LKNCHOPPERS

What do you guys think about the Thompson/Center Superglide Shock Wave Sabot Bullets in 250 grain? How do they perform for consistant groups and damage done to the animal? I want a good blood trail.

cayugad

A lot of deer are killed with shockwaves. I personally have never shot one with a shockwave. If they did not work they would not be such big sellers. Normally they are very accurate as well.

As for how they work, is you have a tight bore then the super glide might be a very good choice. If the bore is larger then the others, then this might not be the best for you. For instance, I have a T/C Black Diamond XR and it does great with the standard Shockwaves. It shot real good with the superglide as well, but for the extra cost, the standard was a better choice.

Your rifle will be the deciding factor. If you place that right, it will take animals. If it blows through, then a blood trail should not be a problem, but then even with an exit hole, the blood trails can be bad.

gleason.chapman

A lotta folks love them and have excellent results with them, the 300g are better holding together a bit better on close shots. They are accurate as heck in my Savage, best bullet I have ever shot in my life for accuracy, I did NOT use them last year for hunting because of two know problems with them that I am aware of:
1) deer sometimes run 150 yards after being shot with a SW
2) sometimes a SW does not expand, shooting thru the animal with the same size hole in and out.
I hunt a couple of places that at 17acres and 26a next to horse pastures and things like that, seeing a guy trailing a deer thru your horse pasture with a ML in his hands will get me in jail or a tresspass violation, so I need boom flops.

Many guys who shoot them take a high shoulder shot and they get boom flops becasue the SW will open up on the hard bone hit, go into the top of the lungs and then go out the other side, sometimes shooting thru both shoulders (so the bullet is tough). So picture that bullet hitting behind the shoulder thru the lungs and out the ribs in front of the legs. Dead deer, no doubt, but it will run 100 or 150 yards. Would I hunt with then now, yes, absolutely, why? Because I have read enough about them and know how to use them. So take high shoulder shots, if possible, use the 300g bullet. Look at the ballistics gel reports for 250g and 300g here:

http://tinyurl.com/6nz6yu


http://dougva.proboards34.com/index.cgi?board=Savage&action=display&thre ad=5302


Best Wishes,
Chap Gleason

lemoyne

Well I use and like the SW but they are funny about velocity, if you are shooting a Savage with smokless you can shoot them so hard they sometimes fail to open, if you use light loads that can also cause problems. I get good accuracy with the original sabot [the black one] but have not been able to get that super glide to group. Lee

spaniel

I've taken probably close to 50 deer with Shockwaves...all the 200 grain 40cal version. I can't say I've ever had one run more than 70-80 yards and 8 of the last 9 went nowhere but straight down (1 exception went about 50 yds). Most were in the shoulder blade but some were double lung or lung/heart.

The last one I had run more than 100 yards took a 300gr soft lead drive-a-truck-into-it Keith Nose hollowpoint through both lungs and still covered 180 yds.

My buddy did have one he double-lunged with a 250 SW that went a ways and was coughing for awhile before it went down.

My point is that my experience has been that the distance run is somewhat unrelated to the bullet used, at least to a much lower extent than the marketing folks would like us to believe. For example I have seen deer with half their heart gone either drop on the spot or run nearly 200 yds. If you need them to drop on the spot, I think it is more important to place the most accurate bullet in your gun through both shoulders near the joint rather than worry about expansion -- most bullets on the market now expand well enough. If you go low in the lungs and hit nothing but hide and air (not much to a lung) nothing is going to expand that well.

Chasam60

Spaniel-This is pretty much matches my results with 250/SST. If you do not hit bone,they just punch through. My deer last year was double lung shot,and ran 150 yds. The exit hole was double fist size after taking our 5 ribs. Recovered bullet showed expansion to .750" with good weight retention. I am going back to 260 Nosler partitions.

sabotloader

LKNCHOPPERS

I am just rattling here so, take what you want...

If you want a really reliable bullet and you are willing to pay the price of the shockwaves... I would like to suggest a .451/260 grain Nosler partition for deer and a .458/300 grain Nosler partition for elk class animals.

I shoot both of these bullets with a 110 grains of T7-2f from several different rifles. They are absolute animal stoppers wheater you hit bone or just meat. They expand to 3/4" and drive most often completely through the animal. The hydrostatic damage to tissue they cause on the way through the body organs is awesome.

They certainly are not a pretty pointy bullet with a great BC, but they fly great and are very accurate. I shoot them to 175/180 yards without a problem or even thinking about it - point and shoot... 200 yards will work and they have the energy @ 200 to do the job but minor sighting adjustments must be made.

I would agree with most and I a one that always looks at bullet BC - but I am finding that a ML velocities the performance is more important than BC.

Another bullet I would suggest is the Speer Gold Dot... it is a bonded bullet and will stay together... the .452/300 grain Gold Dot has a BC of 232 and is also very accurate. Really the Gold Dot is a poor man's Nosler. Lot less expensive to shoot.

I do not think you have mentioned what rifle you might be using - but there are sabots out there that will allow you to laod these bullets without a hammer...

Hope you find something that works for you... SW and SST's are not on my list - not even the long list.

falcon

I have been using SST/Shockwave bullets for a couple of years on hogs and deer. Killed several deer and about 15 hogs with that bullet. My shots are pickedcarefullyand the vast majority of animals bang flopped; none got away. My Encore does not like the Super Glide sabots, accuracy stinks. I use the SST in the black sabot or the red 4 petal sabot: They load very hard but are also very accurate.

The 250 grain SST works for me and I'm not going to change.

spaniel

The bullet took out 5 ribs, punched a huge hole, and expanded more than 50% over its original diameter. That is hardly what I would call just punching through. What more would you expect the bullet to have done in terms of damage given the location it hit? I think the Nosler is a fine bullet and I'm exploring them for one of my guns, but I don't see how it would have changed the outcome.

This is why I base my decision on bullets off a very large number of deer, not just what happened with one or two. How far a deer runs can depend on a lot of things, and I have seen very similar hits result in dramatically different distances traveled. Did the deer know it was being hunted? Was it already charged up and ready to go or standing quietly with no idea what just hit it? This can make a big difference.

Let's take two deer I shot in the same year with the same arrow (literally). The first was a small to medium spike that was walking calmly along, no idea I was there. I shot him through both lungs. He ran 30 feet forward, stood and looked around with no clue what had happened, then turned and began walking back the way he had come from. He made it about 20 yards and flopped over. Two days later I got winded by a doe, who circled me for half an hour stomping and snorting before presenting a shot in the exact spot as that buck and taking the arrow pretty much in the same spot. She was off like a shot, covering nearly 200 yards before piling up. Same angle, same hit, same arrow. The deer's alertedness to the situation made all the difference.

From my view, deer are pretty soft animals. Pretty much the only way to screw it up is to have a bullet so hard it never expands, and I have yet to find a ML bullet that tough. Or one that blows up, which can be done if you drive a PB or light pistol bullet too hard at close range.

If you want them to drop, sacrifice some meat and hit them in the shoulder so their front legs drop out from under them. A deer can stay up a long time but once they hit the ground they never seem to get up as well, and with broken shoulders they won't move as fast.

LKNCHOPPERS

Thanks for the response guys. Keep em coming.