Thread: FMJ on animals

Anyone got much experience with FMJ on animals?

As a general idea it's bad-very very bad, but sometimes certain ammo is ok on some sizes of animals.
What ammo do you have and what do you want to hunt?

My old man used ex army 303 ammo for donkeys years on Deer, Pigs and Goats........ worked ok for him.

When I was an apprentice I made a drill jig for him so he could drill out the tips of the projectiles and turn it into hollow points.

Cheers
Pete

The Mk VII .303 ammo would tumble ferociously, so I have read. Pretty base heavy with a cardboard or alloy tip.

Its very iffy particularly if you are planning to shoot goats with 223 FMJ. The normal thing to do I this situation is to pull all the projectiles out and replace them with cheap soft points keeping the same powder charge.

head shots you'll be right

Originally Posted by Toby

head shots you'll be right

Your on to it Toby

Cheers
Pete

Unless you miss the fairly small brain and shoot it's jaw off, then it's bad, very bad.

um might depend on the velocity/range for the 55gr in an ar15? From what I read at high velocity the 55gr is meant to tumble on impact and split at the canular causing a bad wound just like a softpoint? so same effect as a soft point, but at longer ranges that doesnt happen, it just goes straight through.

That's how M193 performs inside like 100m, generally. If I had to I would use FMJ. Not really any point if you have any other option.

When I was a bit younger & had bugger all money ,the local gun smith (ex military trained) showed me how to file off the tip of FMJ ammo to perform as well as soft point sporting ammo.
The trick is to file the point down until the lead core shows ,you can drill a small hole in as well but don't really need to .
We use to get some wicked exit holes with it ,goats mainly & there was a lot of them around here . Cheap ammo to go out & bomb up a big mob & a lot of fun .

Nathan fosters website is a mine of info, he reckons that the norinco 55gr .223 would perform as well as hunting ammo something to do with the bullet design makes it work as Eugene Stoner intended

Stoner didn’t intend anything with .223. The cartridge was selected for the AR15 after research done at Aberdeen proving ground. Stoner/Sullivan's original intended cartridge was 7.62x51.

Have used 62gr SS109 on bunnies before, despite going through like a knife through butter (Still made them dead though) it often broke their legs even though the wound didn't connect with any bones.

I've used fmj through 303,223,7.62x39 on animals up to & including goats but wouldn't recommend it as a general hunting projectile, They killed ok with good placement but would prefer the sp or hollows. I also hollow pointed fmjs to make it cheaper & perform better & they worked well generally. I've never shot deer/pigs with them however.