jburman
FNG
Remington 700ML, with two 50/50 Pyrodex pellets will push a 300 gr Hornady SST at about 1540 fps. I had the gel set at 25 yards and it punched through about 30 inches, though it did curve down a bit and scrape the plywood, so maybe it would have gone a touch deeper. It retained 277.9gr, which is 92.6% weight retention. At least some of that weight is from the polymer tip that you can see in the gel block still. Largest expansion was to 0.796, and the SST is a 0.452 slug with a sabot to make them .50 cal. The gel blocks were about 8 inches wide so you can gauge the wound cavity it created.
My first shot was a bit high and skipped out of the gel, so I just rearranged the blocks to put a clean one in front, which is why the rear block in the image is torn up on top. I placed the next bullet next to the gel where it stopped for visual. The gel was mixed to 10% consistancy.
I've seen on a lot of forums that the SST don't expand and are no good, but that was almost always with the 250 grain ones. Not sure why the increase in weight would affect expansion to much, but I was a bit concerned when I never recovered any rounds and only had pass throughs on elk. Every elk I've shot with this load has gone less than 50 yards, but I wanted to know my rounds were doing what they were supposed to do. Given this test, I'm pretty happy and will continue to use them, and I wanted other people to know they work fine too.
My first shot was a bit high and skipped out of the gel, so I just rearranged the blocks to put a clean one in front, which is why the rear block in the image is torn up on top. I placed the next bullet next to the gel where it stopped for visual. The gel was mixed to 10% consistancy.
I've seen on a lot of forums that the SST don't expand and are no good, but that was almost always with the 250 grain ones. Not sure why the increase in weight would affect expansion to much, but I was a bit concerned when I never recovered any rounds and only had pass throughs on elk. Every elk I've shot with this load has gone less than 50 yards, but I wanted to know my rounds were doing what they were supposed to do. Given this test, I'm pretty happy and will continue to use them, and I wanted other people to know they work fine too.
