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Milk Jug Ballistics Lab ??
stanman
Member Posts: 3,052
OK, I'm kidding, sort of.
The subject of shooting jugs filled with water has taken alot of flaming on the forum in the past.
As I recall, someone wanted to offer exploding milk jugs as evidence that some particular round was adequate for whitetail deer or long range coyote killing or some such thing.
Well, I confess, I've been known to take a couple gallon jugs out shooting with me, purely for entertainment.
But recently, I discovered that they can actually be a fair indicator of bullet energy deposited "on target".
This will probably be no surprise to many members here, but I find that I get more violent upset from a .22lr HP than I get from a .357 mag. 158 gr. FMJ.
Anyway, what I'm leading to here is an experience that I had while trying out the new (to me) P97.
I had purchased a couple boxes of Win. 230 gr. JHPs and was considering them as a home defense load, but because of the HUGE hollow point cavity, I wanted to shoot several mags through the pistol to check reliability of feeding.
During the course of this exercise, I plunked a couple gallon jugs of water at about 25 ft. and the results were visually impressive.
But, when I walked over to collect the shredded remains, I found 2 perfectly mushroomed bullets laying on the ground directly behind the jugs.
I'm taking this to be an indicator that, on a center mass hit, over-penetration should not be much of a problem.
Can anybody tell me how wrong I am??
Or is this typical of anyone else's experience??
The subject of shooting jugs filled with water has taken alot of flaming on the forum in the past.
As I recall, someone wanted to offer exploding milk jugs as evidence that some particular round was adequate for whitetail deer or long range coyote killing or some such thing.
Well, I confess, I've been known to take a couple gallon jugs out shooting with me, purely for entertainment.
But recently, I discovered that they can actually be a fair indicator of bullet energy deposited "on target".
This will probably be no surprise to many members here, but I find that I get more violent upset from a .22lr HP than I get from a .357 mag. 158 gr. FMJ.
Anyway, what I'm leading to here is an experience that I had while trying out the new (to me) P97.
I had purchased a couple boxes of Win. 230 gr. JHPs and was considering them as a home defense load, but because of the HUGE hollow point cavity, I wanted to shoot several mags through the pistol to check reliability of feeding.
During the course of this exercise, I plunked a couple gallon jugs of water at about 25 ft. and the results were visually impressive.
But, when I walked over to collect the shredded remains, I found 2 perfectly mushroomed bullets laying on the ground directly behind the jugs.
I'm taking this to be an indicator that, on a center mass hit, over-penetration should not be much of a problem.
Can anybody tell me how wrong I am??
Or is this typical of anyone else's experience??
Comments
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
I've wanted to to these tests for a while but never get around to it.
A doctor friend sent me a great medical article a few years back on the charateristics of gunshot wounds written I think by an ER doctor. He discussed how the mechanics of a wound works. Nasty stuff.
The human body is 80% water???? Anyway, fluid slows down a bullet pretty quickly. Water jug and human anatomy have a little in common in my way of thinking. Just my $0.02
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
~Abraham Lincoln
I do shoot jugs from time to time for kicks and giggles, but none of the ammo I have ever used is close enough to find like that. I just shoot them for the visual effect.
All it takes for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.
For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration; the streets are safer, the police are more effective, and the rest of the world will follow us into history--Hitler 1937