WMR handgun ammo: Speer vs. Hornady - Round 2

[JAB]

Some time back I did some very informal (water jug) tests to compare the Speer Gold Dot WMR ammo with the Hornady Critical Defense WMR ammo from my 1 5/8 inch barreled NAA mini revolver. Imo, the Speer was the hands-down winner from the NAA (I think I posted the results somewhere on here but can't locate them at the moment.)

Well, I finally got around to informally ‘testing’ them both out of my Heritage Rough Rider. As my HRR has a 6.5 inch barrel, I expected the Critical Defense to do better from it than it did from my NAA mini. As the pics below will show, it certainly did. I was surprised, however, that the Speer Gold Dot really didn’t perform any better from the Heritage than it did from the NAA. In fact, I would say that (due to slightly better penetration from the mini) the Speer Gold Dot could be said to have actually done ‘better’ overall when fired from the mini than from the Heritage. I guess it really is optimized for a short barrel – not that it did poorly out of the Heritage, either.

As per my usual, these tests were done by firing one round of each ammo type into one gallon jugs that I had filled with water. Unlike the mini, which was fired from only a few inches so that I could get a fairly straight trajectory on the first jug, both rounds from the Heritage were fired from ten feet away from the face of the first jug in their respective lines. It had rained all afternoon yesterday and I was just about to give up on being able to do the test. Luckily, the rain let up later in the evening but it was just about dusk by the time I got everything set up and actually shot the jugs and was pretty well dark by the time I took the final pics. Luckily, my cellphone camera has a flash. Anyhow, on to the results.

First, I fired the Hornady. As I said, I was really interested to see how it would do from the longer barrel. I was a little disappointed with how poorly it expanded from the mini and, given that it didn’t expand much, penetration from the mini wasn’t very impressive, either. This time was different. From the Heritage, the Critical Defense had much better expansion and better penetration. The expanded bullet was found in the fourth jug. That is roughly 24 inches of water. I’ve read more than one place that water will generally yield penetration that is roughly 1.5 to 2 times as much as ballistic gel. Assuming such a conversion rate is even close then the Critical Defense met (or possibly even exceeded) the FBI’s “magic†12 inch penetration requirement. Even from the Heritage, CD still didn’t give quite as impressive an amount of expansion as the Speer gave from the mini. That said, the expansion was still quite good – especially considering the amount of penetration.

Next up was the Speer Gold Dot. From the mini, the Gold Dot expanded very well and was found protruding from the rear of the third jug. The Gold Dot also expanded very well when fired from the Heritage. Somewhat surprisingly, however, it only made it into the third jug – there was no indication of any damage to the back of that third jug, whatsoever. My guess is that the bullet achieved higher velocity from the Heritage and that increased velocity probably caused the bullet to expand more quickly, actually hindering penetration just a little. Still, once again, I wouldn’t call the results ‘terrible’ – especially for a rimfire handgun.

Once, again, I’d say that the expansion that I got from the Gold Dot certainly lived up to the packaging hype:

I have also noticed, as was also the case - although to a lesser degree - when fired from the mini, that the Speer seems to dump a whole lot of energy into the first jug. This time, it didn’t just split the first jug a little – it actually blew that first jug wide open and I’d go so far as to say that it didn’t lack much splitting the first jug completely in two. The force also moved the first jug a few inches to the left as compared to the rest of the line of jugs. Heck, you would almost have thought I had shot it with a light deer rifle or at least a fairly heavy caliber handgun rather than ‘just’ a WMR rimfire from a revolver. The following pic was taken as the jug sat right after I shot it.

I’ll go so far as to say that I don’t think I’d want to hunt small game like squirrels or rabbits with this ammo, even from the Heritage, if I planned to eat it. The Speer would probably blow such a small critter to smithereens! I’m guessing it would be even worse from a rifle but I’ll have to test that theory some other time when I have more jugs to slay. Of course, given the price of both the Gold Dot and the Critical Defense ammo, there are better (and less expensive) choices for hunting small game, anyhow. I’m thinking that either would do a number on a larger critter such as a coyote, though, and will henceforth be carrying one CCI shotshell and four Critical Defense rounds in the Rough Rider when using it as a yard/woods gun just in case I need to ‘deal with’ such a beastie.

These final pics show a side by side of the first jug in line for the Speer test with the first jug in line for the Hornady test. The Hornady obviously dumped some energy and split the jug pretty well but, again, you can see that the Speer busted its jug wide open both in the front:

And in the back:

I still have not changed my mind about Winchester Dynapoints being the best ‘stocking up’ ammo for the caliber. It is much less expensive than most other WMR ammo and performs pretty well from all three of my WMR firearms. That said, after giving it some thought, I have decided to switch to the Gold Dot to carry in my mini when it is playing the role of BUG and Critical Defense in the Heritage when using it as a woods ‘defensive’ gun. For that matter, to be entirely truthful, I wouldn’t feel unarmed or even too badly under-armed if for some reason I had to use the Rough Rider/Critical Defense combo to defend against a two-legged assailant.

Note: There seems to be some point along the handgun barrel length continuum where the Hornady Critical Defense ammo begins to really ‘shine’ while the Speer Gold Dot begins to actually see lessened penetration. As my only two handgun WMR platforms are the 1 5/8 inch NAA and the 6.5 inch Heritage, there is obviously quite a gap there and I currently have no way of filling in that gap. This doesn’t matter much, to me, as I have found what I believe to be the ‘best’ ammo for my, respective guns. However, I have no idea how my findings would transfer to, say, a 2 inch, 3 inch, 4 or 5 inch barrel nor do I have any idea at which point the ‘switch’ between the Gold Dot being better and the Critical Defense being better is made. Were it me and were I in doubt, I’d probably opt for carrying the Gold Dot until at least some informal testing of both could be done. Of course, I am no expert so this is simply my opinion and, as always, YMMV.

Edited August 10, 2012 by JAB