Another Dang 9 wrote:Wimpy chicken loads are for pussys. Make em pay! besides who wants to spend all that time loading when you can be shooting.

I'd like to agree, however I'm the guy at our club who has to acquire the new targets or get the old ones fixed when they get chewed up.

my .02, plus $65 of the club's money for each one replaced,

-Tim

I'm pretty shocked that anyone could leave a chicken standing with a Trail Boss and 110-grain bullet load. My 110-grain Speer round nose 30 carbine bullets (0.179 BC) pushed by 10.0 grains of Trail Boss average 1525 feet per second muzzle velocity from new testing after reading through this thread. This is at about 55 degrees (F) where average was 1533 when about 20 degrees warmer. That 1525 feet per second muzzle velocity results in about 1350 feet per second velocity at 50 meters, so the bullet would still have 445 ft-lbs of energy and 0.66 lbs-sec of momentum. I've never shot at resettable full-size silhouette targets, so maybe a hit right at the bottom of the foot might explain it, but it's hard to grasp how such a lightweight (relative to rams) target that's so close to the shooter wouldn't fall when hit by that. Are others just using a lot less Trail Boss powder and getting less velocity or what?

Jason wrote:I'm pretty shocked that anyone could leave a chicken standing with a Trail Boss and 110-grain bullet load. My 110-grain Speer round nose 30 carbine bullets (0.179 BC) pushed by 10.0 grains of Trail Boss average 1525 feet per second muzzle velocity from new testing after reading through this thread. This is at about 55 degrees (F) where average was 1533 when about 20 degrees warmer. That 1525 feet per second muzzle velocity results in about 1350 feet per second velocity at 50 meters, so the bullet would still have 445 ft-lbs of energy and 0.66 lbs-sec of momentum. I've never shot at resettable full-size silhouette targets, so maybe a hit right at the bottom of the foot might explain it, but it's hard to grasp how such a lightweight (relative to rams) target that's so close to the shooter wouldn't fall when hit by that. Are others just using a lot less Trail Boss powder and getting less velocity or what?

It was low to mid center hits on resetable chicks that too frequently wouldn't fall for me using 110gr M1 projectiles running mid1400s in speed. I did lose a few free standing ones to to edge hits, but I've also done that with 150gr projectiles running 2000 (poor shot selection obviously).

I tested 110gr FMJBTs all the way to 12gr and got consistently better groups at 9gr than anywhere else out of both rifles. I got similar results from other projectiles, so I standardized on the Xtreme 150gr plated which take all the chickens hit decently and 95% of the pigs.... Plus, I only use them for practice, plinking, and small critter dispatching now.

- Tim

The odd thing I have notices since shooting the chickens with my pig/turkey load is there really doesn't seem to be much target damage. The bullet seems to explode on them or maybe it's because the target is so light that there is less dwell on it?