FMJ on animals

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Originally Posted by steven

Um, the chances of a jacket being left in the barrel is an almost comical idea to me, I have great difficulty believing it. Also I dont think lead is poured in but swagged (pressed) in.

The weakest bullets you are going to get will be cast lead, so taking off the copper jacket of an FMJ at the tip where it sees less force of the spin but leaving the main body shouldnt be an issue.

On top of that a good FMJ that is designed to break up by tumbling, well it just seems casually altering it to remove this capability, odd.

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Go find an old gunsmith and ask him, When I first started shooting I used to hang out at the local gunshop quite a lot the gunsmith that owned it was ex army and had a stack of .303 barrels
taken of old stuffed Le Enfield's a good number of them had jackets stuck in them, a .303 has 45000 psi pressure when fired so a lead plug is not going to stop it, the lead core is swaged into the jacket
not bonded, as lead is soft and slippery compared to the jacket it will part company with the jacket leaving it in the barrel, FMJ's are not designed to break up that just happens some times go to any range
and you will find FMJ's intact most of them will be bent like bananas the broken up ones are ricochets thats where the tumbling bullets come from not from hitting flesh, any bullet so unstable that it tumbles
on impact is not any use it won't fly straight or penetrate far enough the military is all about putting holes through things if the projectiles break up on light cover they are not of much use,
Also cast lead bullets are harder than the cores of FMJ's bullets general they are pure lead as it is easy to swage into the jackets, soft point bullet cores are some what harder usually 3% antinomy
is added to pure lead to slow expansion, where a cast bullet is made up of 92% lead 6% antimony 2% tin, If you want cheap bullets use cast ones as long as there are wheel weights and lead flashings
available there will be plenty of cheap bullets,This is what a cast bullet will do if you get it wrong

Looks like you got it right if that's an exit?

Not really wasted a lot of meat, bullet was to soft for the velocity

Its mostly depends upon the ammo you have and after that size of animal you are going to hunt.

Guys, please don't cheap out on killing animals, we need to keep our sport as humane as possible despite what anyone may tell you about FMJ. Keep your FMJ for your steel and paper targets as I do.

Thanks

I will agree with you on that, however I would seriously wonder how many on here who only take home a handful of deer per year would consider using less than the 'best' projectile for the job. It's the one thread I'm always reading up on. It's interesting.
We are so lucky today with our possible selections. Even the bare-bones SP is effective as and is as cheap as chips. Or chops.

when I first bought my .223 I purchased 100 rounds of the norinco yellow box ammo Nathan Foster talks about to break her in and use for shooting wallabies as we went out every month to feed our dogs (pre big 1080 campaigns) I shot everything from hare to goats with that 100 rounds and everthing I saw backs up what he says...they are a unique round very loud/hot/fast and have "some" recoil unlike my milder reloads...noticeably different to shoot.
so yes SOME fmj works very well on game but a good soft point or barnes will usually do better.
and yes the .303 would shed jacket in barrel, if you saw pink colored material when you "dum dumed" a projectile you chucked it out and didn't do any others with same head stamp.
to say it didn't happen is naïve just have a look around/read a bit more or ask old fellas who have been there and done that.

I remember taking my BSA 303 upto awakino for a weekend goat shooting had 100 odd army rounds to use up....bullets would just go straight through leaving pencil size exit holes if you hit a bone wasn't so bad but got a little disheartening blasing into a mob of goats and watching some of them run off into the scrub and start screaming...FMJ is not really for hunting as said above you could snip the tips off but don't snip to much off you don't want the copper jacket getting left behind inside the barrel...never happened to me but have been warned .

There is, or I assume there is a difference between the 223 FMJ of which it is know that it tumbles and fragments on impact acting like a SP (if the velocity is high enough) V a 303Brit which I am not aware has that effect? Also talking to a lot of old NZers they just bought surplus 303 ammo as it was very cheap, though some used SPs and they mostly never handloaded.

that's an over simplification
many variables to take into effect
all FMJ is not made the same or indeed designed to behave the same way
the tumbling is caused by projectile getting off balance enough to yaw and switch ends thus starting to tumble
too fast of rifling SHOULD stop it..too slow and it happens sooner taken to extreme..too fast could make projectile pull itself apart through centrifugal force etc too slow and it will tumble and key hole straight away...centrifugal force?????? take bullet traveling 3000fps in a 1 in 12" twist........ that's 3000rev per SECOND times by 60 secs per minute = 180,000rpm
projectiles designed to tumble..the MK5?? .303 Has soft light stuff in front of lead core making bullet tail heavy...upon impact it wants to switch ends especially if hit at angle..same can be done by having slow rifling making projectile barely stable in flight.
hope that explains it better.

Same with the russian white/blue box of 7.62x39 m8 effect rounds.
These steel jacket lead cored and copper washed bullets, have an air pocket at the tip, to promote tumbling on impact.

'Way back when' we used what we could get and made the most of it.
We used FMJs filed or not, because that's all we had.
Now that is no longer the case. So, use hunting ammo when hunting.