Would someone explain what I just observed?

[DerMeister]

I have a CZ75B in 9mm and my home defense gun. I have had these Remington 124gr +P HP bullets for a while now as my defense ammuntion. I have decided to replace them as they are older so I have been testing them out on different targets.

I got two expired processed turkeys from work. I figured they would be an excellent material for ballistic testing of my defense ammunition.

The first round used was the 124gr+P HP. It zipped right through the turkey, doing nothing impressive. I was really dissapointed. I placed the turkey so the bullet would travel through as much of it as possible. I couldn't see any evidence of expansion.

Second round was a 115gr Winchester FMJ. Same set-up, identicle target. It blew it in half and there was a LOT of damage.

I won't be using FMJ for home defense, but why did the Remington perform so poorly?

 

[BOLTRIPPER]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

i calling PETA

 

[Remnar]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

Shooting a turkey!!

Whats next?? Choking your chicken?

 

[BOLTRIPPER]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

turkey terrorists .....who knew ?

 

[Maggot]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

Pay no attention to those clowns. We welcome, animal abusin, chicken chokein, turkey shooters.

 

[kraigWY]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

In my years (includeing LE CSI, hunting, and as an infantryman in SE Asia), I've seen a lot of gun shots. What I learned is you can never tell what a bullet, any bullet, will do.

Speaking of turkeys, I'll give an example. I was hunting with a friend of mine back about 1970 or so. He was using a 243 and 90 grn bullets.

He shot this deer five times at about 40 yards, three in the heat lung area, two in the neck. All should be killing shots but weren't. I ended up killing it by hitting it in the back of the head with the blunt end of an ax.

The bullets just zipped right through, none of them openned up.

Find, we decided to save the rest of the box for turnkeys. Couple days later we spot a turking about 35 yards away, he shoots it with the same 243 bullets. Hits the turkey which was DRT.

When we got to the turkey, we found the bullet entered one side, expanded and took out the other side. We ended up tagging a half a turkey. It not only opened up, it exploded.

Mind you, it was the same bullets out of the same box. Same gun, the only thing different was the target.

Like I said you can never tell what a bullet will do until it does it.

 

[CommAV8OR]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

124gr+P HP is a hot round. My suspicion would be the speed was so fast it did not allow the bullet to open. A heavier projectile and non +P may give you better expansion results.

 

[Rhys]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

Were the turkeys still frozen?

 

[ArcticLight]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

Well can you explain why the supersonic turkey went through teh aircraft doing no damage? Yet a second one tore the cockpit apart?

One was frozen...


Ya know it could depend where you hit it, even teh largest turkey only has 1" of meat generally...

 

[DerMeister]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

Both were 100% thawed, and it is processed, which I think is just ground up turkey meat shapped into a big hunk of meat which is solid.

 

[smokshwn]

Re: Would someone explain what I just observed?

Processed meat is an incredibly poor representation of live tissue. Not seeing the examples used I would guess they were infinitely less dense than live tissue thus there was not enough resistance to expand the remington and the FMJ's displacement cause the example to blow apart.