Shooting Gelatinous Pig Juice With Mike McNett Of DoubleTap Ammunition

The slimiest part of our agenda at the recent Gunsite Academy event hosted by LaserMax was a ballistic testing demonstration by Mike McNett, founder of DoubleTap Ammunition.

Mike brought along some standardized 14 inch long gelatin blocks for destruction testing with a variety of DoubleTap loads, most of which use the Barnes TAC-XP all copper projectiles. I’ve had really good experience with these in my own testing. They expand reliably, and being solid copper, they don’t come apart when passing through barriers.

Mike arranges two 14 inch blocks end to end. As you’ll see, some of the loads penetrated well into the second block.

First up on the agenda was a 10mm load using the Barnes TAC-XP bullet. The 125 grain projectile hums along at 1,600 feet per second out of a five-inch pistol barrel.

The DoubleTap 10mm TAC-XP load uses a light for caliber 125 grain projectile.

As you can see, penetration is excellent, even with the 125 grain bullet. The TAC-XP passed completely through the first 14 inch block, bounced against the second and fell to the table between the two.

Penetration of the 125 grain 10mm load was exactly 14 inches.

After starting off with a bang, we moved to the other end of the spectrum and shot a .380 ACP loaded with a Bonded Defense projectile. DoubleTap uses Speer Gold Dot projectiles in their Bonded Defense line, so you can expect great expansion performance and no bullet jacket separation issues.

The 90 grain Bonded Defense .380 ACP bullet performed as advertised.

One of the more unusual rounds tested was the DoubleTap 9m+P Equalizer. This round features a total projectile weight of 165 grains, but is comprised of two distinct bullets – a jacketed hollow point designed to expand at lower velocities and a solid wadcutter with sharp edges. The hollow point is stacked on the top in front of the wadcutter, so both fire at the same time. From a range of about 20 feet, both projectiles hit the gelatin block within an inch of each other. Once in the gel, they followed completely separate tracks with the jacketed bullet traveling about 22 inches (it didn’t expand) and the wadcutter penetrating about 10 inches.

The ultimate DoubleTap? Two projectiles with each shot of this 9mm +P load.

DoubleTap likes to use Barnes TAC-XP projectiles in many of its products for good reason. The solid copper projectiles penetrate deeply without fragmenting and deliver great expansion results, even after passing through barriers. The 110 grain .38 Special +P load still achieves over 1,100 feet per second velocity from the shortest barrel snub-nose revolver.

This .38 Special +P load was comfortable to shoot from a snubby, yet delivered excellent penetration and expansion.

Another less traditional load tested was the “Mann” load named after Richard Mann. A standard pressure .45 ACP load, it uses a 160 grain Barnes TAC-XP bullet that exceeds 1,000 feet per second from a Government model 1911.

The Mann .45 ACP load penetrated almost 16 inches into ballistic gelatin.

Velocity rules with hollow point projectiles. A .40 S&W 155 grain Bonded Defense load achieved absolute maximum expansion with velocity over 1,200 feet per second.

Bullets don’t expand much more than this DoubleTap .40 S&W 155 grain Bonded Defense offering.

To finish things up, we talked Gunsite Range Master Ed Head into launching a beast of a .500 S&W DoubleTap load at the pig juice. The 275 grain Barnes TAC-XP bullet hit at somewhere in the 1,600 feet per second range and literally knocked the first gelatin block into the air. When Ed regained feeling in his hands, we measured final penetration right at 20 inches. Yes, it was dramatic.

A 275 grain .500 S&W monster. I think it expanded to a diameter of about three and a half feet.

Not exactly a pocket gun solution…

You can find more information at DoubleTap’s website.