dpete Posted December 9, 2017 Report Share Posted December 9, 2017 This has been my first year of subsonic hunting and I thought I would share some info on what I have found. I built my 8" Blackout 2 years ago as a pistol then last year I jumped through all the hoops and SBRd and suppressed it. I shot my first deer with it last fall using a Barnes black tip which performed perfectly. Entry between shoulder and briscuit, exit out the side just in front of the left hindquarter. The deer went 40 yards and piled up. This year I wanted to load up some subs and "bow hunt with the rifle". Over the spring and summer I loaded Hornady 225gr BTHP and 220 gr SMKs and amazingly both shot to the same impact point at 50 yards with their corresponding 4227 powder charges, and the rifle sounds like a BB gun. Both bullets were running in the 970-980fps range touching holes at 50. I had high hopes for the Makers when I finally got them. Being twice the price of the other two bullets I cheaped out and loaded a ladder series of one bullet each for each charge, decreasing charge by .3 of a grain as I went down. This was just to find the charge that would get me into the 970-980fps range that my rifle seems to like. Once I had that I did a proper load ladder and found the charge that fell into that range also had virtually the same impact point and accuracy as the Hornady/SMK loads. Fast forward to yesterday, first day of WI state wide antlerless season. I'm watching a fawn poke around not wanting to shoot bambi when suddenly it looks up, tail goes up, and zoom off it goes. OK I'm now looking for what spooked it off, and here comes a nice doe (a buck would have really pissed me off cuz they are off limits for the 4 day doe season). She walks in, starts sniffing around where the fawn was and stops facing me almost straight on. An almost identical shot to last year except now I have the 200gr Maker loaded up. I aimed between her shoulder and briscuit as before and pulled the trigger. She hunched/jumped at impact and took off straight away from me. I settled down and got out to take a look. No blood where she was standing but there were deep digging footprints in the snow and I knew where she had gone. 5 minutes later after slowly beaming around with the flashlight I saw a silver eye reflection on the ground and it turned out to be her where she had flopped over. She had gone 30 yards before piling up. While field dressing her out I found the reason for no blood. The bullet entered high on her chest wall and it all pooled around her lungs and heart in front of her diaphragm. The entry wound through the skin was .308 size but it must have started mushrooming immediately and blew through a rib leaving a 1 inch diameter entry hole. The bullet passed through her lung, heart, and diaphragm, and her stomach had a nice entry hole in its front so I opened it up and lo and behold found the bullet. It had opened up almost perfectly even at the severe angle it had entered with. I'm not too fond of doe pictures but I am impressed with what the bullet looks like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sisco Posted December 9, 2017 Report Share Posted December 9, 2017 Nice report DPete, I have to pick some of those up. I will have.to try that.next year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robocop1051 Posted December 9, 2017 Report Share Posted December 9, 2017 Thanks for the story/Report. How much meat did she give you? I’ve been debating on working up a light weight (182 190 grain) subsonic round. Simple math says a low weight subsonic would be really low pressure, but Gemtech an Noveske seem to be running theirs ok. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpete Posted December 9, 2017 Author Report Share Posted December 9, 2017 18 minutes ago, Robocop1051 said: Thanks for the story/Report. How much meat did she give you? I’ve been debating on working up a light weight (182 190 grain) subsonic round. Simple math says a low weight subsonic would be really low pressure, but Gemtech an Noveske seem to be running theirs ok. We haven't boned out the meat yet. With these 200 grain Makers I'm only using 8.4gr of IMR 4227 so it can't exactly be high pressure. The trick with subs is to have enough gas pressure to run the action of the rifle but still be quiet. If you have a bolt gun then it isn't an issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
survivalshop Posted December 11, 2017 Report Share Posted December 11, 2017 Good job , expensive Bullets , but looks like they work . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magwa Posted September 17, 2018 Report Share Posted September 17, 2018 I like it ..... good job Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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