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Thread: 45 acp hollow point

  1. #1
    Boolit Grand Master


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    45 acp hollow point

    I was out at the end of today checking a trail camera when I looked up and noticed a raccoon 60-70 yards away that did not see me. I was carrying my SIG P220 today with my own 230gr hollow points cast of 20:1. I do not know the exact pressure of the load, but it is likely +p, or close to it. Velocity is 920 fps. At the first shot, the raccoon looked hit, but ran for some brush. It made it a full 100 yards to a hollow log. I gave it one more shot.

    To my surprise, my first shot was pretty good, but a little far back. It was certainly a fatal shot. Both bullets passed clean through, but the exits were nothing special. I've seen better results from my 327 federal. No doubt the 45 acp is a fine cartridge, but I may have to check that these bullets expand. These bullets have huge hollow points, and I was fairly sure I'd see expansion, but I expected a bigger hole. I got about a 1/2" exit hole, which is about what I'd expect from a 45 solid bullet.


  2. #2
    Boolit Grand Master


    Larry Gibson's Avatar
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    I've found 30-1 to be a good alloy for HPs the start out under 1000 fps for best expansion. In revolvers i use 40-1 alloy with a GC'd bullet. Problem with auto loaders is they must not hang on the feed ramp nor deform too much in transition from mag to chamber. Only way to know with your bullet in the P220 is to try it.
    Larry Gibson

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  3. #3
    Boolit Grand Master


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    I'm just surprised with how giant the hollow point is, that I did not see more. It is the NOE 452-232-HP. Even at that range, they should have hit around 850 fps. Or maybe that's all a bullet does at 850 fps, expanded or not? These bullets contact the feed ramp on the ogive, so I doubt feeding would be harmed with a softer bullet. I'm more worried about setback.

  4. #4
    Boolit Buddy
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    I have only been casting bullets off and on for a few years. But one thing that I find really surprising is how tough a metal lead actually is, in many respects.

    The other day, out of an Arex Delta M Gen 2 9mm, I did a very unscientific test with some old 9mm bullets I had cast, vs. some copper jacketed hollow points. I shot each bullet into four pine 2x4's that were held together back-to-back with clamps. I shot them from about three feet away. I figured that the cast bullets would maybe penetrate through at most two of the boards, and probably break up a lot. They actually made it into the 4th board. I don't remember what the alloy was that I cast them with, but by no means was it straight lino or even probably anything like Lyman #2. They were Lee RN tumble-lubed 125's. They also didn't lose much weight. After I dug them out they weighed about 110g, more or less. Didn't expand much either.

    As an aside, the copper jacketed hp's went the same distance.

    Lead is hard. Surprisingly so, at least to me.

    8mmFan

  5. #5
    Boolit Master
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    Two thoughts:
    1.) "Small critters" tend to be more resilient to gunfire than many of their larger counterparts. I shot a grain-fed, house cat-sized rat at 36 paces with a .45 ACP, whereupon it rolled over and ran off. The first thoughts of my college companions were that I'd grazed it or shot completely under it, which were contradicted by the coffee saucer-sized pool of blood and very discernible trail near the base of the silo, where I'd aimed. In daylight, I recovered the FMJRN projectile, which had come to a stop against the silo, and flattened against it, slightly. A silo employee asked me if I might have been "rat huntin" in the area recently. I allowed that the notion was not TOTALLY impossible, since I wanted neither to lie nor incriminate myself. He showed me the ventilated rodent, with a dowel about the diameter of a 1st grader's pencil through its thorax.
    I bagged the dead rat and took it back to show my roommates, who rapidly conceded my marksmanship, for the sake of getting the dead and not improving rodent out of their midst and away from the dormitory. Strangely, my marksmanship was seldom questioned on future "expeditions".
    A .45 ACP has a reputation for stopping enraged defensive tackles, hashish and fundamental Islam-fueled Philippine Moros, fanatical Japanese infantry and an arm's length list of other formidable would-be attackers. For it to fail on an oversized rat was truly not in my "expected" list of outcomes, but here we are. Your sidearm's "equivocal" performance on the raccoon is by no means an "X-file" anomaly.
    2.) Except for the old 200 gr. Speer "Flying Ashtray" and the lighter Lyman "Devastator" hollow point, I've never had great success at getting .45 ACP hollow point projectiles to expand well in anything but "wet pack" or sand. "Going softer" on the alloy may make expansion more likely, but I'VE never had good mold fill, when I went softer than 25:1 lead:tin. There's also the matter of feeding with very soft projectiles. As Hackathorn stated, the .45 is the king of feedway stoppages, and soft bullets are of no help. If you obtain good mold fills at 30:1 or 40:1, I would expect it to help expansion, if it will feed. I suppose that dumping the cast bullets into cold water straight from the mold might harden them slightly, but I don't know if it would defeat the purpose.
    I did a little work with a ballistic calculator, using your numbers, and came out with ~900 f/s velocity at 75 yards, and ~850 f/s at 100. Unless your 230 gr. HP projectiles have VERY open points, I have trouble envisioning much in the way of expansion at any velocity under 1000 f/s and likely under 1100 f/s.
    One projectile you might investigate closely is the 215 gr. SAECO #58 LSWC or PC bullet by Montana or Missouri Bullets (respectively). It does not have a reputation for expansion (especially the PC 22 BHN Missouri Bullets), but the very wide meplat tends to hit like a flying sledge hammer.
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  6. #6
    Boolit Grand Master Tripplebeards's Avatar
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    What’s the BH? Reminds of me father same experience it had with deer out into 77/44 and a Lyman devastator. I was using 15.4BH alloy at 1750 fps. Sailed right through. No expansion or blood trails. Both deer went a 100 and 120 yards before dropping. I’ll watch the post here because I want to use cast HP in my 10mm glock.

  7. #7
    Boolit Master Rapier's Avatar
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    If you can not achieve the velocity for bullet upset, it is better to concentrate on the largest meplat that you can find. Handgun bullets are notorious for not expanding in live tissue. In actual effect, the HP is not much different from the RN when they do not expand. If you go to a heavy bullet with a big flat nose, a real big flat nose, the impact effect will change drastically.
    My pin load for years and years has been the Lyman 45 Auto Rim bullet, a mold that Lyman no longer makes. It is shown as a 236g in the old Lyman books, but my mold drops them at 252g. It takes a bit of work to get them setup to function properly, but when you shoot something with them it stays shot. The effect is similar to being hit by a thrown brick.
    The bullets below my custom long slide are the 252s.
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  8. #8
    Boolit Mold
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    In my experience a coon is just not big enough of a critter to get any expansion with any bullet bigger than a 130-140 grain HP, regardless of the size of HP or hardness of the alloy. A coon in cross section is only about 3-4 inches thick and they're pretty soft in the middle. I've shot lots of critters that size and it takes soft, light bullets and big hollow points to open up.
    NRA Life Member

  9. #9
    Boolit Buddy memtb's Avatar
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    Raccoons are tough, with a will to live. I had a “very” hot 160 grain JSP load developed for my .357 mag for deer hunting. I had the opportunity to shoot a raccoon with my “deer load” at about 15 yards, not once but twice. The raccoon ran about 30 or 40 yards before “tipping over”! The brief autopsy indicated that both rounds were well placed, either would have been fatal…..eventually! This is when I lost some confidence in my “deer load” and lost “ALL” confidence in a .357 Magnum as being a “bear stopping” cartridge! Just my experiences and my opinion! memtb
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  10. #10
    Boolit Grand Master


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    Racoons, badgers, and coyote all have a tenacity for life and can take a lot of punishment if the central nervous system isn't disrupted. I once had a coyote that i shot through and broke both front legs push itself more than 50 yards. That was with my 30-06 using 180 gr Hornady SP at 2750 fps. An excellent deer (bigger mulies), elk, caribou and bear load. The smaller varmint/predators seemingly can take a lot of punishment from other than explosive varmint type bullets hitting at higher velocity.

    I've shot several such varmint/predators with my own 45 ACP loads and with Speers 200 gr HP FAT bullet loaded to 1000 fps out of my M1911. The results were pretty much in line with megasupermagnums results. I wouldn't discredit megasupermagnum's 45 ACP load at all.
    Larry Gibson

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  11. #11
    Boolit Buddy alfadan's Avatar
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    Critters think " Ouch! Something is attacking me! Run!"

    Humans think " Ouch I've been shot! Lay down and die because shot things die".

  12. #12
    Boolit Master Dan Cash's Avatar
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    I would not worry about expansion with a .45; it starts out larger than many other calibers ever expand to. Also, it seems that the more of a scavenger an animal is, the more tenacious its' grasp on life.
    To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the trouble with many shooting experts is not that they're ignorant; its just that they know so much that isn't so.

  13. #13
    Boolit Grand Master


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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Cash View Post
    I would not worry about expansion with a .45; it starts out larger than many other calibers ever expand to. Also, it seems that the more of a scavenger an animal is, the more tenacious its' grasp on life.
    The reason this raccoon ran so far was because I did not take out both lungs.

    You can argue need of expansion all you want, but the hole I'm seeing is rather pathetic. For the amount of recoil of that load, I'm quite displeased. I expect better. I went and searched the log some more today, but I was unable to find the bullet. I'm thinking of going out right now, and shooting one more with some water jugs on the back side to catch the bullet.

  14. #14
    Boolit Grand Master


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    I just went out and tried again. I collected every shop rag and towel I could find in the garage, and I made a thick stack which I figured would be bullet proof. I propped the raccoon on a shovel, and took two shots. The first I somehow managed to perfectly connect on the edge of the shovel creating this crazy wedge bullet. How cool is that? For the second shot I repositioned, but I was shooting at an angle now. This time the bullet actually stopped on the far side skin after traveling only about 12". As you can see, they mushroom perfectly, identical to my earlier testing, one such picture below. This one measures about .850", and still weighs 232 grains.

    I have to say I'm quite disappointed. This is such a giant bullet, but it leaves a comparatively small hole due to the low velocity. I see nearly identical results with 327 federal 143 gr HP at 1250 fps, which is actually less recoil. I don't mean this to badmouth 45 acp. I'm going to continue to shoot and carry this caliber, but maybe some of us need a reality check on the bigger is always better mentality. For all I know, this bullet really scrambled the insides, but I'm not about to gut it. I think this does help the case that a 45 acp is pretty good with a flat point solid, and a hollow point isn't that much better.





    This was recovered from a back stop

  15. #15
    Boolit Buddy
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    What you are seeing is the effects of 350 foot pounds expended over 12 inches. Many rounds will do very similar such as 22 mag, 9mm, 327 federal, 40 S&W, 38 special, etc. No difference between the common handgun calibers when energy and penetration are the same. This is why I tend to carry 9mm because when I carry I want a hollow point, and if energy and penetration are roughly equal, the wounds will be roughly equal. With the side effect that my ammo capacity is doubled over the 45.

    A 55 cal 9mm at 1200 fps makes the same wound or bigger as a 80 cal 45 at 850 fps when they are both acting like parachutes and penetrating the same depth because they have the same amount of energy. The wound is the work, the energy is the capacity to do work. They have the same energy, and if equal in penetration, physics says they have the same total wound volume.

    Flat nose bullets have the same wounding mechanism. In Jacketed Performance with Cast Bullets there is a formula with Meplat x velocity that gives you wound width. A 28 cal meplat at 1300 fps makes the same size wound as a 36 cal meplat at 900 because the flesh is squirting off the nose at a 90 degree angle like a pressure washer. The faster bullet pressure washes harder, so even though its meplat is smaller, the high pressure bow wave damages flesh to the same diameter as the slower, wider meplat.
    Last edited by mnewcomb59; 05-02-2022 at 03:27 PM.

  16. #16
    Boolit Grand Master


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    I've seen too many exceptions to buy into energy, or any formula. I knew a hollow point like this isn't a penetrator, I'm just surprised a .850" bullet made a 1/2" hole. Flesh is flexible though. Hopefully this example adds one more to the real world results pile.

  17. #17
    Boolit Grand Master Tripplebeards's Avatar
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    How close to a pure soft lead boolit PC'd do you think you could get to feed without leading?I'm sure 20/1 is getting pretty soft.

  18. #18
    Boolit Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by megasupermagnum View Post
    I've seen too many exceptions to buy into energy, or any formula. I knew a hollow point like this isn't a penetrator, I'm just surprised a .850" bullet made a 1/2" hole. Flesh is flexible though. Hopefully this example adds one more to the real world results pile.
    The only constant is that there are always exceptions...

    The worst case of "wow, what happened?" I know of was when a buddy of mine and his wife (who is a great shot) emptied a Marlin 44 mag rifle with factory loads AND a Ruger Super Blackhawk in 44 mag into a feral hog and saw it run off. They started shooting at about 20 yards and he was running after that. The porker went about 100 yds before it laid down and finally died. They counted 14 entry holes through the torso and head (some exited and some did not) but nothing hit the Stop Button until he ran out of the red stuff - they were just happy he ran away instead of toward them.

    Your coon experience may be an example of when kinetic energy derived from velocity starts to become more important. I bet a 17 HMR would have stopped him in his tracks.

  19. #19
    Boolit Grand Master
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    In my experience, coyotes, badgers, coons ground hogs and possums are easy to kill, IF YOU HIT THEM RIGHT. If you miss the kill shot the first time, they become bullet sponges, and will soak up a lot of them before finally dying from blood loss. Deer too for that matter.

    This is why the lowly .22 rifle loaded with anything from shorts to Stingers is the preferred trapline or nighttime coon hunting gun. It is easier to hit with than most any handgun. Seems to kill about as well too, to me.

    Robert

  20. #20
    Boolit Buddy

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    Expansion is also dependent on the resistance it encounters at the target. Denser, more muscular critters offer more resistance than some little, stringy soft critter. I remember older police ballistic data years ago, that the 357 was more effective than the 44 magnum ON HUMANS. People don't offer enough resistance for heavily constructed 44 bullets to expand; they just punched through with no expansion. However the lighter 357s didn't have the same problems. They expanded well, creating more tissue damage. I cannot confirm any of this, havent shot anybody to test it. Does sound plausible, though.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check