Lehigh Dave has made another new offering... a 40 cal 150 grain HP steel/copper plated bullet designed to work as does the brass bullets. His target group were younger adults, children, women, and even some of us guys. His feeling was the 150 grain steel bullet would greatly reduce recoil and cost per bullet.
This morning - I decided I really need to go shoot... We have a couple of football games this afternoon and thought it would be a good get away before the games....
The purpose of my trip was to test the "Recoil Reduction"... I can really tell you it certainly does reduce recoil. I started shooting at 70, 80, 90, 100, and 110 grains of T7-2f. I got to tell you 70 grains provided a recoil which i would compare to a 22 mag/17 HMR. By the time I got to 110 grains it still remaned very mild.... My only problem as I kept thinking in my mind "if it is this soft here - how soft is it at 100" I really do not know why I was thinking 100 because i was shooting 75 and all along I was thinking this could be a very effective bullet at 50 yards and probably to 75 yards for most people, after all a 50 cal round ball is a 177 grains...
My conclusion --- Recoil Reduction - It certainly did....
Here is the target from this morning outing. I was not really going to shoot for accuracy because of the wind conditions this morning. It was blowing hard here in Moscow so I knew it would be worse at the farm. I set up the chrono about 10' off the muzzle and the target 75 yards down range. My portable shooting bench was protected from the wind for the most part as grain silo blocked the wind... but 30 yards down range the bullet was exposed to the full force angled wind blowing up the draw.
I always worry tomuch when shooting through a chrono so i always formulate a few nerves in that + I knew the wind was going to complicate things... But got it done...
Again for me the bullet certainly shows it can be shot accurately....
ENERGY? the big question... I broke out my big Sierra reloading manual flipped to the
30-30 Winchester and decided to check the 150 grain flat nose bullet velocities and energy levels...
At 1900 fps (lowest velocity level in the manual) the bullet is developing 1202 fpe at the muzzle... then
2000fps = 1332
2100fps = 1469
2200fps = 1612
2250fps = 1686
2300fps = 1762
So my conclusion is that this 150 ML bullet with very low recoil will match what we use to achieve from a 30-30... I can not even remember how deer, and mule deer to-boot, that I shot with my grandfathers old 30-30 when I was a kid.
The final question.... which for me remains un-answered at this point... will the bullet perform as designed? Dave has indicated that he may need to score the petals... Guess time will tell.
Wish I could find some peepers to shoot...
Testing the New Lehigh...
