GS Custom Bullet
Cal: 0.224"
Weight: 40 grs.
Velocity: ~3600 fps (.223 Remington - 27 gr. Benchmark)

This bullet was fired into a swimming pool and the bullet core and fragments were recovered for evaluation.

Weights:
Starting bullet = 40.2 gr.
Bullet Core = 31.5 gr.
Bullet Core + Recovered Fragments = 38.0 gr.

Weight retention of bullet core was 78.4%.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this bullet's performance.



Side note: Gerard Schultz of GS Custom bullets reports that his daughters use this bullet to kill smaller plains game using a wildcat chambering of 22x64mm. It reportedly shoots these 40 gr. pills at 4,700 fps.
http://www.gsgroup.co.za/22x64.html

Did the bullet kill the pool? Did it require a follow up shot?

To be fair it is tricky to make any accurate statements without knowing what type of pool it was. African pools tend to be much tougher and their bones tend to be more robust and so bullet failure is more common with them while the European swimming pool is much easier to kill. The other point is that you are a bit undergunned with a 223 for a swimming pool. Some of them weigh many tons and so require, at least, a 416.

Of more recent years swimming pools have become rather less common in terms of hunting but as eddieharren says you have to assess bullet performance in terms of its effect on the swimming pool. I guess the bullet didn't exit? That in itself as maybe not a good thing but exits are uncommon on swimming pools. How fast did it die? Did it charge you afer being hit? There are just so many variables.

I would think the angle of entry and placement of the shot would have some bearing on this also. Did you shoot it in the deep end, where the bottom was sloping or in the shallow end? Was there a possiblility that there was any floating debris on the surface or suspended? Was there a current or was the water perfectly still?

All serious considerations. Too many variables to consider this a definitive test. The next pool might not lose a drop of water.

Great looking spent Bullet for that kind of Impact. Speaks well for the Bullet Design.

I still prefer a LARGER Bullets(Diameter and Weight) for Killing things over 40 pounds - whether it is a popular opinion or not.

Good Hunting and clean 1-shot Kills.

Holy crap! I woke up this morning and the basement carpet was soaked and the pool was empty! Okay, not really.

Thanks for all of your very clever responses. I would expect nothing less from the AR Forum.

I had a feeling I would catch some shit for posting about a .224 cal bullet in a wimpy .223 Rem., but I thought it would be fun anyway.

To be honest, over the years I've grown tired and/or bored of messing with all the other materials used to test bullets: milk jugs with water, wet newspaper, wet phone books, banks of sand, cumbersome expensive ballistics gelatin, etc. A while back, I was getting ready to try those new tubes of reusable ballistics goo, but again I thought it was too expensive for my needs and not worth the hassle of melting goo in a crock pot.

Albeit not a perfect objective relationship, most of us will still agree that bullet construction and retained weight is indicative of penetration and terminal performance. My little pool experiments are simply to subjectively test the construction and retained weight using as few variables as possible. There's not much one can screw up shooting into the deep end of a pool at a given angle. (Please don't anyone start lecturing me about shooting into water.)

You might remember a while back when I shot a 150 gr. Winchester Ballistic Silver in 300 WSM into the pool as well. (not my favorite bullet at all, but I bought the ammo for the brass back when the 300 WSM first came out).





After I saw that the results were similar to other's experiments using ballistic tips fired into gelatin, I figured this was good enough for me. Obviously, the penetration is more difficult to measure, but even that's not too hard to do.

Here's how I used a Penetration Thingamajig: Using a metal pole, I submerged an evenly spaced stack of 12" embroidery hoops (cheap on Ebay) covered with plastic wrap (Saran wrap) just below the surface. Based upon the level of punctured plastic film, I was able to roughly determine the penetration. I figured the force required to puncture the film was negligible, much like the plastic on the milk jug experiments we read about. It takes me about 5 to 10 minutes to re-stretch the plastic and reposition the stacked hoops, but even with that little bit of effort, I've only bothered with it a few times.



Anyway, back to the subject at hand... the 40 gr. .224 cal. GS Custom. Since GS reports using the bullet up to 1,100 fps FASTER than I was getting in my 223 Rem, I thought that the pedals of the bullet might have stayed intact at 3,600 fps. That is really my only significant observation.

I was just wondering what was on your mind...