You know that guy that you go shooting with and he makes tiny groups and shows everyone up. Well, I got to be that yesterday.

I went to a lead-free shooting event yesterday at Ft. Hunter-Liggett. They were letting hunters and shooters test out lead free ammo in our own rifles.

I showed up with my Browning BLR in .270 with Bushnell 6-18x44. Targets were at a leisurely 50M distance.

Here's my group:



The organizers were sufficiently impressed with that group that they let me shoot the milk jugs and ballistic gel for the demonstration session. The jugs were 5 x 1-gallon jugs lined up full of water inside a big plastic 55gal drum. I got to shoot the water jugs (2 setups) with lead core 150gr Winchester CXP2 and the Hornady 130gr GMX lead-free bullets I'd shot the group above with. The lead core made it into the 4th jug shedding considerable mass along the way. It ended up nicely but not overly mushroomed but had obvious areas where lead was peeled off. The hornady copper bullet penetrated all 5 jugs completely and then the drum base and continued zinging across the landscape. Both shots were dead center on the jugs. There was no evidence of copper shedding in any of the jugs.

The gel was done similarly. It was about 36"deep with a pretty small face of about 4"x6". I put the first round (lead core Winchester) on the left side. It penetrated about 28", mushroomed nicely and stopped in the gel. Lead wiping through the wound channel was obvious and apparent. The wound channel cross section was nice from impact to about 10" in but got pretty thin in cross section after that.

The hornady copper stuff exited the top of the block after penetrating about 24" (the block had bucked up in an arc as soon as the bullet hit and the bullet kept going straight, neat to see). The wound channel kept maximum cross sectional size for 4"-ish further than the lead core and there was no visible fragmentation except for the polymer tip which was found in pieces at 5" 10" and 15".

I apologize for not having any other pictures but my phone was dead by the time I got there and I couldn't really take pics of myself shooting anyway.

The tough part was that they had exactly 4 rounds available to pull off 4 PERFECT shots. Most anyone can make 1 shot on an eraser head with 1 out of 4 bullets. I did it with all 4. Not bragging, just goes to show you what practice can do. Truth be told I used to be a competitive shooter so I had a definite advantage.

EDIT: Unless I'm being a tard, that group measures about .375". At 100yrds the spread would have made it to .750". That's cold bore, with a hunting rifle. No sniper/tactical stuff like everyone else was using. Never seen so many people be such bad shots with AR-10's.

 

Neat. So are they supposed to be swapping to copper rounds still now? Wouldnt that increase the price of copper dramatically? Also wouldnt copper be overkill on some rodents or hunting applications? The lead mushrooms which creates bigger impact, while the copper would just go straight through the target right? Just seems bad for hunting but great for plinking.

 

California is trying to spread the condor zone (lead free zone) all over the state and ammo manufacturers are trying to help them. Nothing like a mandated product that costs twice as much to sell and half again as much to produce.

I don't dig on the all copper stuff. They're getting better at being accurate but they still expand slower and over penetrate.

 

Do you mean its gunna cost twice as much as lead ammo? If so thats horseshit. And yeah id hate to hit a deer with a 30-06 copper round, most likely would go straight through.

 

yeah.... here copper stuff is already 45-60 a box. Remington core-lok't are 23 a box. The bigger the cartridge the more the copper stuff costs. I saw 300 weatherby ammo at over 100 bucks a box.

 

Dayum, that is seriously too much money to be spending on ammo. You would never catch me even looking at ammo that cost over 100 bucks a box.

Congrats on the expert shooting, I just love seeing the reward of practice. I did competitive shooting in high school and loved every minute of it.

 

I can vouch for the copper price sucking major *****. 30-30 ammo, .270 ammo, .44 ammo, and .357 copper loads...I forget how much I spent..but...it wasn't fun at all.

 

I was a competitor long ago. Palma, smallbore, Black Powder Cartridge, IPSC, IDPA and a few others. My shoulders are so fragile anymore it's hard to take 10 shots from anything with some substance to it.