Round balls better than expected

[shooting on a shoestring]

I'm working up some anti-skunk loads for my Appalachian assult rifle (Model 94). I live in a small Texas town (pop. 500) just one house from the Texas Aggie experimental farm (feel free to insert your favorite Aggie joke). My front yard occassionally gets a stray skunk passing through. I've used .22 shorts, as some of my neighbors do, but they are still pretty loud. So I used 1.5 grains of Bullseye, case full of C.O.W. with a .310 ball on top. Very quiet, about like slamming the door of a pick-up, getting 450 to 500 fps. However, I stuck a plug of C.O.W. near the muzzle and decided to leave out the C.O.W.

So today I fired 20 rounds of 1.5 grs BE floating around that big ol' 30/30 case with a .310 ball in the end. Loud as a .38 spl and velocity 650 to 700 fps (got loud b/c I went past the speed of sound). However, I shot a 6 inch three shot group at 100 yds. The group was 22" lower than POA, but still, I didn't think they'd hang together at 100 yds. At 25 yds, 1.25" groups benchrested, and 1.25" groups standing at 10 yds. Thats plenty of precision for terminating skunks.

I think I'll back off to 1.0 grs BE and see if I can get under the speed of sound again and get quiet w/o the C.O.W.

[Bret4207]

Try toilet paper. It doesn't clump.

[gon2shoot]

Murph would probably argue that point Bret.

[Bret4207]

Okay, it's never clumped on ME. Are you talking our Murph or that rotten Irishman Murphy who screws everything up?

[longbow]

I haven't loaded round ball for .30 cal but have had pretty good results with round ball in .44 Marlin.

I only had .440" rb's so decided to try them. Shaved a little lead but they shot well. I made a simple sizer which puts a narrow belt on them and they load well and give quite good groups with up to about 10 grs. of Unique.

Longbow

[ammohead]

I take .375 round balls and run them first through a .358 sizer then .349 to put a bit of a cylindrical section on them. Then seat them over 5 gr of bullseye in a 348 win case for my model 71. Shoots to point of aim out to 30 yards and flattens jack rabbits.

ammohead

[ISME]

You might try 10grn Unique and a 100- 110 grn half jacket bullet . Costs a little more but has good accuracy. I got this from another member a while back.

[rockrat]

You might want to try grits instead of COW. Might not clump up, otherwise, try something like CCI Mini-caps or equivalent. Out of a long barreled Marlin, they are pretty quiet. You could always buy a supressor!!

[crgaston]

Um, isn't the speed of sound around 1075 fps or so?

Also, Super Colibri .22's are about as loud as a handclap, and I've killed raccoon and possum with 'em.

[woody1]

The speed of sound is appx. 1125 fps, depending..... Just because loads are below the speed of sound doesn't mean they will be anything near "silent." They will be "quieter" than those above the speed of sound and should not have the supersonic crack. Regards, Woody

[NickSS]

I have shot lots of light bullets including RB in my 30-30s. These loads were mostly made with Red Dot powder with charges of from 1 gr to 5 gr and with bullets varying from RB to 115 gr Lyman 31108 bullets. They work well for small game and pests up to ranges of 50 yards or so. Most sound like a 22 going off so not very quiet. The quiet way to dispatch pests is to us CCI mini caps. When shot from a 22 rifle (fixed breach no semi autos) that have a long barrel (over 20 inches) the strike of the bullet makes more noise than the shot. They work really well on critters at short range with proper bullet placement.

[cajun shooter]

You are dead on Nick if you are talking about the CCI Long CB Caps. I shoot these all the time out of a Henry 22 rifle and have dispatched over 30 coon and opossum with them. The critters just won't leave my chickens alone. I shot one one day and my wife and a neighbor were on the front porch while I was on the rear. When i came around the house with the rifle, they said Have you been shooting? Very quite.

[shooting on a shoestring]

crgaston and Woody1 - You're right the speed of sound is a little over 1100 f/s. However, if a round ball exits the muzzle at 650 f/s, the gas behind it jets around the ball as it exits and breaks the sound barrier which means gets a loud pop.

The trick is to get the gas to slow down, like diffusing it with COW, or my current experiment, keep the volume of gas low so the expansion will be nearly finished when it exits the barrel.

I've got the 1.0 gr BE loads loaded, just need to get home and try them out.

[Echo]

And that wasn't Murphy he was talking about, but another guy with the same name...

[MikeSSS]

I tried 350 gr .458" bullets in a Marlin 1894 .45 Colt rifle with the, I think, 24" barrel and very light powder charges. These loads hit pretty hard and the case sealed so you didn't get the gas blowback that .45 Colt rifles are famous for but they weren't as quiet as I wanted.

Using 200 gr and 250 gr .454" bullets just increased the noise level so that it sounded sort of like a quiet 22 lr.

I tried everything from the bullet falls on the ground 10 feet in front of the muzzle to it shoots pretty flat across the pond and never could get the .45 colt to be as quiet as the .38 pipsqueak loads used in Cowboy Action.

A friend tried round balls in a .44 mag, one, two and three balls per cartridge and they were pretty quiet.

I also tried very light loads in a 12 ga shotgun. These ranged from "bloop" and the wad stayed in the barrel (got sucked back down into the barrel after almost reaching the muzzle) to low power rounds that were almost useful. The pattern had big holes in it and that's no good during dragon fly and wasp season.

The very long barreled 22 lr's are pretty quiet when using CB caps but the bullet has good penetration. Super Colibris are good but regular Colibris get stuck in long barrels.

[O.S.O.K.]

The speed of sound is approximately 1125 fps - and varies with temperature and humidity a little.

If you want the perfect and time tested anti-vermin quiet round, go with .22 CB's in a bolt, pump or lever action .22LR. They will sound like a pellet gun but still give good enough accuracy and spit to shoot the skunks in the head and terminate.

[9.3X62AL]

crgaston and Woody1 - You're right the speed of sound is a little over 1100 f/s. However, if a round ball exits the muzzle at 650 f/s, the gas behind it jets around the ball as it exits and breaks the sound barrier which means gets a loud pop.

The trick is to get the gas to slow down, like diffusing it with COW, or my current experiment, keep the volume of gas low so the expansion will be nearly finished when it exits the barrel.

I've got the 1.0 gr BE loads loaded, just need to get home and try them out.

I'll be interested to read your results. It didn't occur to me that the gas jet itself would break the sound barrier. Well, DUH........ (What ya expect from a social science major?) "Appalachian Assault Rifle"--I like that.

[August]

May I ask, what the hell does one do with a skunk after shooting it?

[woody1]

May I ask, what the hell does one do with a skunk after shooting it?


Hat??

[StarMetal]

Try toilet paper. It doesn't clump.

Dacron is better :bigsmyl2:

Joe

[shooting on a shoestring]

August - What I do is scoop the dispatched varmint up with a #2 Ames Pony (shovel), carry it about 20 yards out onto the Texas Aggie Experimental Farm, make a slight excavation (about 4 to 5 shovel's worth), plant and backfill. I've noticed a slight variation in corn stalk height in the general area where I've parked a few. So far I haven't killed enough skunks to skew the Aggie's exprimental outcome, at least not that I'm aware.

[shooting on a shoestring]

Well, I fired the 1.0 grain of Bullesye under the .311 RBs today. For velocity I saw just over 500, a 503 average and a 511. STD was running just over 10. The loads were considerbly quieter than a standard .22LR. However, there was still more noise than I hoped for, and I could still stand to lose 50 fps. So I think I'll back off to about 0.7 grains and see what happens.

Another tack might be to use 150 gr pure Pb boolits and just enough Bullseye to get them out of the barrel. My theory being the heavier boolits would take longer to accelerate to about 450-500 fps making for longer dwell time in the barrel and more time for gas pressure to leak off, leaving less gas to escape when the boolit exits the barrel, and hopefully be quieter.

Of course all this could be mute (pun intended). One of my neighbors complained that her dog got skunked and she's hoping I will eliminate the offending striped kitty. The 62A is loaded with hollow point shorts and waiting for the chance. All my quiet 30/30 loads are fired and it will be a few nights before they get reloaded.

[rhead]

The heavier bullet can go slower and still be effective downrange. The greater barrel dwell time will cause a less forgiving situation accuracy wise. (It is harder to hold the platform still for 3 micro seconds than for 1. You are more likely to experience a pulse or something else while the bullet is in transit. There are no free lunches. Find the best compromise of sound, accuracy, and power and then live with the short comings.

You always have a choice It is just that sometimes plan b sucks too.

[softpoint]

I use the .312 Hornady swaged hollow base wadcutters, 90 gr. made for .32 pistol in my 30/30 XLR with a couple of grains (too lazy to go see exact amount right now) of tightgroup. Give the case mouth a little more flare, seat to almost flush. My XLR will put three of these touching most of the time at 25 yards, Sounds like an air rifle.:razz::cbpour:

[Treeman]

Shoestring, This corn tastes funny.. an' it don smell rahgt neither. ;^)

[KCSO]

10 grains of unique is too much for quiet loads as it willl go over 1200 fps. I use 6 in my pest loads for the 30-30. Here is a load that needs no filler use Trail Boss a 1/2 charge and a round ball will be just right and will run under 1" at 25 yards. I use a 380 ball in my 38-55 with 6 grains of Trail Boss for about 900 fps and it is a proven skunk load.

[20nickels]

For those of you sizing down your round balls, try just seating them as is. The seat and crimp dies should swage them down. Nickels.

[Cannoneer]

After shooting the skunk, don't you have a problem with the critter voiding his scent sak? That smell must stick around for a couple of days unless you have something to neutralize it.

:(

[shooting on a shoestring]

Still laughing at Treeman....

Cannoneer, you bring up a good point. What I've found is a good head or neck shot will kill the critter before it sprays, but they still leak a little. On a few occasions, I've shot them, then grabbed them up by the tail holding them upside down, and they don't leak hardly at all. However, on most occasions, they are more smelly than I care to pick up. Then I hustle up and grab the shovel. So far I haven't had any that did a royal stink job, but a couple have had some lingering effects.

Dad shot a skunk once with a .220 Swift. Skunk vaporized..... and his pickup....well it brought back memories every time it rained.

[Throwback]

Junior wrote an excellent article on this subject:

http://www.castbullet.com/shooting/rb30.htm