Thread: has anyone tried loading 8x57 mauser as a subsonic?

Originally Posted by hairyone

I have an old sporterized 8mm mauser , that doesn't get used, thinking about getting it threaded and put a supressor on it, could they be loaded as a subsonic and still be usefull for close-ish hunting?. i'm thinking fallow and out to 100-ish meters

If you can find some trailboss you can quite easily load down to subsonic. You will burn through a fair bit of that gold dust verifying your drop out to 100ish though. As far as accuracy goes, its a role of the dice, my .223 that usually shoots like a laser, can hardly hit paper at 25 with subsonics. Meanwhile a mediocre .308 seems to put subsonics in small groups almost regardless of projectile within sensible weight range.

As others have pointed to, using subsonics on deer is a different ball game to the supersonics. It's like having a .22 but often you might think you would have been better off with an actual .22