Fort Scott TUI Ammo For Hunting?

[Double Naught Spy]

I did a search of the forum and did not see where anyone had tried this stuff for hunting. This ammo is sold by Fort Scott as hunting ammunition. The bullet is non-expanding, solid copper that relies on tumbling as a destructive force in the body.

20220714_151903 reduced format.jpg

The ad copy on this stuff sounds amazing.

https://fortscottmunitions.com/6-5-grendel-scs-tui-123gr-rifle-ammo-bulk-ammo/

Honestly, I am not sure how anyone can claim their bullet will necessarily cause hydrostatic shock sufficient for shutting down surrounding organs for a clean and ethical kill, but maybe I am wrong.

I am a little confused as to which bullet they are using. They sell three that vary ever so slightly...
.264-123-SCP .264-123-SCP1 .264-123-SCP2

...but the loaded bullet is described as "Solid Copper Spun (SCS(R))"

The bullet's themselves are literally sharp pointed bullets. These would make for a fine scribe for softer metals, for example. My understanding is that they are very well made, very accurate bullets. Cool. Most everything I shoot is more accurate than I am, but I will take whatever help I can get.

After my apparent fiasco of trying to use the tumble concept with Wolf Military Classic 100 gr. ammo, I had said I would not be trying this FS TUI round, but mostly because I did not want to pay for it. It is not inexpensive ammo, even when ammo was much cheaper. However, a buddy of mine that hunts next door to one of the properties I hunt had gave me 60 rounds of the stuff. I wasn't going to turn it down.

I had stopped the Wolf tests early because the 100 gr. tumbling rounds just were not stopping or dropping hogs effectively. I even had some viewers who watched my vids say that I had outright missed hogs because they ran away, apparently looking unscathed. It is hard to get wound details on hogs you can't recover, so maybe I did miss those hogs, but strangely, hogs started dropping again once I changed back to my regular hunting ammo.

It has hard to be completely unbiased on any test if you know what type of bullet you are shooting. I do try to be open minded, however, knowing that some bullets will perform in manners that I don't necessarily like, but other hunters may. Jake believed from his testing that sometimes the ammo worked fine and other times that it may have penciled right through, given the hogs he had run off. He also mentioned difficulty in dropping running hogs. Hopefully, I can get on some hogs, make some kills, and see how the ammo is acting inside the hogs.

Today I will chrono the ammo, verify zero, and get on with my first of what I hope will be several hunts with Fort Scott, Tumble Upon Impact 123 gr. ammo. Hopefully, I can get some hunt results soon.

[myrifle]

DNS. As much as I hate feral hogs.

Dont use that ammo. It's not going to work and some snowflake is going to get your channel shut down because they cryed when the pig didn't die.

[Double Naught Spy]

Thanks for the concern. Part of running the channel is determining what does and does not work for hunting. Some hunting ammo doesn't and some non-hunting ammo does. I do get some critical comments from time to time and some weirdos as a matter of normal operations. The snowflakes that complain to YT will complain about the gore. The snowflakes that complain to me are everyone else who knows more about hunting and are better at it than me. So they won't complain to YT about pigs not dying. They will complain to me that I am a terrible shot. Or, they will be quick to tell me what ammo I should be using instead. The really interesting folks are the ones who tells me that a given bullet won't work because it is not of sufficient weight or that 6.5 Grendel isn't a real hunting caliber.

If the ammo doesn't work and folks ask about it in the future, there will hopefully be some video evidence to backup telling folks not to use it. If it works, there will be video evidence to recommend it.

[Old Bob]

There are some videos on their website; both ballistic gel & necropsy. I've seen their ammo in .223 Rem & 7.62x39 in some local gun shops.

https://fortscottmunitions.com/

[Double Naught Spy]

I would expect nothing but best case scenario results from the manufacturer's website and that is what they present. The necropsies are for .380 and 9mm.

Here is one of their vids on YT. It is hog hunting. Most of the hogs are either shot multiple times by one shooter or multiple times by two shooters simultaneously. There are several instances of single hit hogs running after being hit, so maybe not getting that hydrostatic clean kill as advertised.

[grayfox]

The reading I've seen says that in order to get hydrostatic shock you need an entry velocity of ~2400 fps, and entry somewhere close to the CNS...
I'm not an expert on this, and tbh I thought I saw a much earlier article that said 2200 fps min, but in any case, there's probably some minimum entry velocity needed to cause a sufficient shock wave to disable or downright kill the animal.

So most grendel loads, especially a 123 gr one, may not have that sufficient minimum entry velocity...

Come to think of it, maybe the proper term is one of momentum at impact... o well.
DNS do you know of any studies that concluded this as well?

Definitely not as good a hog hunter as you are so no worries there!! (and probably others too).

[sundowner]

Interesting video .

[603 Country]

[Double Naught Spy]

grayfox, hydrostatic shock and hydraulic shock are terms that are defined, but not necessarily recognized by everyone as being distinct. I like this guy's definitions and this article is a pretty read...

https://www.ballisticstudies.com/Knowledgebase/Effective+Game+Killing.html

Hydraulic shock is the civil engineers term also known as water hammer but in terminal ballistics context refers to the pressure of accelerated fluid particles that create the temporary wound channel.

Hydrostatic shock transfer refers to the effect when shock waves travel through flesh to distant nerve centers, disrupting their ability to emit electrical impulses.

From what FS is describing of nearby organs, it sounds like hydraulic shock, but that is being pedantic on my part, but hydraulic shock and temporary wound cavities happen with all penetrating projectiles from firearms (for this discussion), but not all produce hydrostatic shock that shuts down the nervous system from a wound located nowhere near the nervous system.

Michael Courtney (you can google his name for his articles) seems more inclined to mix the two meanings (as many do) from what I recall and did some pistol rounds testing on raccoons and claimed they were killed by hydrostatic shock, even via firing into the water next to a raccoon. That is very interesting and I don't know that he is wrong. However, you have a relatively low velocity projectile (as compared to rifles) producing a kill via a shock wave in the water that transferred to the animal. Note, this is a small animal.

This is a quote from the abstract or summary of a foreign dissertation that seems to explain the means of death via hydrostatic shock (to the brain centers)... https://is.muni.cz/th/132384/lf_d/an...on_english.txt

https://is.muni.cz/th/132384/lf_d/ (original link)

Cufflike pattern haemorrhages around small brain vessels were found in all specimens. These haemorrhages are caused by sudden changes of the intravascular blood pressure as a result of a compression of intrathoracic great vessels by a shock wave caused by a penetrating bullet. At the end of work are outlined clinical problems of these types of injuries. It is highlighted in particular the potential impact on the early development of degenerative changes in the brain.

In other words, a sudden increase in blood pressure caused micro bleeds in the brain. My guess is that they occurred elsewhere too. Such as might happen when hit in the body with a baseball or punch to the chest. Obviously, the health of the victim comes into play with factors such as advanced age, smoking, and drinking that can all put people at risk for microbleeds even without sudden impacts.

So it seems to me that there are multiple factors at play. You must take the size/weight/volume of the target into account, shot placement, and the size, weight, velocity, energy at impact of the bullet. For example, a .223 55 gr. bullet impacting at 3050 fps may produce the desired effect in a goat, but not in an elephant. Courtney claims to get it at ~1000-1100 fps in a raccoon from a pistol round, but I would not expect he would get a comparable result on a 300 lb boar with similar shot placement.

Every time one of us shoots an animal in a non-CNS location, where the bullet does not pass close by CNS structures, yet the animal falls over dead, that is going to be hydrostatic shock. It does happen with Grendel rounds at various velocities. I think we have all seen it happen. We have all probably made a very similar shot on a similar size/weight animal and had it not die in place. That is where all this gets weird.

I have read and heard suggested that facts such as direction of bullet travel relative to the brain matters. So a quartering away shot should be more lethal than a quartering toward shot because quartering away, the impact energy sends a pulse in the brain's direction and quartering toward would send the pulse away from the brain. Also, whether or not the animal has a lungful of air matters. I have seen no information on this to suggest either one of these theories is valid or invalid. I really like the first theory because it is more testable than the second, at least with my abilities and opportunities.

I know a lot of folks that shoot "behind the ear" and that it kills every time. As I have noted several times, where you shoot behind the ear really can matter. Shooting behind the ear on a hog places the bullet behind the skull. In a head up position, behind the ear places the bullet above the spine. Sometimes they will drop dead and sometimes they will survive and heal up long enough to be killed months or years later, the hydraulic and hydrostatic forces failing to work their magic despite being very close to both the spine and the brain, the bullet simply having passed through muscle, fat, and skin.

Anyway, I am sure somebody could derive a formula to come up with when hydrostatic shock is more likely to result given various factors. However, the target's attributes are ever bit as critical as the projectiles attributes and it is not simply a matter of simple velocity or energy of the projectile to determine when hydrostatic shock may occur. There is always going to be shock waves, but there isn't always going to be hydrostatic shock.