Is that trespasser the appropriate gauge of steel to use for target practice?
Big Foot wears body armor!
LOL. Bob Lusk's neighbor said that his steel target was guaranteed not to get "drilled" by a bullet by the maker (5/16" or 3/8" AR 400 I think). Dave Davidson shot my long range rifle at it and the target barely swung. It was set at less than 200 yds. He thought he missed. Nope, A 7mm 175g Sierra Matchking @ a muzzle velocity of 3475 fps went right through it like it was butter.
I'm sure esshup replaced the plate. I mean knowing the Match King was gonna go right through it and all. Poor guy is living on a fixed income, driving a 76 Ford Pinto, and picking up soda cans on the side of the road.
I've got 400 of the Match Kings waiting to be loaded for my coyote rifle. I'm gonna try to get my .223 to reach out a smidge.
It's really hard to find any distance to shoot at in our area, but my neighbor has a 800 yard shooting ranch next door, so I may go ahead and put some plates up for him. AR500 plates can be bought locally, and all I'd have to build is the hangers.
FishinRod, go ahead and start a thread.
I offered, he said no, he was going to take it back to the guy that built it and who said "nothing can go through it besides AP rounds" and he was laughing when he saw the hole. I gave him a loaded round to take with him when he went to the guy that built the target.
MatchKings will work fine on game, but you have to be VERY PICKY at what the impact velocity is. Too fast and they will explode like a varmint bullet. With that being said, I never used a MatchKing on game, just on paper/steel. After a couple hundred rounds down the tube I was missing the paper. Couldn't figure out why but when I looked up over the rifle (it was in a rest like a Lead Sled) I saw a grey cloud at about 50 yds. The reason why I was missing the target (I "think" this is the reason) was that they were exploding in mid air. I think the throat got a bit rougher and the RPM's of the bullet was causing it to go "poof" because the rougher throat scraped a wee bit more copper off of the jacket.
I switched to 180g Berger VLD Hunting bullets and the sweet spot accuracy wise for them was 100 fps slower. They didn't go "poof". Now I'm shooting the Berger 195g Elite Hunter bullets right around 3300 fps. Google "7mm Allen Magnum" for the info on the round. If you pull up asprifles.com, the rifle is the 6th rifle down on the right hand side of the "custom rifle" picture page.
When I was having the MatchKings go "poof" I called Sierra and talked to their tech guy. It was the 3rd phone call talking to the same guy when he said "Wait a minute, you are shooting them at 3475 fps? What the he.. are you pushing them that fast in?? We've never tested them over 2700 fps. You are on your own." I explained that I was pushing them with 110 grains of WC-872 powder in a modified .338 Lapua case. FWIW, the RPM of the bullet calculates out to be 278,000 rpm. Bullet RPM = MV fps x 720/twist rate (in inches) Barrel is a 1:9 twist
As for the polymer tipped bullets, Hornady says that some start to melt at higher velocities, I haven't seen a picture of a melted tip though. I would think that they could put a ballistics gel block way out there and shoot it to get a picture of one, having calculated the fps needed to impact the block and not damage the tip. I've shot deer with an SST and recovered an undamaged tip in the deer, and shot a deer with a aluminum tipped bullet and the processor found the undamaged tip.
