What I Learned at the Range Today

[versifier]

Shooting loads with .30Carbine 10" Contender, sabots with 55gr .224 bullets. 25yds, 25shots, 12" square target, 15 hits, no group, .30cal holes. Huge fireball in the failing light. With .30-30 sabot loads and even the same .30carb/sabot loads in my .308Win rifle with chamber adapter all the sabots are found within ten to twenty feet of the firing line. Even when the loads showed poor accuracy at 50yds and beyond, what holes there were in the paper were all .22cal. I don't think these loads in the short barrel get going fast enough to shed their sabots. In any event it seems to me that the short bearing surface of the sabot fails to stabilize in the 1:10" twist barrels of my pistol and rifles. Shotgun patterns with sabot loads when the same pistol with 120gr soupcans can hit clay birds all day long at 100yds. I think these sabots need a 1:12 barrel or more to stabilize. No reason sabots shouldn't work in a 1:10 if they just made them with a longer bearing surface.

[Clayt]

That's pretty interesting!
I once tried some early Federal 12GA sabot slugs that the plastic sabot often hit the paper at 100 yards and shot usable groups.
It would be cool to see the flight with a high speed camera