Ammo Tests

The .40S&W arose as the indirect result of the FBI’s 1986 Miami shootout. If you aren’t familiar with the details surf on over when you’re done here. Any student of small arms is well served to read up on it. Google is your buddy. During the Miami shootout, two FBI special agents were killed and five wounded by a pair of bank robbers wielding a variety of weapons.

It is not often we see a caliber that actually changes the way we think about shooting. Wildcats abound, often with marginal improvement over a factory round at best. There are exceptions, though most calibers fail to catch hold. Even those backed by major players. Several new calibers have been tried in AR-15’s over the past few years, none strong enough to give the rifle new legs. Today, hopefully, that changes.

Syntech Ammunition was launched a few years back, specially designed as a high-quality training round. It keeps a lead core, but the jacket is polymer. The bullet is encased to keep any lead on steel contact from inside the gun, eliminating aerosolized lead and overall making a cleaner to shoot round. The construction also reduces splash back from steel targets.

I was a young cowboy with a fondness for horses, firearms, and pretty girls, in that order. One afore-mentioned pretty girl awaited my arrival across a high mountain pass that guards my Rocky Mountain home, but as my diesel pickup growled its way upward toward the pass I knew I was going to be early for our date. So I geared down and pulled off the highway into a small patch of ponderosa timber. The motor grumbled to a halt and I lifted my most recent crush off the truck seat, it’s long frame svelte and gleaming in the late afternoon light. The action was as smooth as whipped cream sweetened with maple sugar, and I forgot all about my upcoming date. Carrying the curvaceous form a little way from the truck I swung it to eye level and squeezed. A distant twig disappeared with a thunderous crack, and smoke rose in slow spirals from the six-inch barrel of my vintage Colt Python. I was in love.

“Trying to stop a bad-guy with a nine mm is like trying to stop a charging buffalo with a twenty-two. Might as well use a fly-swatter”.

Such statements were common when I was a kid, and at the time there was some truth to them. Many experienced shooters, veterans, and L.E. officers still preferred the hard-hitting .45 ACP, (Automatic Colt Pistol) to the 9mm with its smaller, lighter and more streamlined projectile.

Like many other successful cartridges, the .224 Valkyrie was conjured up in a shooting enthusiast’s mind. A “Wildcat” in concept, this new offering from Federal Premium was designed as a ballistic solution to solve an academic problem: how to take “America’s Rifle” to 1,000 yards and beyond. 

There’s a new product that shooters should keep an eye on. Timberghost Tactical LLC, a Georgia-based company, is taking the ammo world by storm with their new ammunition line: NovX, which is a stainless steel and copper polymer 9mm Luger +P. According to NovX, their 65-grain, standard pressure Engagement: Extreme Defense cartridges clock at 1,655 feet per second (fps).

Since its introduction in 2007, Hornady has continued to hit the sweet spot among long-range shooters with the 6.5 Creedmoor. A modification of the .30 TC and ultimately an offspring of the .308 Win., the 6.5 Creedmoor is effective because it capably seats bullets with high sectional density and ballistic coefficients, which are remarkably adept at producing flat trajectories and handling the wind. The 6.5 is also popular among competition shooters because it successfully houses these long, sleek bullets in a case that still fits in standard AR-10-style magazines and short-action bolt guns. As a result, the cartridge has been popular in competition and among game hunters.

Times change, and technology changes along with it. We hunters have an irrefutable connection with the past; we discuss our favorite cartridges — often with opinions based upon the experiences of our forefathers — and we long for the opportunity to recreate those hunts made famous in the hunting literature we adore so much. However, I feel that if our hunting heroes of yesteryear could’ve had the opportunity to use those tools that we now have available, they’d embrace them immediately. And among all the improvements we’ve seen in the last half century, I rate modern bullet development at the top of the list.