Wonderful Wicked Wadcutters... A defensive load you may not have (but probably should have) considered. Jacketed hollowpoints consistently fail to expand at snubnose velocities when fired through gel or gel and plywood–acting almost like an FMJ (right). Additionally, there are few things in life more uncomfortable, or disconcerting to a new shooter, than the unbelievably abusive recoil generated by an Ultra-Light snubbie loaded with hot, heavy, and/or very fast, self defense ammunition. SNUB-NOSED REVOLVERS HAVE BEEN popular as carry guns for a long time. Also, those who favor big main guns can be found packing a snubbie as a backup, but the short barrels that users favor for carry bring a price: lack of velocity. That velocity loss means expanding bullets often don’t expand. If your high-tech hollow-point fails to expand, it works no better than a traditional lead round-nose. Also, the rounded nose of a jacketed hollowpoint can glance off of hard things like bone. But if you increased velocity (and chamber pressure) until you get enough to cause expansion, recoil becomes ferocious in a lightweight snubbie. So let’s go about this in a different direction. We all know shot placement matters more than expansion anyway. If a thug is about to punch your ticket, a lead round-nose through his sternum is much more favorable to your cause than an expanding bullet that only creases his stomach. Even if that bullet expands to the size of a five- gallon bucket, the poor shot placement means it is of little, or no use. So how about a bullet that works very efficiently without expanding, that has good accuracy and whose ultra soft recoil means easier shooting and practicing? What about full wadcutters? Hear me out before you get all outraged. What are the advantages? Cast-lead bullet mavens from Elmer Keith to Veral Smith have demonstrated that the sharp edge of a bullet efficiently cuts in the wound track even without expanding. The late, great Jim Cirillo experimented with full wadcutter bullets when serving on the NYPD Stakeout Squad, and carried them everyday. Where a rounded profile will shove vitals aside or glance off bone, the square, clean edge of a wadcutter or semi-wadcutter will slice and cut, or dig in. When I was shooting bowling pins, a popular bullet with revolver shooters was the “lead pencil”: a 230-grain .358-diameter full wadcutter. It did not glance off of bowling pins, and as Jim Cirillo noted, it didn’t bounce off the hard skulls of bad guys either. You can hardly argue with the accuracy of wadcutter bullets. Target shooters have both demonstrated the efficiency of the bullet (clean holes in paper) and its accuracy. PPC shooters use wadcutters despite the learning curve in reloading their blunt profiles into the cylinder. They use them for the simple reason that few other bullets will shoot such tight groups. For those who wonder about accuracy at a distance, the 50-yard 10 ring on a PPC target is about half the size of a sheet of typing paper, and competitors who expect to win expect to hit it almost every time. The X ring is less than half that, and the serious shooters are aiming only at the X ring. In other words, wadcutters deliver accuracy as far as you can hit, and commensurately with your abilities. The soft recoil helps. Where a 125-grain JHP in .38 Special is doing all it can to generate 900 fps out of a snubbie (and usually failing), the sedate wadcutter can be counted on to deliver all of its 700 to 800 fps from a four- inch barrel and close to that in a two-incher. The low recoil and muzzle blast both encourage practice and allow someone under stress to deliver as much accuracy as their skills can generate. Another advantage of the wadcutter is one you might not think about: Penetration. The FBI ballistic protocols assume that a bullet must penetrate an absolute minimum of 12 inches of gelatin in order for it to be considered an effective defensive load. And, more is better, until the penetration exceeds 18 inches, then the extra penetration is considered wasted energy. There, the wadcutter bullet actually demonstrates an embarrassment of riches; it will easily penetrate well past the 12-inch mark, and depending on how hard an alloy the bullet is made of, more than 20 inches is possible. Wadcutters fired through the same media give identical shape but with less recoil and better accuracy. So the benefits are accuracy, low recoil, deep penetration and low muzzle blast. What are the drawbacks? First, factory ammunition is made with soft, swaged-lead bullets. Such bullets will dig in on curved obstacles, but they are thought to deform too easily for our needs. The softness is seen to limit penetration on chance objects and hard structures, but unless you’re shooting through walls, cars, or other hard cover, this is really a nonissue. Also, if your shot happens to need to plow through the bad guy’s arm to reach vital organs, the hard bones of the upper arm can significantly slow a swaged wadcutter. However, if he’s hiding behind a sheet of plywood, a wall, or a table, it won’t help him much at all. Second, shooters might have a lack of confidence in using “just a target load.” After all, it doesn’t have a lot of recoil, muzzle blast and flash. Me, I figure what happens downrange is important, not what happens at the end of my arm. To figure out if wadcutters have any promise at all, I tested a couple of them and some other .38 ammo in gelatin. My test gun was a Ruger LCR, a polymer-framed five-shot snubbie–a definite “value for money” carry gun, and one that is most decidedly un-fun to shoot with the most robust hollowpoint loads. The Remington swaged wadcutter penetrated well, and the hard-cast Oregon Trails double-ended wadcutters shot through an impressive pile of gelatin. For the sedate velocities they posted, going more than two feet deep in gelatin is impressive. I also tried a hollow-point and a practice FMJ load, and the velocity of those loads was not encouraging. At an average 735 fps from the two-inch barrel, the 125-grain JHPs were barely expanding. I tried all the loads through a sheet of half-inch plywood and found the penetration decreased, but still more than sufficient. Are wadcutter bullets good for defense? If the most robust hollowpoints are “too much” in recoil, a wadcutter is certainly better than a lead roundnose. You won’t lack for accuracy, and practice will not be onerous. And as a bonus, that beautiful, perfect hole they cut in paper and cardboard, will be cut in your attacker as well. Wadcutters don’t push through, the CUT through. Nasty, nasty. As for confidence in wadcutters as a defensive load, I have to go with the advice of a long-since retired Detroit police officer, who was commenting on his choice of the .32 ACP. “They’re all goners if you shoot them between the shirt pockets,” he said. In the case of the .38 wadcutter load, I really don’t think, if you do as he said and plant your shots “between the pockets” on a bad guy that he’s going to be casually brushing his shirt and complaining “Hey, that hurts.” As always, shot placement is what counts. The SUPER Low Recoil Self Defense Round... A load that has gotten my undivided attention, is the 100 Grain hard-cast double-ended Wadcutter at 800 FPS. From a 2 inch snub nosed revolver it makes 750+ FPS. A 100 grain .38 caliber projectile exiting the muzzle at 750 to 800 FPS delivers 125 foot pounds of energy (FPE) at the muzzle (142 FPE at 800FPS). Now that may not sound like much, but it’s nearly twice the energy of a hot 40 grain .22LR, and more than a hot 45 grain .22 magnum with more than twice the bullet weight and three times the hole size. The best part of this round however, is that in the lightest .38 revolver on earth (13 ounces), it has the recoil impulse of a .22 magnum (read: virtually 0). It delivers more punch than a 98 grain .32 long with a bullet that has 16% more surface area and generates less recoil. To my mind, that’s a winning combination for someone who cannot, or will not deal with the punishing recoil of a standard velocity, or +P .38 round in a light weight gun, or anyone else for that matter. This round may very well be, the world champion of highly effective, super low recoiling, self defense rounds. A standard 148 grain wadcutter at 800 FPS will generate 210 FPE at the muzzle. This is a long standing, accepted, and frequently used self defense round by those in the know. The problem is, that a bullet of that weight, moving at that speed, produces too much recoil for many in an ultra-light revolver. In a 25 to 30 ounce all steel gun, the 148 grain wadcutter is a pleasure to shoot, whereas the 100 grain wadcutter is a pleasure to shoot in ANY gun. Is the 100 grain WC a viable option? Yes, it absolutely is, and a damn good one. Any gun is better than no gun, and a gun that you can shoot accurately and quickly is the best of the lot.