Black Hills - decent 223 load for home defense?

[Bartholomew Roberts]

"Almost always" isn't good enough IMO, better to buy a couple of boxes of premium ammo just to be sure. Shoot one for accuracy and ballistics testing, keep the remaining cartridges for HD use. IIRC I read an article a while back that demonstrated about a 25% failure rate with ball rounds. I don't know which rounds were selected, nor where I read it, but that is just too unreliable for me.

The 25% number is from a study Martin Fackler did many years back. More recent studies have shown that both M193 and M855 tend to penetrate about 4" of ballistics gel before yawing about 70% of the time. 15% of the time, they will yaw under 4" and 15% of the time they will penetrate about 7" or more before yawing, even when travelling at over 2,700fps.

The variation has to do with the angle of the bullet on impact. Basically, in the first 100yds, the nose of the bullet wobbles like a tiny thrown football. This link explans the variation well and is in general, excellent reading for self defense ammo selection.

 

[Maverick223]

Bartholomew, thank you for the link. While I don't believe it was the original source of the failure rate (it could be, but I don't recall reading it), it is very informative and indeed a good read for selecting SD/HD ammunition.

 

[Jeff F]

I will say this: their 68-grain moly-coated hollow points are crap. How do I know? I took them hunting when I hunted javelina. Every single one of them passed clean through. May as well have been FMJ. It didn't matter where it hit. None of them expanded. Oh well. Heart and double lung shot finished the job.

Yep, match hollowpoints are not designed to expand. They perform like a FMJ and some will penetrate better then M855 LAP ammo.

 

[M1key]

QUOTE: Yep, match hollowpoints are not designed to expand. They perform like a FMJ and some will penetrate better then M855 LAP ammo.


Didn't check out Dr. Roberts link above did you?

Summarizing Doctor Robert's choices results in the following list:

If Barrier penetration is NOT an important factor AND your rifle can stabilize them (1:9 minimum twist rate):

Hornady 75gr OTM loads
Nosler 77gr OTM loads
Sierra 77gr SMK loads

If Barrier penetration is NOT an important factor AND your rifle can't stabilize the heavy 70+ grain bullets:

Sierra 69gr SMK loads
Hornady 68gr OTM loads
Winchester 64gr JSP (RA223R2)
Federal 64gr TRU (223L)
Hornady 60gr JSP

 

[Maverick223]

To summarize the above account (as well as my own experience with 68-77gr. OTM), heavy match grade OTM tend to work pretty darn good. I'd have no issues with using em'...the only flaw is that I train with standard 55gr. ball (the trajectory is too far off for my liking).