Well... I didn't see that coming

I got the chance to go shoot the 1377 a little bit today. I didn't have a whole lot of time to shoot and it was quite cold so I just decided to see what it would do as far as penetration was concerned. I learned about the 1/2 inch pine test a few weeks ago and I was talking to K about it a bit. He asked me how a pellet gun would work against two legged predators. At the time I was fairly confident that only a fool would use a pellet gun for such a thing but I'm beginning to change my mind a bit.

I told K that I knew that with proper placement a high power pellet gun was capable of neutralizing such a threat, but it just didn't seem practical. Like I said, I didn't have much in the way of time today so I took a half dozen or so 4x6 pieces of 1/2 inch pine and set them up against a hay bale. I wanted to see how well the pellets did on the pine and I intended to use that information in determining wether or not the 1377 would be a decent squirrel hunting piece.

I shot each pellet at 10 yards and 15 pumps and I tested Barracuda Magnums, Crosman Premier Hollow Points, Gamo Lethals, Gamo Rockets, Gamo Coppers, Predator Polymags, and RWS Hyper Veloictys.  Overall the lead pellets did much better and just went to confirm what I've been saying for months about lead free pellets, they're trash and don't ever use them. I couldn't get a fully penetrated board but that didn't really surprise me seeing as how I was slinging pellets around 700fps and the required energy to piece the board is supposed to identical to the force required to pierce a human skull. Basically I could give someone a very bad headache with the 1377 but that was about it. Then I shot the RWS Hyper Velocity Pellets.

The RWS Hyper Velocity is a lead free sabot round. It is really just a novelty round used to make a slow rifle fire supersonic... or is it? I shot the RWS last as I thought that it was the last chance I had to make some progress on the board. This is what I found.

You can see the path the pellet left in the wood. It didn't quite come through the other side but it came insanely close.

The wood is fairly old pieces of scrap so this will require some additional testing but it would seem as though the 1377 may very well surprise me after all. Im not suggesting anyone do anything here, this is merely an observation and it is one I intend on testing further at a later date, perhaps with a chronograph? Anyways, food for though.

As always stay safe and keep it classy.