.38 Wadcutters for self defense

[okietool]

[mtnboomer]

Yes. Everybody likes good penetration!

[turkeyrun]

and a nice, clean, round hole



A buddy load some .357 Maximum with hollow base wadcutters. Some, he put the bullet in nose down. Made a wicked looking HP. On targets, they were good to 25 yards. At 50, they lost velocity drastically and shot a 15" pattern. Took them out and shot a goat, about 90# Billy. High it dead center of ribs, nice clean hole. Opposite side had a softball size hole.

[Mr.Glock]

Hell yea! Sure they will dead you too!

[The Devil]

Yes why dont I put wheels on my mother and call her a bicycle?

because that would be retarded like using wad cutters for self defense.

[turkeyrun]

Yep, nobody ever got dead from being hit with a soft lead bullet.

You should call your Mom a bicycle, she been rode more than Spread Eagle.

[The Devil]

yea especially by me. I learned moves only a mother could teach. Oedipus was a genius.

[mtnboomer]

"yea especially by me."

Once again, that explains a lot. Your family tree likely has no limbs.

[TOOF]

I don’t want to get shot by one.

[Mr.Glock]

Me either!

[Eyecyou]

Ive been loading 38 wadcutters for a while now and have carried em in my 637 airweight. Seen a while back barnes makes a JACKETED hollow base wad cutter that could definitely with stand some hotter power behind it

[TOOF]

I have a back porch 38 wc recipe I load that is less recoil than a 22lr. Don’t recall off the top of my head but something like 1.6-7 gr unique. I’d have to go look for sure so don’t quote me on it. But anyway within it’s paltry range it is rat killing accurate.

[turkeyrun]

That is VERY light.

A typical target load is 4.6-5.0 gr of Unique.

I have loaded down to 3.5, but never have loaded less.

[TOOF]

Like I said I wasn’t sure. But I think they were in the 550 fps range. Maybe 2.5 or 3.5, I don’t recall and don’t feel like going to look and I don’t want to get shot by one either.

[turkeyrun]

Yep

A Red Ryder shoots @ 350-375 fps and a BB is is ~17grs.
I don't want to shot that either. Though, we had several BB gun wars.

[Lurker66]

Soft lead projectiles has killed more things worldwide than Noah’s Flood.

[mtnboomer]

Years back it was a fad to load hollow-base wadcutters backwards in a case. The idea was that they would become hollow points with a huge cavity and make good defense loads.

They called them "flying ashtrays" because the large mouth reminded everyone of an ashtray (remember: this was the '60s and '70s so smoking was still socially acceptable).

The fad died off when ballistic gelatin gained common use as they saw that the "wings" on the hollow bases would either break off, or fold back flat, upon impact basically making them a full wadcutter.