300 Ham'r vs 6.5 Grendel

Actually, there are videos of successful hog hunting down to .22 subsonic and .17 hmr. You can snipe a hog just like you can any other animal (though maybe not legal for other animals) with smaller calibers if you know what you are doing, but that doesn't make those caliber necessarily very good or ideal for 'hog hunting' in general.

As for why there are so many good videos of hog stops on YouTube isn't because the cartridges or bullets are necessarily working just fine for hogs. It is because people tend to NOT post videos of when things don't work well. I know this from personal experience on posting vids where the results are not what people liked. Commenters on YouTube can be rather cruel in their evaluations of the video creators, their capabilities, cartridges, calibers, bullets, gear, etc. I have found that on YouTube, everybody knows more about what I am doing than I do. However, with ammo testing, you get some varied results.

Hogs really are not difficult to kill, but what surprises a lot of people is the hogs' propensity to run after being shot if they don't suffer CNS damage. Generally, with a decent double lung or heart or heart-lung shot, a hog usually won't run more than 100 yards and commonly much less. In that distance, they will bleed out or suffocate (lungs fill with blood) and then finally collapse. Unless you are in a nice open field, however, this can make them hard to find.

Another matter that confounds hunters and tricks them into believing hogs are tougher than they are is that they sometimes seal up after through and through shots and so don't produce blood trails or don't produce good blood trails. This is due to shields and fat layers on boars and fat layers on sows helping close up the exit wounds known for helping create blood trails. The hogs still bleed out, only it is internal, but there is little or no trail left behind to follow. Sometimes, the damage inside is massive, but there is very little blood coming from the exit wound.

The only way a hog consistently drops in place is by suffering significant CNS damage, ideally upper CNS damage, either directly through direct physical impact of the bullet on the brain, brain stem, or upper spinal cord, or indirectly through hydraulic shock or hydrostatic shock (two different phenomena, though the terms are often used interchangeably).

People are also impressed and equally confounded when they shoot a hog multiple times before it died, failing to understand that the first shot might have been lethal, just not immediately lethal (non-upper CNS significant damage), and once the adrenaline dumps, the hog isn't apt to go down until it bleeds out, suffocates, or suffers a later upper CNS damaging shot. So they shoot the hog time and time again trying to get it to go down and it eventually does, but they are convinced the hog had supernatural powers.

Interestingly, you will find the same type of evaluation on folks shooting things like raccoons, opossums, and armadillos. Here is a classic example... https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/evil.905314/

So we find that smaller, less powerful calibers tend to do less damage and bring down hogs less efficiently than larger calibers on non-CNS shots. Non-expanding bullets tend to bring down hogs less efficiently than expanding bullets of the same caliber. So there is a very real correlation with the amount of damage being done with the bullet and bringing down hogs.

Why this is important is because as hunters, not every shot we take is a perfect shot. If we did, there would be no need for expanding bullets, tracking dogs, and blood trails and in many cases, we would be just fine with shooting smaller, less powerful calibers. We would all make low or no meat damaging upper CNS shots and hogs, deer, bear, elk, etc. would all drop in place. However, buck fever, physical exertion, animal movement, environmental conditions, varying distances, etc. all conspire to make hunters something less than exceptionally accurate benchrest shooters when in the field.

So getting back to the Grendel-Ham'r query, they are going to be superior to much smaller calibers such a .223, particularly when it comes to non-perfect shots. People may find better results with even larger calibers, but that often then starts getting into a lot more recoil. Sniping recoil isn't so much of an issue for singular kills, but recoil and reset time is a significant issue for followup shots when dealing with trying to kill multiples of hogs in sounders or when dealing with a poorly made first shot.

 

That’s a subsonic round. I’m curious what exactly are you saying it beats? What else is in its category besides it’s predecessor 300 whisper & Blackbutt?

 

Double Naught Spy,

That was a very well thought out & explained post. I agree with almost everything you just said. (In case you thought, I was not advocating using smaller over larger, only that bad shots are bad shots.) Thank you for taking the time to share. I wonder how many others read everything

The ONLY hunting I agree with is precision, ethical put downs. Some just like to kill, ethics play no part. But that is neither here nor there. I do understand the devastation hogs are responsible for. In Arizona it was Coyotes costing Ranchers millions$ every year. My good friend downs every coyote he comes across. Is what it is. And I don’t have a dog in the fight.

Enjoyed your post.

 

There are no hogs in my part of the country so I've never shot one, but having shot a lot of deer and tracked many more, pretty much the same thing applies for deer. Heart and lung shots more often than not result in 15 seconds of run time until their brain runs out of oxygen and they pass out. For deer I think anything 22 caliber centerfire or larger is perfectly capable of killing deer with little difference in effect, but the differentiator for me is entrance and exit wound size so that I have a blood trail to find them. Its absolutely unbelievable how hard it can be to find a down deer in chest high slough grass even when they only went 75-150 yards. Most of our hunting spots you only see the deer in a 5 yard wide window and you'll never see them again till you go find them on the ground. And you would need to be within 5 feet of them on the ground to find them because of the grass. I like big calibers, not because they are any more deadly, but because they let the blood out so I can easily find the deer without tromping around in the slough for 2 hours trying to follow hoof prints. If I was shooting in the middle of a bean field I probably would be perfectly well served with a smaller caliber.

 

I do agree, yes you can have a “study knowledge” of anything. I have that of a great deal. But it’s not the same as a Working Knowledge, which will always be greater. And that, in fact, was my point. Good post though.

 

If he needs any help with the coyote population give him my contact info. I'd be happy to assist if he's nearby.

 

Good question based on honesty. And my mistake in being rather vague.
The category is more useful in hunting game of medium size (North America) in the .30-30 range.
How does it beat it? Considerably more bullet weight; 154 grain bullet at what I've chronographed at 2150 fps is better than a 135 grain bullet at a bit more velocity. This choice is affected by my dislike for the AR-15 family of rifles. So, like everyone else, it is a bit subjective.

I have a question: Which is a subsonic round? Not the .300 Ham nor the 7.62x39mm round.

 

There is absolutely nothing about reloading - pouring powder, seating bullets and primers, sizing brass, and incessantly cranking a press handle - which teaches anyone a single damned thing about shooting. Period. Such a claim is non-sequitur.

Studying and practicing a craft will improve knowledge and skill. Roller skating won’t make you better at playing trombone, and reloading doesn’t make anyone a more skilled marksman.

 

I believe he's asking about the 7.62x37mm Musang used in Philippines, I would assume you meant 7.62x39 here.

 

Yeah, strange concept to me. The AR15 platform, rather M16 has been kicking arse & taking names for like 55 years with our military. Putting it among the most successful weapons campaigns in history. I understand a person just not preferring it.. but hating a rifle is strange concept to me. I don’t hate any rifle. And going further, the AR may not be BEST in every category, but it’s very GOOD in every category. But I digress from the topic. To each his own. I am curious of your rifle choice though?

 

I listened to an interview with Louis la'more one time, and while he had never seen a gunfight he had researched them extensively. He said there were numerous reports of guys emptying multiple revolvers into each other and still shooting. That if you didn't hit him in the head the heart or a major bone people didn't typically fall over.

 

I didn't say I hated it, I used the term dislike. Perhaps better would be 'have no use for...'
I have to disagree with the AR as "... very GOOD in every category". In the fifty-five years of being inflicted on the U. S. Military it has shown any number of flat failures. During the Vietnam 'conflict' it was used at ranges up to nearly fifty yards and as a submachinegun; not a rifle. What has saved it is two-fold, cost of replacement and the assumption that soldiers are physically weak and cannot be burdened with a more effective rifle. I do have to agree with the perception of 'cool' inherent.
So I do not agree with your perception. Of course, that is what makes for horse races and beauty pageants.

I vastly prefer accurate shots from a suitable arm. I vastly prefer cartridges with good momentum. And I like good wood and steel.

 

I assumed your mention of 7.62x37 was a typo and you meant 7.62x39. I've never seen or heard of a CZ in 7.62x37, but then again I don't know everything.

Well anyway, 7.62x39 has been loaded subsonic for decades. There are currently no less than four factory 7.62x39 subsonic loads that I know of, with pills between 180 and 220 grains. And its no trick at all to handload 7.62x39 for subsonic.

7.62x39 is the little round that could, and it does. Those that have really taken the time to explore its capabilities and reap the benefits of its versatility are an elite group. Many people dismiss it as a commie round, which is an emotional response more than an technical response. They repeat the same old debunked myths that have been floating around before the web, before forums like this existed.

 

It’s the 7.62x37 Musang.. yes, MUSANG, not MUSTANG!

It was made after the Whisper & Blackout as a Sub round.

 

Of course, if he meant 7.62x39, I apologize. And I would agree.. It’s effective. But so is 223. Man goes up against 223: 223 hit man go SPLAT! Man fall down go Boom! Man breath last breath and die painful death!

 

LOL! My friend isn’t the Rancher. He’s just a land owner. He has a good friend near him who IS a Rancher. But he doesn’t take help. (My buddy). He’s stingy & lies popping them all himself. I just shake my head.

 

Right now only two companies seem to load for the .300 HAM'R, Wilson and Sig. If a third company jumps in there I'll probably buy one. I'm really intrigued by the round, and IMO it's maybe what the US Army should have picked instead of the 5.56 round.

 

So if the US Army had a time machine and came forward in time, they should have gotten the .300 ham'r and transported it back to the late 1950s and when testing the 5.56 and then adopted in the 1960s? If so, they would be in more trouble than they are today with a round that is too short range, the ham'r being worse off than 5.56 and neither of which are great at penetrating hard armor at distance.

I think they could do much better than the ham'r, LOL.

 

Even the 7.62 NATO can't penetrate modern armor so that dog don't hunt. And when the round was adopted there wasn't any hard body armor to begin with. So a 7.62x45 NATO (a plausible designation for our alternate timeline HAM'R) would have been better at CQB distances and out to 300 meters and realistically probably at least as effective as anything we had with the 5.56 at least until the Mk 262 Mod 1 came along. Of course, no matter what round we selected some would love it and others would hate it. And until DARPA finally acknowledges their time machines it's just a fun speculation.

The inescapable truth is that no single round is best for all applications, else there's only be a single round. The main draw of one single round is ease of logistics. My take is that something pretty close to the 5.56 parent case or just a smidge larger is a good compromise, which is why it was selected. If I was designing one just for myself it would probably be more or less a 5.56x45 case with a 6.5mm to 7mm bullet.

Realistically the military could get by just fine with suppressed .22LR pistols in combination with time machines. Even a good heavy pillow would get the job done!

 

I think if you took a 6.8 SPC and stretched it out about .100", neck it down to 6 or 6.5mm, and make the mag length 2.5" long instead of 2.3", you would have about the ideal cartridge combination. I'm really surprised that with all the billet AR receivers that nobody has made one yet with a lengthened magwell and bolt carrier
.

 

Figured it was worth a shot lol

 

I have good luck with the 129 gr interlocks. The same reason you cite is why I quit hunting with SSTs in all calibers. They are still fine for target bullets.
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1010474612

 

Lengthened magwell and bolt carrier? I think they call that an AR10.

 

AR10 is externally larger in every dimension, not just length.

 

Oooh let's split the difference and go 25 caliber, call it the 25 deathray. Of course it'd really be just another compromise in an already crowded field, but think of the hype we could make up.