Massive ballistics project

Last up was a batch of miscellaneous pellets that didn't belong in any other groups. There aren't as many pictures because I screwed up the cut and sliced some of the ballistic channels. I also somehow managed to forget to take photos of the gamo red-tip, but, they can't all be winners I guess.

Pellets fired into this block were:

Predator MetalMag
Gamo Red Point (the name's not on the tin, who knows what these are called?)
Gamo PBA Platinum 
Beeman Silver Arrow
H&N Super Magnum

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And circling back to the Crosman set, there's an H&N Baracuda on that row.

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First up is the predator metal mag. I love these pellets - they feel smooth like teflon, their length makes them easy to handle, they load easy and shoot easy. Mushroom expansion was consistent. Wish I had better pictures. All around this is one of best made pellets I shot. Personally I can't get tight POi groupings at 15 yards, but I've read enough from others to believe my gun may not like it for some reason. Everything else about this pellet is great.

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Next up was the Gamo red point. Sorry I don't have pictures, I managed to toss the pellet out before I took pictures - I blame beer. but as you can see from the picture above, it penetrated less than the metalmag. One interesting behavior was the red tip punched out the core of the pellet, leaving it as a donut.

Next is the Gamo PBA platinum. I had very low expectations for this pellet because of the light weight and generally unfavorable reviews of it online. So I was shocked to see a long, deep penetration channel. It curved through the ballistic medium as well - I thought that was interesting. The before and after are indistinguishable. I'm going to take a deeper look into this pellet - if my gun likes it, I may have a solid pellet here.

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The Beeman Silver Arrow disappointed in this test - opposite the Gamo PBA, I had high expectations for this one and was disappointed.

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The last of all pellets, I save the biggest, heaviest pellet in my current collection - the H&N sniper magnum. It has an incredibly piercing impact - when I shoot these into my targets, they hit the wood with a resounding "THWACK" far louder than my other pellets. The picture alone shows this pellet has as much lead crammed into it as possible, and digging them out of plywood they look good enough they might could be shot a second time.

My gun doesn't shoot this one consistently, unfortunately - if your gun can shoot this pellet consistently, it will deal a hammer-strength blow to whatever it hits.

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Almost forgot the Baracuda Hunter. It didn't do so well in glycerin - the hollow point barely expanded, whereas every other hollow point expanded. It still expanded more than the piranha though. However, I got the chance to use this pellet against a squirrel, and it delivered a devastating head shot like I've never seen. My thoughts are that this hollow point needs a harder target than the rest for it to perform.

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