7.62x39 Cast Subs for hunting

[LEADHOPPER]

Looking to find the best heavy for caliber mold for 7.62x39 subs out of a AR-15 platform for pig hunting. Has anyone found a mold that works good for this, barrel slugs at .312 Thinking at least a 190 grain bullet. Hollow point would be a plus in my eyes.

Thanks in advance.
LEADHOPPER

[Grayone]

I have loaded some 311041 which with powder coat and gas check weight was 185. Used Trail Boss for ~1050 FPS. These worked well in my AR in 7.62x39. I believe that if your rifle will use a .308 diameter bullet then the Hornady SubX in 175 or 190 weight would work well also.

[deces]

I read somewhere on here that a fellow developed a rather nice load in the range of 230 gr. Maybe they will chime in.

[Bad Ass Wallace]

I'm loading a 192gn boolit (0.313") over 23.5gn of 3031 in my rifle

[Rapier]

I buy the .308 barrels chambered in the 7.62x39 cartridge made by SOTA Ams. My old 7.62x39 Lyman die set has a .308 sizer and expander ball as well as a 7.62 set which is the way the old die sets came.

The so called "Cruise Missile", the Lee 230 grain plain base, powder coated, then sized to the groove diameter, using a case lube pad, will hold 1/2" groups at 50 yards with H-110 subsonic loads in the 1-10 twist of the SOTA barrels at about 1,000 fps. Trick is to get full function by adjusting the gas flow, buffer weight, the recoil spring tension weight, annd smoothing out the BCGS coating, if any, unless you want to shoot the AR as a single shot.
A .312 bullet of similar design and weight should perform the same, with a similar twist rate. So much, depends on your barrel's twist rate.

[Milky Duck]

there is a 151grn hollow point .308 cast that is very good...BUT subs suck for hunting if your aim is even SLIGHTLY off.... two ways to kill using them...central nervous system hit/brain or neck or take out the lungs and wait till they die..... its like using arrow with a target point... you are poking a small hole through whatever you hit with very little/no shock at all...sort of like poking a length of reo bar through animal....
the lehigh projectiles get rave reviews for subsonic loadings and results look very impressive, you CAN get expansion with cast at subsonic by slitting lips of hollow point cup ,the very best I got was 14mm width through head/neck of sheep shot at 15-20 yards..that was the onlt projectile ever recovered and I shot 10,12 sheep using them......went back to using high velocity .223 as was far far more humaine.

[Sgt H]

Milky Duck is spot on with low velocity loads and their effectiveness at game killing. with small bores, 22-30 caliber the velocity threshold where wound diameter is much larger than expanded diameter is 2500-2600fps. As you go up in diameter this velocity threshold goes down. Even in 44-45 caliber it is still around 1700fps. In the larger calibers you can still get larger quick killing wound channels with a rapidly expanding boolit, especially if it partially fragments to cause secondary wound channels. This of course requires enough boolit weight to penetrate when much is lost to fragmentation. An example of this is the Lyman/Gould HP for 45 caliber (about 340grains). I cast these soft and drive them about 1500fps from my 45-70's. The HP is about half the boolit length deep and the front half typically fragments and causes large wound channel. On lung shot whitetails a 2 inch would channel is typical and this load is very effective up to 100 yards or so. Have not used it further as my shots on deer are typically 20-70 yards.

[35 Rem]

When I wanted to hunt deer with cast in my CZ Carbine in 7.62x39 I wanted a "heavy for caliber" bullet so I chose the NOE TL313-153-RF. True 153 grains is not a huge jump over the standard 125 grain projectiles seen in this cartridge but it is a measurable increase. Also 153 grains can still achieve 2,000 ft/sec even in the carbine barrel so that I could guarantee expansion at least out to 150 yards. I don't recall the exact velocity numbers of my load but know that it's somewhere around 2,000 give or take 50 ft/sec.

Maybe you could even add another 20 or so grains and use a 170-grain bullet while still getting acceptable performance with cast in 7.62x39. However, any heavier bullet than that is going to mean little to no expansion and especially if you intentionally go below 1,100 ft/sec.

[truckjohn]

7.62x39 chambers vary a LOT by manufacturer.

Make a pound cast using once fired brass and fishing sinkers prior to buying molds. You really don't want to go buy a mold with a nice, long nose and then find out that you've got a nice tight leade and chamber neck. It is one thing to neck-turn brass for a bolt action. Match prepping brass is not something I want to do for a brass slinging, cartridge-dinging semi-auto.

I have run into both of those things, as well as tighter than expected bore dimensions while the groove dimensions were more or less standard, and as a result, I have several molds that won't chamber anywhere near the planned COAL.

Another one is COAL which will reliably load into mags and chamber out of your mags. Be sure to test first.

Also, be very careful assuming your barrel is 0.312. CIP spec minimum for 7.62x39 is 0.3138". Nearly all of the 0.311" and 0.312" claimed barrel dimensions I've seen for these are because of assuming that or crushing the lead in the calipers.

[wesson357]

I load Lee 180gr Rn .312. Once powder coated, they are .315 and with 11.0gr of 5744 or 17.0gr of H335 they are subsonic and shot very well in my SKS.