc.. are taken with ballistic HPs. And now Berger even calls em hunting bullets...

I've been shooting game with sierras, and with Bergers starting late 80s as the different ones came out...

Now if you are talking FMJ hague vs any other bullet I'll agree.

yep you don't want to get wrapped around the axle about what you done read on the internet vs. the actual shooting of game. My first 5.56 deer I did not even think of what was in my hands, just shot the thing and oddly enough it died.

I've had enough issues with standard deer rounds and standard deer bullets that I take nothing for granted.

Poke it where its supposed to be poked, and most of the time things will be thumbs up. Regardless of what you are driving, excepting FMJs...

Of course I have a buddy that has shot a wad of deer with 55 fmjs... I have no clue why, excepting guessing they come apart at the crimp, but there is always way more damage than I expect, and exit larger than entry and deer dead... doesn't make me want to try it though....

my favorite quote which I will repeat until I assume room temperature was last year when a bud shot the south end of a north bound deer with a 30-06 and I shot a little 7 point meat deer in the shoulder with a 75/223. "I don't get it we find blood all over the place when I shoot my deer and don't find the damn deer, we find no blood and yours is dead 30 yards away".

The Army preferred this load-bullet- and worked with Black Hills with several hundred thousand rounds expended by Black Hills to perfect it for what the Army wanted, a bullet that did not just zip right through and not open up. Black Hills balked at first at the crimping, at the "open tip" and other changes to their usual and customary way of producing ammunition.

That is what was happening with the M 855 steel penetrators in 5.56 on Iraqis and Afghan combatants. Doctors said it was like a 5.56 mm thick needle literally "needled through" without causing any life threatening damage to the enemy unless hit in specific areas. That left a whole lot of combatant tissue to be shot up and allow the combatant to continue the fight.

The troops grabbed this at every opportunity and used it to effect out to 600 yards and it opened up which is exactly what they wanted it to do. I understand tumbling had nothing to do with it's effectiveness-just straight on and impact and expand.

The Marines had their own version of it.

I have the research on it around here somewhere if anyone is interested in more details but I believe it acts about like your standard Speer, Hornady, Sierra, etc. cup and core lead bullets for deer.

Dang!

It was J Guthrie, the up and coming gun writer everybody in the industry seemed to be raving about who did the research on it.

He's a Georgian who died in his sleep at age 37 a few months ago shocking so many folks.

Yep, The Black Hills, MK 262 MOD 1 5.56 MM Special ball is military term but they finally just took a Sierra 77 grain Matchking and put a slight cannelure on it for the required military crimp and even had reports of lethal engagements out to 800 yards with it. The OTM stands for Open Tipped Match.

The Marines used a similar 62 grain SOST round (MK 318).

There was some mention of the Marine round impacting and the heavier base coming around causing the bullet to yaw, or tumble with their round.

Snipers in Special Forces said the Army round ya'll are discussing here was ..."the best, most accurate round the Army has ever issued." One ranked the Hor 75 TAP as the most lethal (my bullet), followed by the MK 318 and with the MK 262 riding herd at third for lethality. Anything was better than M855 in a CQB environment."

So, if it was effectively killing men at those distances, it certainly would be a capable killer of big game depending on the distances and weights, girth, etc..

I've been loading my own version of it for a few years now, with both the SMK and the Nosler Custom Competition.

At first Sierra balked at putting a cannelure on their bullet so Nosler obliged. Sierra saw the contract slipping away and relented. I believe the cannelure and crimp are part of the reason they work so well. I've only killed coyotes with them but they work well.

I tried some real MK262 and was surprised it was slower than advertised.

Slasher,

While MK262 MOD1 is good ammo, there is quite a bit of misinformation in your last two posts.

First, MK262 was an adaption from the load that BH used for the service rifle ammo they were making. It had nothing to do with the "army wanting a bullet that did not just zip right through and not open up". It was meant the ammo that complimented the SPR/MK12.

Second, no shoulder fired small arm causes "life threatening damage to the enemy unless hit in specific areas". It doesn't matter whether it is 5.56, 7.62, 300WM, etc. if you do not hit specific areas, people don't die. This is where the "stopping power", "knockdown power", and other such nonsense comes from.

Amazing that we understand that whether we shoot a deer with a 7mm mag or a 223 we MUST hit vitals to achieve a good result, however when it comes to humans we think as long as its a 7.62 we can hit them anywhere..... That ain't the way the cookie crumbles.


Third, 77gr SMK's rarely "expand" as we think of it. They almost always travel a certain distance in tissue, yaw 90 degrees and tumble. If velocity is high enough they will break at the canulure. They in no way- "act about like your standard Speer, Hornady, Sierra, etc. cup and core lead bullets".


Fourth, MK 318 SOST performs completely different than MK262 or Greentip. It a barrier blind load and is not the Marines version of MK262. Every branch of the service uses/used MK262. Only the Marines in Afghanistan and certain SOF organizations use MK318.

Yes, the whole rational for the SPR's was the fact than neither the Colt M4 barrels or the M855 greentip were capable of 400m+ accuracy. The ammo is only required to meet 3.5MOA. IME, even greentip will break at the cannelure and fragment even out of an M4 from about 130 or so yards and in.

interesting so much ' research" was done.

We loaded 75/77 until it was fairly fast and accurate. And it worked on paper and on game.

Nuff said.

Of course it has to meet mil spec, but thats not really research, thats just doing it.

Sometimes folks make things to complicated.

It wasn't "research" so much as just developing a load and a rifle that was both combat reliable and accurate. Crane and PRI did a good job of it, by all accounts.

My information came straight from Black Hills president Jeff Hoffman, their history with the round, much of which I left out that is so freaking interesting such as rounds heating up and failing to extract due to velocity increases-back it down-
the open tip to place the weight toward the rear to make it more stable in flight and accurate; thus not in theory to cause expansion in the usual manner upon impact and violate the Hague Convention-although that is exactly what it ultimately does.

I think we are just looking at it practically- me and Guthrie as hunters would-and while your information is accurate to a point, it misses entirely the point of the projectile's purpose and it's philosophy of use for the units it was planned for-long range accuracy in specific weapons and then the general populace saw how superior it was to the projectiles they were using and they absconded with it whenever they could.

To kill men... I personally would have a list of dozens of projectiles to use on deer sized game before I would choose this one. That is only because I hunt with .284 and up.

I am looking at the ballistic gelatin and Guthrie is correct.

Maybe it's semantics. J Guthrie is too respected, in addition to being too skilled of an interviewer to have garnered information that is not correct.

Yeah, same chit we do as reloaders every single day we take something like that on.

The bullet has been around for a LONG time, and many of us have been driving it to sub moa rapid fire accuracy out to 600 with irons for many years...

None of this is the flippin rocket science folks make it out to be sometimes.

Got any links to pictures?
A couple of years ago Steelhead posted a picture of an exit wound on a blacktail made by a 64 grain winchester power point. Massive damage. Made a total believer out of me for the 64 grain pp.

I sure would like to see a any pics anybody has on the 77smk's; either the recovered bullet or the exit wounds.