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Zee
Senior MemberPosts: 27,456 Senior Member
9mm and .357 Sig - Terminal Performance Testing

Buddy called me last weekend and said he had a couple trapped pigs he wanted butchered. Asked if I could help. Hell yeah!! Told him I had some new 9mm ammo I needed to test.
We agreed we would do it this weekend and I would test my 9mm while he and another guy wanted to test their .357 Sig ammo.
I’ll just lay out the data, one pig at a time and then I’ll give my opinion and we can discuss y’all’s.
I’m gonna do this in various installments because I’ve been screwed by this forum software before. Typing and loading lots of info and pics just to have it kick me out and lose everything.
Glock 17 (4.4” Barrel)
9mm
147gr Winchester Ranger Bonded
1,026 fps
5 yrd shot
Sig 226 (4.4” Barrel)
.357 Sig
124gr Speer Gold Dot
1,396 fps
5 yrd shot
9mm
147gr Winchester Ranger Bonded
1,026 fps
5 yrd shot
Sig 226 (4.4” Barrel)
.357 Sig
124gr Speer Gold Dot
1,396 fps
5 yrd shot
"To Hell with efficiency, it's performance we want!" - Elmer Keith
Replies
I shot the pig with the Glock 17 and my boy videoed standing next to me. Can’t post videos on this forum software, so I’ll post screen captures from the video.
My buddy who trapped the pigs is a retired Houston Narcotics Cop. He is a Sig fan and we enjoy poking each other about Glock vs Sig. another mutual friend of ours is a Dentist. Good guy who likes guns and shooting as well. I would say he is in the “learning stage” and still struggles a little with what I would call accurate shooting. Kinda like our thread about accuracy of defensive guns and my bringing up training/shooter expectations.
First shot, he flinched and creased the brisket of the pig. Breaking a rib at the juncture with the brisket. Not entering the chest cavity. Just creating a painful flesh wound. Well, the pig was wired now and a bit pissed off. We told the Dentist to shake it off and focus on making a good shot. It took awhile to get the pig to stand broadside and still but, we finally succeeded.
9mm / .357 Sig
147gr / 124gr
1,026 fps / 1,396 fps
255 lbs / 120lbs
calm / amped
heart & lung shot / lung shot
8 sec on ground / 29 sec on ground
I am a fan of speed. But, I am also a fan of shot placement. In the end......where you put an effective round is more important than which effective round you use.
There's a school of thought that favors the lighter bullet 9mm loadings. Some evidence here might advocate that. At one time in the distant past the 147gr loads had a poor reputation. I think at least for the Winchester Ranger brand, that rep can be shed.
Great effort and information as usual.
In "man-with-a-gun" context, the 9mm gave 6 seconds to no more mobility and two more seconds to can't shoot at you any more. Pretty much textbook for what the FBI lab is saying a pistol bullet should do, and in keeping with what we've seen with both rifle and handgun kills that were purely cardiovascular / starve the brain of O2 in nature. Cool that you could do it on a pig on the upper end of the "human adversary" size scale.
A pity that we didn't get clean results from the Sig, but knowing you, our day will come. Definitely, we have the opportunity for great science on the whole "usefulness of speed" argument if we can get a similar hit on a similar pig with the same starting diameters we had here. The only fly I see in the comparison ointment in this case is that the Gold Dot is going to be a wider expanding bullet than a bonded Winchester - both being designed to do slightly different things - so the difference in speed may not be the whole of what we're seeing there with regards to the width of the channel.
I know this quest for knowledge is hard on you buddy, but you're just gonna have to kill more pigs.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
Kudos to your boy for standing fast👍
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again! -- Mark Twain
9mm - 124gr +p
.357 Mag - 158gr
.40 S&W - 155/165gr
10mm - 180gr
.45 ACP - 185/200gr
Though I cant argue with the 147gr performance yesterday.
I'd be curious as to whether or not there might be much of an increase in hydro-static damage with a moderate increase in velocity out of a longer barrel, like say, out of your PC9, and if that made a difference in time to incapacitation.
.380 ACP, 9x19mm, .38 Special, .357 Mag (rifle and handgun), .35 Remington, .358 Win, .35 Whelan. . .
All essentially the same diameter with the potential to cover a HUGE range of weights and speeds, AND if one were clever, allow testing of the same basic bullet at those different speeds.
We pretty much already get that the FBI prioritization of 1. placement, 2. penetration, and 3. more diameter if you can get it without sacrificing 1 & 2 works, but if we wanted to start delving into how much extra speed you need for speed to matter, this would probably be the starting point for best science.
The FBI is currently saying that 2000 fps impact speed is the threshold for the concept of energy dump / hydrostatic shock / destruction by displacement to really kick in, but then we have all the old tales of yesteryear about how great the 125 grain .357 Magnum JHP was (Remington was specifically da bomb, IIRC), and that flies somewhat in the face of that notion.
At any rate, .35 caliber seems a good field to study this with, if your propeller beanie gets to spinning.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
"Are YOU thick enough to stop a bullet? Let's find out."
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
Might as well look at what makes the best drain.
Veral Smith has some good real world observations on this in his cast bullet book. I shall review and get back to you.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again! -- Mark Twain
Paraphrasing his key points, keeping in mind that this guy is a big advocate of medium to large meplats on non-expanding LFN and WFN type bullets.
1. He's very big on driving a hole straight through something important and making that hole wide enough for surrounding tissues to bleed significantly into - wound volume, as it were. He likes his sectional density - i.e., ability to penetrate.
2. He's of the opinion that a 1/2" permanent hole gets it done on animals below 150 pounds; that 3/4" to 1 1/4" gives you significantly more leeway to placement.
3. Interestingly, he's of the opinion that much over 1 1/4" inches, as caused by shock displacement can be counterproductive to the hemorrhage effect. He says that if that shock is also taking out major nervous system components in the process, all can be right with the world, but if it's a purely cardio hit - - he cites the opinion of a surgeon who said that the shock effect ruptures CELLS rather than cuts arteries and the effect is that those cells then release a blood clotting agent. He and his mold customers claim some anecdotal experience of this.
4. His pet formula for ability to make the ideal wound tunnel is "displacement velocity" - basically the rate at which the flat front of a bullet shoves tissue sideways out of its path. He gives this as meplat diameter in thousandths of an inch times velocity (presumably in feet per second) divided by four. Kind of reading between his lines seems to indicate that his favorite .44 Mag LFN and WFN bullets with meplats of .30" and .34" respectively are giving displacement velocity ratings of about 100-120 when shot at speeds of 1200-1400fps and making permanent tunnels of about 1" to 1 3/8". Dropping the speed of the .340 meplat to 800/900 fps reduces the hole diameter to 1/2" to 5/8". For comparison, he's saying that you can get a 1 1/4" wound channel out of a .28" diameter meplat .38 at 1700 fps; 1/2" out of the same bullet at 1000 fps.
Nerdy stuff, to be sure, but getting to the meat of the matter.
As relates to personal defense though, we're probably balancing more "controllability of gun" issues, so our speeds will be on the lower end - hence the hollowpoints to make the holes wider. The book goes into that as well - - however, my brain is not up for it this afternoon!
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee