Quote:
Originally Posted by flipper35
They had these in rifle rounds, but were outlawed because they left no rifling marks.
|
That's simply not true. Remington quit manufacturing them simply because they didn't work very well and never really caught on. Remington used these plastic sabots to encase 55 grain .223" dia bullets when loaded in three .30 caliber rounds, the .30-'06, .308, and .30-30. The idea was to make your big game rifle into a varmint rifle.
These were terribly inaccurate in most rifles, more or less precluding their use as varmint rifles. The plastic from the sabots left a very stubborn fouling in the barrels, which then ruined accuracy as a big game rifle. Like I said, just didn't work very well, so no one bought them, so Remington quit making them.
Plastic sabots are used to load pistol bullets in muzzle loaders. In states where this is legal for hunting, this has become the most popular way to load a muzzle loader. These plastic sabots work very well in this application, but the parameters are entirely different. Far lower pressures, far lower velocities, so they don't leave plastic smears down the barrel.
Shotguns used for deer hunting commonly use reduced caliber slugs encased in plastic sabots as well. While the old style Forster slug (which is full diameter) is still in use, the saboted slug is much more popular. The slugs look like oversized airgun pellets.
Besides, when a 55 grain .223" dia bullet traveling at 4,000 fps hits something, it totally disintegrates anyway. It's meant to, so it's very damaging to small varmints. The hope is that unlike big game hunting, any hit anywhere will be instantly fatal. We're shooting very small targets at very long range, so we don't have the option of aiming for the "vitals". They are simply too small. We want any hit to do the job, and we achieve that with extremely frangible bullets. There simply won't be big enough pieces of the bullet left from which to discern any rifling marks, assuming we find any pieces at all.
So, no, plastic sabots were never made illegal because they don't allow for rifling marks on bullets. Pure internet myth.