You're doing good.. I'll give some of my experience shooting an AR platform. Let's just talk form, assuming that you're loads are accurate. I found that you can't 'soft shoulder' an AR. Some of this depends if you're shooting from a bipod or bags and what your rear support is. I shoot a bipod for testing and a rear bag I can squeeze. Trigger pull is a factor, always concentrate on a perfectly straight back pull, and more importantly, follow-through. What I mean is don't reset the trigger right away, follow through with your shot for consistency every time.

Grip is very important with shouldering. Make sure you are square on your shoulder leaning slightly in to the gun applying consistent pressure to 'load' the bipod or bag. Make sure your web of your hand is straight, a push pull between the trigger and your grip is crucial. If you repeat everything the same every time, those fliers will shrink or disappear.

This is 565 yards with my 18" Wilson Combat 6.5 Creedmoor on plates that are 12", 10", 8" and 6".

If you factor in accuracy, terminal performance and AVAILABILITY I've come to the conclusion these are the best bullet choices for the baby HAM'R and they will cover everything from coyotes to Elk, self-defense and range use.

110gr Hornady V-MAX
110gr Lehigh CC
125gr Speer TNT
130gr Speer HHC
135gr Hornady FTX
135gr Sierra HP-V
150gr Speer Gold Dot (.300 Blackout version)

With the exception of the 110gr Lehigh CC and the 130gr Speer HHC all are very popular bullets for various other good selling calibers, which explains the availability.

I really like the 150gr Hornady SST (#30303) for larger game, but since it's designed for the near extinct .300 Savage it's not available a lot of the time, like now. So for bigger game like Elk the 150gr Speer Gold Dot is a good choice.

I know it’s referenced somewhere on this thread but I can’t find it. I’m curios if anyone uses the 130 gr MK319 SOST bullet on game.

Is the 130gr HHC a Speer #2007?

It's a #2007 with a round nose and the cannelure relocated for the HAM'R, otherwise the same. The #2007 works just fine in the HAM'R, you just can't crimp into the cannelure.

Is the 130gr HHC a Speer #2007?

Question for all you that have been using the Speer 125 gr tnt. I’ve seen a few of you using it on hogs, anybody tried it on whitetails?

Took two doe with the 125 TNT out of my 11.3" last year. Worked beautifully.

What kind of distance? I have the 16” I’m sure it could only be better than the 11.3” but I just haven’t had much success with the “varmit” style hunting bullets, albeit in another caliber.

Both were at 25 yards. I would expect similar performance at 100 yards with your 16". Estimated impact at 25 yards with my 11.3" was 2225~ fps.

Ok, based off running the numbers in my ballistics calculator, you’re right. I’m probably over analyzing but since they’ve clear cut our lease, shooting distance has expanded to 200+ but I’m personally not comfortable taking a shot further than that, I’m just trying to find some satisfaction that if I had to shoot that far, this bullet will kill effectively. It’ll be roughly ~1970 fps, ~1070 ft lbs @ 200 yds. Numbers wise it looks good enough but with the way that bullet is constructed, I’m a little hesitant.

The 125gr TNT is a accurate, economical, and performs well in 300HAM'R. DJ and others have proven that it is effective on game. There are other bullets that perform as well or better, such as VMax, Hot Core, or Controlled Chaos. Unless you are shooting high volume, the economical consideration (cost per bullet) may not be as important to you. My view is spending +$1 just for the bullet is no big deal if it will be used to harvest a deer. Think of the amount of time and expense that you lay out just getting to hunt. I don't have buyer's remorse when spending money on quality hunting bullets. I may use 20 rounds doing load development, which still leave a lot of bullets left to harvest pigs and deer. If you want an economic bullet that you can use to shoot deer, racoons, rocks and paper then maybe consider the VMax.

Most Important: Select a bullet that you are confident with its performance. Having confidence in your equipment eliminates a major distraction when its time for you to focus on taking a shot.

I agree with that. I’m willing to do the same obviously price is a factor but getting a quality bullet is too. I guess I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around what is basically a designed varmit bullet being used on some of the toughest game in the country and the fact they seem to be working very well is hard to understand. I’m definitely open to either the vmax or tnts but it’s that extended distance >150yds will they act more like a varmit bullet?

I think you're looking at the varmint bullet terminal performance backwards. While they are impressive at almost any velocity the "explosive expansion" they are famous for is usually found at the upper end of the velocity range. Hornady for example advertises their bullets will do the explosive thing at velocities as low as 1600fps....below that they act more like a normal bullet. My best advice is to ask the manufacturer and do some testing. I suspect the reason the Vmax is so good is that it's designed for 30/06 velocities so the jacket is thick enough that at Ham'r velocities it expands more like a normal bullet.

Also it's been my experience that pigs aren't really all that tough to kill. I've taken a few with 55gr Nosler ballistic tips in a .223 and a few with #4 shot in a 12 gauge because that's what I was carrying at the time.

Looking for some info on the 125sst. I know that the tip has to be removed, which i am fine with. I am curious about general accuracy, expected velocity (16" barrel), load data (CFEBLK & cci 450 primers), and terminal performance on whitetail/medium pigs (can I expect good expansion and a pass through on a broadside shot). Also, will the cannilure be hidden or exposed? I know Bill posted limited info here but it took me a few days to read this forum the first time and certainly others have tried this bullet since then. Any experience with this bullet is appreciated.

I just didn’t have great experience with the 55gr vmaxs on whitetails. Even at 40 yds they failed to pass thru with neck shots. That’s really why I’m skeptical but I appreciate the info. I’m sure it would be fine but once you’ve had a bad experience with a particular type bullet I’m not exactly in a hurry to try it again.

I can understand your reservation. It's almost counterintuitive to use a "varmint" style bullet for big game. There's a reason you don't see heavy for caliber "varmint" bullets. In order to expand rapidly on small game they rely heavily on velocity to increase target resistance that aids in that rapid expansion. There are stories of varmint bullets blowing up, sometimes right as they exit the muzzle, sometimes when they hit a hard bone, perhaps due to thin jackets, excessive velocity, too fast of a twist rate, or some combination of those factors. The great thing about the .300 Ham'r is actually how it's lower velocity, compared to say .308 Winchester, actually makes those lighter .30 caliber "varmint" bullets act more like a good hunting bullet. If you watch enough ballistic testing you'll find that certain bullets will give better penetration and expansion and will shed less weight at lower impact velocities. If you can, when you go to work on a load for the 125 TNT's take some cheap one gallon water jugs and see what kind of performance you can achieve at the range you intend to shoot at.

Yes! It is counterintuitive, I guess I hadn’t realized the lower velocities make that big an impact on its performance. I know that each bullet is designed to react a certain way, within a certain velocity range, based off of its intended purpose. It’s really a game of variables and our job as hunters/shooters is too match those sets of variables with whatever game or use we are pursuing. I like the jug idea, I needed more reason to go out and practice some more lol. But any info is helpful, that’s why I’m on here, real world results is what I’m after and I know several of you on here do a whole lot of shooting stuff, much more than life allows me.

varmint bullet performance on Hogs from a HAM'R

https://texashuntingforum.com/forum...-projectiles-for-hogs-yes-no#Post8662831

I have to recover all animals possible on a couple of properties I hunt.

I waded slowly into the varmint projectiles in HAM'R because of that.

In the past couple years I've killed hundreds of hogs coyotes etc with varmint designed projectiles spit from the ham'r. I've lost a few but I can't pick out a single animal was lost due to the fault of using varmint designed bullets.

To go with the images from the large hogs in the link above, this is a mixed mag of 110gr Lehigh Controlled Chaos and 110gr Hornady vmax on some shoats.

Shooting water jugs or melons or potatoes or pretty much anything like that while a fun pastime isn't really all that relevant as to how a bullet will work in a hunting situation. For example almost any caliber more powerful than a 22 will make a water jug explode although there is a noticeable difference between say a 223 and a 300 Win Mag. A friend of mine swears by the way he tests hunting bullets. He places a piece of quarter inch plywood in front of a block of ballistic gel and if possible covers the plywood with the hide of whatever he is hunting. The gel isn't all that expensive in the overall scheme of things since it gives you a lot of feedback about penetration, expansion, weight retention, etc. and can be reused. Plus it's a WHOLE lot less messy than trying to recover a bullet from a pig!

While it's no where near a perfect representation of an animal's body, nor is it intended to be, a mature animal is about 70%~ water. So it's not completely irrelevant. Also it's more about bullet recovery as you should line up several water jugs to capture the bullet to find out whether or not the bullet being tested will hold together or fragment as varmint bullets tend to do. Another way to do it would be to build a "meat target" with some sort of bullet stop to capture the bullet for inspection. Where I go shooting there's quite a bit of shale and that has been great for bullet recovery as they don't penetrate very deeply and often end up just laying on the ground in a pile of shale fragments. There are lots of ways to get a feel for bullet performance before sending one into an animal.

One of the nice things about shooting is deer is they are all the same save but size and angle of shot. But hogs are different. If you shoot a 200 lb sow then it's a lot like taking a big deer only with a much smaller "sweet spot". But I have been on hunts where a 200lb and 300 lb boar were taken. Both of them had gristle shields on them. That is 1.5 to 2" of natural armor plate that makes life a lot tougher on the bullet. Going thru a few inches of skin and muscle is a lot harder if it has to go through the gristle plate first.

This means that a bullet that is perfect for one hog may vastly over or under penetrate on another hog. All the more reason to get your shooting skill up to snuff and give the hog a CNS shot. I don't have any great wisdom to offer about what bullet is best. Mostly I go by what Bill Wilson recommends. My tendency is to over emphasise penetration and that has cost me.

This is how I do most of my bullet testing here at the ranch, however we also do gel testing up at the ammo company in AR. I've found that bullets recovered from water perform very similar to the way they do in gel and it's sure a LOT easier, especially since being on a cattle ranch we have hundreds of the red mineral tubs for the water. To duplicate the Sig Ammo protocol we often put 4 layers of denim in front.

Did some "bullet testing" with the HAMR and 125 TNT's the other night. Performance was completely satisfactory. It worked really well, was putting the pigs down hard. There were more than in the pics down out in the cotton but we didn't take time to round them all up at the second spot. Pigs were rooting up nutgrass and eating cotton bolls.


Video:
https://rumble.com/v1hu9wd-8-26-22-pigs-with-agm-adder.html

OK, I've been staying out of all this varmint bullet for larger game discussion, but I've got to put my $ .02 worth in....

#1 Cleanly killing any game animal, but ESPECIALLY larger hogs it's all about shot placement. You take out the spine or brain and the animal is DRT period!!! Place the shot on the shoulder of a broadside animal with a caliber/bullet that will penetrate into the vitals and you will kill the animal, you will probably just have to go find it. I try to take my plan A/B shot (hog quartering to me and shoot into the center of the neck) whenever possible on hogs, especially larger ones. This shot takes out the spine most of the time (especially if a low weight retention bullet is used) and if I miss the spine the bullet goes into the lungs.

#2 Is bullet selection for the desired outcome assuming the caliber used is even remotely adequate for the game. For shots in the neck of a hog pretty much any bullet suitable for the HAM'R (including varmint bullets) will reliably kill hogs no matter how big they are. However, if you want to be able to shoot a big boar on the shoulder and into the lungs you will need a bullet that will reliably penetrate through the shield and deep into the body cavity.

#3 Bottom line, if you shoot a hog in the neck where you should, varmint bullets work just fine!