.22 Mag Penetration & Expansion Test w/ Pics.

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HunterB4

New member
I know that we are only dealing with mag rounds here, but I've been curious as to what they can do, so I did a little testing this past weekend. I fired four different rounds (listed below) from my bolt action Marlin 25MN at 35yds. Each round was fired into six 1/2" sections of compressed board.

The Rounds:

Federal 50gr JHP
Winchester Supreme 34gr JHP
Winchester SuperX 40gr JHP
Remington 33gr AccuTip

Each round penetrated into but not through the 5th board (approx. 2 1/4") except the for the 40gr Winchester SuperX round which stopped in the 4th. The only round that didn't have hardly any expansion is the Federal 50gr. I believe that the bullet weight is just too much for the velocity (approx 1550 fps) of this round to get the proper expansion from it. The Remington round expanded the most with the Win. SuperX 40gr at a close second. Anyway here are the pics and sorry for the lack of quality as my camera is a little outdated. If you would like other pics I'll see if I can't get a better camera. Enjoy.


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I can't see the pictures. I picked up a box of the Win Supreme 34gr yesterday. Hoping they'll do a good job.
 
JCnAR, I live at the end of a dead in road and people abandon animals all the time. I have horses, dog, and a few cats. I can only feed so many mouths.

I use my 22 mag to dispatch unwanted animals before my wife sees them. I have tried certain types of ammo in my Mauser 210 in 22 Mag. The 34g Winchester Supreme simply is terrible. It is however very accurate in my rifle allowing me to shoot up the one box head shooting animals. You can not count on a lung shot with this bullet at all.

I shot numerous house cats in the body and none of them died on the spot with the 34g Supreme...you can forget a 45 lb dog!

The 40g Winchester HP performes so well that I bought 2 cases of the ammo! The 40g Win HP is a true jacketed hp which many may not be aware of. IN my Marlin 25M, the Win 40g HP shoot about 1 1/4" at 100 yds on a calm day, also.

Good luck!
 
Well I wish I could see the pics. I bought the federal 50gr JHP for coyote hunting, but have yet to get one with this bullet. So with your test do you think I should try something else?
 
ackleyman, i shoot the winchester supreme hp's in my marlin almost exclusively(it's the only ammo the [beeep] thing really likes) if i have any complaints about them it's that they expand TOO violently. when it comes to squirrels, you gotta head shoot them or you literally have 2 halves when you're done. even with a headshot, all thats left are tendons and bone fragments. i know they are good medicine for coon.. put one behind the shoulder and the insides turn to jelly.. no exit either. maybe we're not thinkin of the same ammo?
 
I've never ran any kind of performance tests on the 22 mag. I have through trial and error found the Win 40 gr JHP to be the best all around round in my rifles. I have 2 mags, one Taurus 72 and a Ruger 10-22 mag with a Green Mountain barrel and VQ stock.
 
NofiveO, The ammo that you are talking about is the ammo that I was talking about, also. The only difference is that I am speaking of how lousy the Supreme kills on animals of a house cat size and larger. I believe that it is common sense when you look at the bullet that it is going to expand on impact, which is not a good thing on larger animals.

A feral cat is a good test of a bullet, and they are not that easy to kill. The Supreme allows them to run off most of the time and the Win 40g HP kills!

Larger dogs are even more of a test on a good bullet. I hate it when I have to put all those strays out of their mysery, makes you wish that you could dump the guy out into the dessert that dumped the dogs and let him experience how it feels to starve to death.
 
Not to be a smart alek but just what will this test prove? Unless your always going to be shooting at 1/2" compressed wood. For a true "test" you need a materiel that is equivalent to what you will be hitting in real life. I find clay, ductseal, or even wet newsprint to me a better expansion media. And places like Cabellas offer a ballistic geliten that is a true representaion of animal tissue less bone and hide.
 
I think that you can tell alot. Obvisouly the characteristics of the bullet expansion will be different than in flesh or what not. But as long as you test on the same material you should be able to get a "genereal" idea of how the bullet will react. I'll bet that if I would've done the same test with what you listed above the bullet may have expanded differently but would've reacted the same and they all would've reacted on the same level since the material they were fired into is the same.
 
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ackleyman, i shoot the winchester supreme hp's in my marlin almost exclusively(it's the only ammo the [beeep] thing really likes) if i have any complaints about them it's that they expand TOO violently. when it comes to squirrels, you gotta head shoot them or you literally have 2 halves when you're done. even with a headshot, all thats left are tendons and bone fragments. i know they are good medicine for coon.. put one behind the shoulder and the insides turn to jelly.. no exit either. maybe we're not thinkin of the same ammo?



I have had real good luck with the Winchester Supreme's too . I only use the 22 mag for squirrels and close range groundhogs though . The way they expanded for me , I didn't want to take a chance on any larger animals . They do tend to blow up squirrels pretty bad with body shots .
 
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I agree with you HunterB4. Good Test.

Do you guys have many misfires with the winchester 40 grains Super X's?



I've shot a few boxes of the SuperX rounds and have never had a misfire. If you've had misfires I would get a different box of rounds and try that. As with anything else it could be a quality issue with a few batches from the factory.
 
I can back up Ackleyman on the 34gr Win Supremes. They're terrible bullets, although superbly accurate. I guess I shouldn't say they're terrible bullets... they're very good target bullets with terrible terminal performance, in my experience as well.

I can remember only 1 feral cat that I've shot with them that dropped DRT... all the rest ran off. And I've shot dozens of them. Same thing with skunks. I've been using these things for too long and seen it happen too many times with the "supremes". Supreme disappointment and aggravation is more like it. At first I thought it was me missing the shot.. but every time, the rifle was dead on when I'd test fire it afterward on paper. The only reason I've been using them for so long is I've got a ton of them (my LGS made me a really good deal on a case of them when I bought my 25MN... maybe he knew something I didn't
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif)

Ackleyman thinks they might blow up on the surface, but I think they drill right through with no expansion at all, just like a FMJ. Look at the pics above. The 34gr Supreme is hardly mushroomed in the first pic, even after hitting the hard compressed board. A lightly constructed, frangible bullet like the Supreme should be more deformed and fragmented than that, in my opinion. From those pics, you can see that these bullets are fairly tough. I never have been able to tell for sure, everything I ever shot with them ran away to die somewhere else (cats) and the skunks kept on going too, although not as far and at their own much more leisurely pace... but I'm not going to go comb through a freshly killed/sprayed skunk to check on what that bullet did or didn't do /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif. But the last skunk I shot with the Supremes took 5 shots to finally stop it's forward progress. 22LR usually does it with 1 shot.

As far as blowing up squirrels, I think that's more a product of impact velocity than bullet expansion. Shoot squirrels with a 22WMR FMJ and I'll bet you'll get the same results. I've never used the WMR on squirrels, as my 10-22 is my favorite squirrel rifle. But I know that head shots with Remington Subsonics (hollowpoints) and CCI Standard (solid lead) both usually make their eyes bug out. I would think that a bullet of the same size at nearly double the velocity would have a markedly greater effect on such a small animal as a squirrel.

I went out yesterday and picked up some Winchester 40gr JHP's, some Remington 33gr Accutip's (V-Max's?) and some CCI and Remington 40gr JSP's. The JSP's look identical, except for the headstamp, I wonder if CCI is making them for Remington? Anyway, I'm hoping my 22WMR will have more killing power than my 22LR, as it should.

I hope you guys that like the Supremes continue to have good luck with them... As for me, I don't have any use at all for them. Plinkers now... I've got about 200 rounds of them left and I'm done with them. Now hopefully I'll reach first for my 22WMR instead of the 22LR.
 
From looking at the rounds in person, I can tell you that the Win. SuperX rounds are the ones that I will start using. The expansion and uniform of the expansion was the best all around. Not to mention they are the cheapest of them all too.

I would like to try the CCI rounds to see what they look like compared to the others. From reading on here the CCI and Win. SuperX rounds are the most praised.
 
Rileylake, I really am just guessing at what happens when this bullet hits, all I know is that 90% of the cats that I shoot with the bullet run like they have had scalding hot water dumped on them.

The Supremes are really accurate in my rifle, and they blow the heck out of crows at 50 yards which led me to believe that they were doing a surface expansion...heck, I don't really know.
 


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