5.56 in a .223 rifle

[ricky5042]

Hi yes my Howa 1500 is a 1-12, i have used some old military ammo i got from a local shop M183 i think but cant be exact lol was manufactured in 1982, the rifle handled it perfectly ok although this ammo didnt group very well! i was lucky to get a 2" group at 50m not my rifle is capable of groups down to 0.060" at 50m.

The chairman at our club says his ar shoots the mil surp ammo perfectly ok.

[bradders]

Thanks- Others like Dave and Bradders will be able to identify this military ammo. Note the considerable differences in the bullet shapes(if you know about such ogives,fine;if not read up a little on it- it has some bearing on seating depth and engagement with the rifling,and hence on accuracy and pressures,but maybe not as much as whatever powder is in the case,or the case's measurements,or the bullet's quality.)One thing is for sure,it was not loaded with your rifle in mind.Accuracy is usually in line with price- ie very much at the lower end. Gbal

 

That ammo is RUAG 62gn 5.56. It's pretty good stuff for what it is and the brass is excellent for reloading.

Pressure is lower than RG 5.56 due to lighter brass and you shouldn't have any extraction problems.

If you shoot it through a 1:12 you won't hit the side of a barn with it though!

 

Ricky, I believe you mean M193

[Crosshair]

That ammo is RUAG 62gn 5.56. It's pretty good stuff for what it is and the brass is excellent for reloading.

Pressure is lower than RG 5.56 due to lighter brass and you shouldn't have any extraction problems.

If you shoot it through a 1:12 you won't hit the side of a barn with it though!

 

Ricky, I believe you mean M193

 

If I use it, it'll be through a 1:9 Steyr Pro Varmint

[bradders]

If I use it, it'll be through a 1:9 Steyr Pro Varmint

Then you'll be fine

[Crosshair]

Then you'll be fine

 

Cool! That's great news, I'll give it a whirl

[sonic]

The head is the front end of the bullet!

I think you'll find the head is where the primer goes.

[Crosshair]

For anyone interested how they went, they punched some pretty consistent 1/2 moa groups at 100 and enabled me spend a couple of fun afternoons shooting some fox cut out targets from various rests and ranges that I wouldn't normally have wasted ammo on.

Not ballistically useful but all good practice. I reckon they would be perfect fodder for the one or two crafty foxes a year that sit looking at me out of dense cover- they'd almost certainly drive on through the foliage rather than fragmenting.

[sonic]

For anyone interested how they went, they punched some pretty consistent 1/2 moa groups at 100 and enabled me spend a couple of fun afternoons shooting some fox cut out targets from various rests and ranges that I wouldn't normally have wasted ammo on. Not ballistically useful but all good practice. I reckon they would be perfect fodder for the one or two crafty foxes a year that sit looking at me out of dense cover- they'd almost certainly drive on through the foliage rather than fragmenting.

Is that almost or certainly cause there's only one of the two where I'd pull the trigger

[Crosshair]

Is that almost or certainly cause there's only one of the two where I'd pull the trigger

I chose my phrase to reflect my uncertainty about the law rather than any uncertainty about the bullets driving through Rape Stubble, Nettles or a clump of grass.

 

Does anyone know if you have to use expanding ammunition on live quarry?

[gbal]

I chose my phrase to reflect my uncertainty about the law rather than any uncertainty about the bullets driving through Rape Stubble, Nettles or a clump of grass.

Does anyone know if you have to use expanding ammunition on live quarry?

 

Well,there are certainly some exp bullet requirements for some live quarry species.

But the options quite generally seem to me to be "must" (legally)and "should",(ethically) so they both prescribe

expanding bullets.

 

The limited testing of bullet designs usually challenges all the assumptions about brush busting and so forth,and no animal deserves a through and through wound risk.Clear shot or no shot is the choice.

Gbal

 

 

 

 

[Crosshair]

Well,there are certainly some exp bullet requirements for some live quarry species.

But the options quite generally seem to me to be "must" (legally)and "should",(ethically) so they both prescribe

expanding bullets.

 

The limited testing of bullet designs usually challenges all the assumptions about brush busting and so forth,and no animal deserves a through and through wound risk.Clear shot or no shot is the choice.

Gbal

 

I'll have to have a play on some fox cut outs in the bushes and see what the results are accuracy wise.

I'm not expecting it to bore a hole through a limb and carry on, but last year especially, I shot a lot of foxes in the long silage grass (our estate was a sea of it and i get early poults in June) and was always wondering whether the bullet was going to make it.

 

I'll post some piccies of the results.

 

 

[gbal]

I'll have to have a play on some fox cut outs in the bushes and see what the results are accuracy wise.

I'm not expecting it to bore a hole through a limb and carry on, but last year especially, I shot a lot of foxes in the long silage grass (our estate was a sea of it and i get early poults in June) and was always wondering whether the bullet was going to make it.

 

I'll post some piccies of the results.

 

Hi Crosshair:that should be interesting,and it really hasn 't been fully tested as there are quite a few variables.bullet design , the kind of and thickness of deflector ,angle of impact etc,etc.

The general conclusion is that any obstruction makes the outcome less predictable,but never better.

It'll be interesting...

Gbal

[sonic]

I chose my phrase to reflect my uncertainty about the law rather than any uncertainty about the bullets driving through Rape Stubble, Nettles or a clump of grass.

 

Does anyone know if you have to use expanding ammunition on live quarry?

Simple answer other than deer no.

But all non expanding bullets are not the same. HPBT are drawn from the base leaving the hole at the point although not designed to expanded they will in some cases.

FMJ are made from the point leaving the hole at the base they do not expand (this is to comply with the geneva convention) while they might carry through cover. This does not always mean they go where you want them. the other thing is you don't get energy transfer that expanding bullets give. So are more likely to get runners.

HPBT will expand but not necessarily in the way one designed will.

Practice makes perfect so firing them is not wasted but I'd save them for that and find how you/your rifle behave from the less than ideal rests (wing mirror etc). Then it's one less thing to worry about when out foxing.

[Crosshair]

To be honest, some ten years ago, when .223 was my only rifle, I suffered several runners from seemingly well placed shots which, when I finally caught up with the foxes (I actually had a spaniel that retrieved them for me- I wrote an article/story about him in The Countrymans Weekly ) seemed to be lack of penetration. I do wonder if a slightly tougher bullet placed clean through the shoulder blades might actually be a better shot in many cases- it would at least ensure immobilisation.

Hmm, lots to think about.

 

Incidentally, I shoot much better from a wing mirror than any thing else

 

[gbal]

To be honest, some ten years ago, when .223 was my only rifle, I suffered several runners from seemingly well placed shots which, when I finally caught up with the foxes (I actually had a spaniel that retrieved them for me- I wrote an article/story about him in The Countrymans Weekly ) seemed to be lack of penetration. I do wonder if a slightly tougher bullet placed clean through the shoulder blades might actually be a better shot in many cases- it would at least ensure immobilisation.

Hmm, lots to think about.

 

Incidentally, I shoot much better from a wing mirror than any thing else [/quote

 

Yes,indeed.There are quite a number of bullet differences,and intended expansion rates,mainly driven by the USA market, geared to their quarry.Plenty of 'failures' toodue to the use of the wrong bullet.It's nothing like so easy as hollow point/not-match bullets eg are typically hollow point,and may work well,but are designed for aerodynamic,not terminal effectreasons.

Generally varmint bullets,so marked/marketed do not penetrate deeply- the common volume US varmint is the prarie dog,roughly the size of our squirrels,and bullets so intended can be spectacularly expansive-'varmint grenades' indeed as Barnes call theirs.There are plenty of others in varying suitability for our vermin.So your slightly tougher options exist. V max seem popular and effective,and some weight choices in each calibre,so no need for one size fits all. A pretty good bullet exists for most purposes,but it just isn't the same bullet for each!

 

Gbal

 

 

 

[sonic]

I use a 243 and have used 55bt sierras 58 vmax and now 75 vmax. The 55's were good but 58 vmax better groups. I've had side on shot where the entry was hard to find no exit to some you wouldn't post pictures of. I had two runners last year both with 75 vmax. one was in around the shoulder missed bone exit neck. As it was in the snow I let the dog "track it" she has to learn somehow. It went three hundred yards before I could finish the job. The second was shoulder shot didn't go through and they can run on three legs. Fortunately it stopped for a look after 20 yds.

There is always a compromise with bullet design but less with some than others.

FMJ is designed to incapacitate a person not kill. As a casualty is a far bigger drain on your army than a corpse.

HPBT for target shooting are made so you can push them faster without damage to the base thereby ruining accuracy.

Expanding to dump the most energy in the target as possible.

[Laurie]

There is always a compromise with bullet design but less with some than others.

FMJ is designed to incapacitate a person not kill. As a casualty is a far bigger drain on your army than a corpse.

 

 

Not quite true. The only reason we have FMJ miltary bullets is that the French and Germans ganged up on the Brits in the late 19th century through jealousy over the size of the British Empire and its large number of African colonies at the time when small calibre smokeless cartridges were being introduced.

 

British home and colonial forces had discovered the 210gn RNFMJ bullets in the 303 at low velocities were very poor 'manstoppers', except at VERY short range when the terminal velocity was still reasonable, or if the bullet struck a major bone causing explosive fractures with the bone splinters doing most of the internal damage, or in VERY long range hits where the bullet tumbled. The USA found exactly the same thing in testing its .30-40 Krag with a 220gn RN-FMJ at 2,000 fps MV on live (anaethatised) pigs.

 

The propsed answer to dealing with the Pathans in the NWFD and other similar 'troublesome / lethal natives' was a series of Indian Dum Dum arsenal developed and manufactured expnading bullets, this being the object of the Kraut ' Froggie attack resulting in the Hague Convention protocols. An offer to use Dum-Dums on 'savages' in the colonies and FMJs on 'civilised' opponents in European wars was turned down flat, hence we are where we are.

 

The key thing though - and one totally misunderstood by peace campaigners, journalists and others who think FMJ = good; 'Dum Dum' = barbaric / nasty - is that the military have been working on increasing the lethality of the FMJ ever since and the modern high-velocity FMJ-BT is a VERY lethal, tissue damaging device indeed. Governments discovered early on that increasing the bullet length and giving it a pointier front-end not only improved external ballistics substantially, but made the projectile base-heavy so that it will very quickly tumble on entering flesh, a medium with a very high liquid content. The good old play cricket by the rules Brits went still further with the 1910 303 174gn Mk VII bullet used until the 1960s with a large internal airpsace under the jacket tip filled either with aluminium or sterilised wood fibre making the bullet even more base-heavy and unstable.

 

The modern 0.21-0.22 calibre FMJ-BT is a highly lethal device especially at short ranges when terminal velocities are still high. It tumbles rapidly and this puts enormous strains on the jacket sides nearly always causing jacket then bullet failure around the rolled-in cannelure, its weakest point. The bullet then normally fragments into three large pieces and several smaller ones which depart into the limb or torso cavity in varied directions increasing the chance of major damage to key arteries and organs. This was long known about, but saw its zenith in the original US M193 55gn 5.56mm bullet which causes massive trauma up to 300 metres and saw an abortive Swedish red Cross attempt to have the USA prosecuted for war crimes during the Vietnam war.

 

(An unintended / unknown irony was that Sweden used the German designed version of the 7.62 NATO round loaded with a very thin and weak mild steel jacket 147gn bullet as its military round at the time, and studies have shown this is a very fragile bullet that causes even more severe damage than the early 5.56mm. The Soviet / Russian 5.45 x 39mm AK74 bullet has had this fragility / instability built in from day 1 and inflicted horrendous wounds on any Muhjahadeen insurgents unlucky enough to be hit by one in the USSR Afghan conflict.)

 

The upshot of all this is that it's probably marginally still preferable to be shot by someone using a 7.62 or 5.56mm milspec round - especially from one of the ultra-short barrel 5.56mm carbines that the military seem to favour these days, handy but with a disastrous MV reduction - than with a 308 or similar sporting round with an expanding bullet, but don't for one second think that an FMJ from a high-velocity rifle cartridge will pass through you leaving a small neat hole front and rear unless you're unlucky enough to have it hit a bone on the way through! Pistol cartridge FMJ bullets, especially 9mm Para are a very different kettle of fish and very poor incapacitators, hence the huge amount of research by the US law enforcement community and ammunition manufacturers in massive HP designs. fluted / scored jacket front-ends etc. This was largely driven by FBI concerns after a 1986 gun battle between a group of its agents in Miami-Dade county, Florida with two cornered armed robbers, one of whom crucially used a Ruger Mini-14 semi-auto 223R rifle to deadly effect while a perfect 9mm FMJ good-guy heart-shot on the guy failed because the bullet hit his wrist first and was slowed enough to cause inadequate torso penetration. The move to 10mm Auto followed by .40 S&W and cavernous hollow-point projectiles followed as a direct consequence of this episode.

[gbal]

I use a 243 and have used 55bt sierras 58 vmax and now 75 vmax. The 55's were good but 58 vmax better groups. I've had side on shot where the entry was hard to find no exit to some you wouldn't post pictures of. I had two runners last year both with 75 vmax. one was in around the shoulder missed bone exit neck. As it was in the snow I let the dog "track it" she has to learn somehow. It went three hundred yards before I could finish the job. The second was shoulder shot didn't go through and they can run on three legs. Fortunately it stopped for a look after 20 yds.

There is always a compromise with bullet design but less with some than others.

FMJ is designed to incapacitate a person not kill. As a casualty is a far bigger drain on your army than a corpse.

HPBT for target shooting are made so you can push them faster without damage to the base thereby ruining accuracy.

Expanding to dump the most energy in the target as possible.

 

Just two quick points adding to this-the expanding bullet should have a design appropriate to dumpong the energy at an appropriate depth of penetration,otherwise a horrendous surface wound is likely. Or. ""It's all in the heather,"(ghillie's dismissal of Clients weatherby magnum).

The notion that combatants shot with FMJs might recover better is well commented on by Laurie,but in addition some of the humane intentions of others supporting the convention was based on largely 20th century european practice,of trying to treat wounded combatants.By no means all fighting forces had the means,or perhaps the motivation,to put large resources into such support.If not,a drain on resources hardly applied to them.No doubt,there were some unintended consequences on both sides,as well as mixed motives,and interests involved.

 

Gbal

[sonic]

Thank you Laurie I was aware of some of what you've written but not all of it. It makes interesting reading.

I was referring to 5.56mm rather than others. I was in the army not long after the switch to the SA80. We were told about stopping power of the SLR. And how casualty's tied up more people casvac etc.

To be honest I don't want to be on the receiving end of any of them.

I would not use or recomend FMJ for live quarry.

[Laurie]

I'm not convinced there was much 'humane' thought in design of bullets in the early days of the modern smokeless military cartridge. Military planners judged smallarms ammunion effectiveness by the number of pine boards of a standard thickness set at a standard distance apart that the bullet would penetrate at a given distance from the muzzle.

 

Even the early low velocity 6.5-8mm FMJ rounds penetrated a vastly increased number of boards over their .40-50 calibre black-powder predecessors. Generals who still thought in terms of Napoleonic War battlefield tactics where two, even three or four lines of infantry marched into the muzzles of the muskets in the opposing side's lines exulted in the perceived increase in 'killing power' determined by the combination of flat trajectory and high penetration thinking a single well-aimed shot would now kill two, if lucky, three advancing opponents.

 

Apart from the rapid change in tactics caused by the huge advantage that entrenchment allied to the machine-gun + magazine rifle gave to the defence, a feature that was totally obvious during but largely ignored by the senior military in the South African and Russo-Japanese turn of the century wars, the prevailing view of the new cartridges totally overerstimated their lethality through confusing penetration with debilitating tissue damage. Hit someone solidly with a 400-500 gn lump of slow moving lead and the recipient rarely lived to fight another day, certainly not on that day, but the new blunt small caibre FMJs caused much less immediately debilitating wounds unless they hit a bone or a vital blood vessel / organ.

 

There was another crucial factor that influenced both sides' of the arguments views - the psychological effect of being hit and wounded, and ironically one that is right at the front of military concerns again today. Hit a European or American soldier, especially the average conscript with a tiny number of would-be posthumous VC and Congressional Medal of Honor medal winners aside, and he'll stop where he is and holler 'stretcher-bearer' or equivalent. (Fair enough, I would!) But .... hit a Zulu tribesman or Pathan warrior, or in the US case a Filipiono Moro tribesman hyped up on a mixture of drugs and Muslim dogma similarly and he kept on coming at you as long as his legs still functioned. We're seeing this again of course with Islamic insurgents not interested in lying down 'having done their bit' but carrying on and guaranteeing their passage to paradise if they can kill an infidel before they peg out.

 

It was the British Tommy Atkins and his local levies who were fighting tough as old leathyer and so-motivated Muslim tribesmen on the North West Frontier Province, or Zulus in southern Africa, and it suited the German and French agendas to a T to ensure the Brits didn't get more effective bullets, hence the Hague Convention rules. Politics and the Great Power Game, not any notions of humanity. The same powers, us included, were simultaneously developing new more powerful explosives as artillery shell fillings and boasting of their unbelievably destructive powers, and whose sole concerns about adopting Hiram Maxim's machine-gun had nothing to do with its being inhumane rather how would their budgets support the increased ammunition consumption. One of the last century's great military weapons historians, Ian V. Hogg I think, posed a rhetorical question on the lines of:

 

 

How is it in any way humane to insist on an FMJ bullet while allowing the development of artillery shells that send what are in effect hundreds of whirling knife-blades out of the impact point at thousands of feet per second in a lethal radius that will gut or dismember any human being who is in their path? It was a relevant question in 1890, even more so in 2013 with things like air-dropped cluster munitions in use.

[Laurie]

Thank you Laurie I was aware of some of what you've written but not all of it. It makes interesting reading. I was referring to 5.56mm rather than others. I was in the army not long after the switch to the SA80. We were told about stopping power of the SLR. And how casualty's tied up more people casvac etc. To be honest I don't want to be on the receiving end of any of them. I would not use or recomend FMJ for live quarry.

 

 

I agree 100% - staying behind the muzzle is my priority.

[Laurie]

Anybody interested in wound ballistics should Google

 

Martin L Fackler

 

Dr Fackler was a US Army surgeon who treated hundreds (thousands?) of wounded men in the Vietnam War. Afterwards he set up and headed the US military's Wound Ballistics Laboratory, and after retiring as a Surgeon-Colonel, continued his programme of scientific research into gunshot wounds challenging many of the contemporary theories.

 

There are various websites that show the results of his and the civilain institute he founded to study gunshot wounds, notably wound channel diagrammes from different bullet types from extensive shooting into ballistic gelatin blocks. The ongoing debate here about bullet types on vermin / game is in many ways a subset of his results, but the more you look at the work of people like Dr Fackler, the more you realise that it's an incredibly complicated subject and that there is a lot less difference between different bullet types' actual performance than the bullet / ammunition manufacturers, humanitarian bodies etc would have you believe.

 

There is also a very interesting book on the subject 'Rifle Bullets for the Hunter: A Definitive Study' (by various edited by Dave Campbell) for sporting shooters still available from Gunbooks

 

http://gunbooks.uk.com/products/RIFLE-BULLETS-FOR-THE-HUNTER-%E2%80%93-A-DEFINITIVE-STUDY.html

 

although I think it's now out of print. Although it's heavily orientated to pushing sales of a device called The Bullet Tube (a reusable green gelatin type medium in a tube that shows bullet penetration and track) it has a lot of good stuff, in particular linking bullet construction / type to terminal velocity showing for instance how a 22 calibre V-Max that is an out and out varmint / fast-expanding ' fragmenting bullet at a high terminal velocity becomes a penetrating hold-together example in a less powerful cartridge allied to a longer range hit producing a reduced terminal velocity.

[sonic]

I think this http://www.ar15.com/ammo/project/Fackler_Articles/effects_of_small_arms.pdf is worth a read. I found from your suggestion

[NICK]

Laurie.

There was a Video i saw back in the 80s made by Fackler called 'Deadly Effects'. Dispelled a lot of Myths about terminal ballistics particularly Secondary Cavitation.

Did the U.S. Sign up to the Hague Convention?

Nick.

[Crosshair]

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