Well, I took another crack at this boolit trapping thing again. I built a wooden box that was a little over 2 feet long out of some 7/16” OSB board that was on sale at Home Depot for under $7 per sheet, some 2 x 4s & some 2 x 2s. I also put a piece of 3/8 plate on the back, just to be sure that everything was going to stay inside of it, even the 30-30s. I also brought along a little 11 inch long cardboard box to try with .22s.
The 11-inch long box of rubber mulch worked well with 40-grain PMC sidewinders that have a claimed speed of 1250. I found them all between 8 & 10.5” deep. A Stinger went right through. So did an Agulia Super Max.
Next I moved up to the big wooden box, which had the rubber mulch packed tightly. I hit it with 7 200-grain .45’s at 800fps, 3 130-grain .357s at 1250fps, 3 158-grain .357s at 675fps & a couple of 30-30PSPs. Most of the .45s sunk in 11.5-13” deep with 2 going 17-18”. The 158-grain TCs went in 11.5-12”. The 130-grain RNFP at 1250fps went in 17-19” & to my surprise, the 150-grain 30-30 with a factory claimed speed of 2390 only went in 20” deep. I think that the 170-grain 30-30 with a claimed speed of 2200 was somewhere near there too, but I missed finding it when I was unloading the trap & I didn’t actually see it until after I was putting the rubber mulch back inside. Nothing hit the back wall so I know that it didn’t go that far. I had a piece of cardboard in front of the back panel & the cardboard didn’t have a mark on it. The boolits were all completely whole, except for the two 30-30 PSPs which mushroomed as they normally do & look to have retained almost all of their weight. I haven’t actually weighed them yet. A few boolits have dents in them where it looks like another boolit hit them. I guess that I must have been shooting with better than average accuracy a few times.
I’m wondering if the fast moving 30-30s stopped where they did because they had traveled through 20 inches of stuff or because they were within several inches of a hard backstop & the rubber was packing up tight against the hard backstop. I think that next I will try to shorten the box a little & see if the fast movers stop sooner. Does anyone else have any ideas or requests?