I bought a bunch of the Federal Fusion MSR 62-grain on sale several months ago to try in my new AR-15, and was pleased to find that grouped pretty well (less than 2 MOA cold or hot although the first cold shot is always predictably 2 MOA higher than the rest of the group).  My barrel is from Lothar Walther, a 16-inch stainless "very very lightweight" profile (26.5 ounces), carbine gas, 223 Wylde, 1:8.  Also I had some milk jugs and was curious, so I rigged up a little demo.  Please no one give me any grief about my little demo.  I didn't have any ballistic gel, let alone enough for a statistically significant anything of any kind.  Draw your own conclusions.  Or draw none at all.  Whichever.

Range was approximately 100 yards--I never see any gel tests conducted at actual rifle distances on the web, which sucks.  If I can stockpile enough jugs and disposable time before deer season, I might repeat this at 150 yards for comparison.  Both shots penetrated the 5/8 board in front, tossed the first jug after ripping it nearly in half, and came to rest in the fourth.  Total travel through the board and jugs was about 22 inches.  Both bullets yawed off of the initial trajectory about 3 inches.  Both slugs mushroomed similary, and ended up looking pretty much like the pictures in the magazines.  I attempted to weigh them with a very poor quality scale, and determined that they weigh nearly the same amount, and that that amount is 65 grains, plus or minus maybe 10 or 15 grains.  Or maybe 20, but they both look good, if the images are not still loading when you read this.  I'm going to go buy more of this, if I can still find it in stock.

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Looks like they performed very well!

Thanks for posting.  Out of curiosity why shoot through the board rather than just the jugs?  The expansion is impressive, im a fan of that round.

I know that water is not as tough to penetrate as muscle, plus there is always the occasional tree limb or rib interfering with your perfect shot. Thus the board. I wanted shed a little energy on the way in.

Awesome, they work well. Shot a Doe last year with the Gold Dot (64 gr) version of this bullet and it did the job. Didn't recover the slug cause it was a complete pass through, but both lungs were destroyed.

Is the MSR the same projectile as FBIT3?

I am really glad you shot your test loads through a board first.  I retired my Tap 556 75 OTM for the newly recommended barrier loads like the Gold Dot and similar Fusion. In the ammunition, FAQ, it is now the new recommended load for all purpose.

It did what it was supposed to: penetrated a barrier without fragmentation, held together and expanded.  The 75 OTM are great loads for unobstructed targets, but you can't always guantee that will be the case. The intruder just might want to take cover during a gunfight.

I have shot many hogs with this round. Very effective!

I shot my buck last year in the 150gr .308 flavor. It destroyed the insides of that thing!

Thanks for the post. This is a known performer and informal tests are always welcome. Were you able to get any over a chrony? I'm playing with some of these that I loaded up and would like a real world comparison to how fast they are from the factory.

I plan on using this load for deer this year down here in Fl. I have yet to have a shot over 100 yards or so, and I feel as if these will perform quite well on the tiny ones we have. I'm planning to hopefully get a few hogs before then to test it out as well. These seem relatively widely available for me locally as well as online so I would be quite happy if it groups well in my rifle.

OP, I'm in upstate, off of exit 48 on I-77. If you're close enough, come by and bring jugs and I'll add what I can. We can film it and upload it.

I have a chrony and a RCBC 505 scale to weigh the bullets on.

FWIW, the water jugs can be correlated a bit to gel tests. Each jug is approximately so many inches in gel, but I forgot what exactly, but water is water and can be duplicated. My woods aren't cleared, but my neighbor let's me shoot across his yard as long as nobody is home, or if he is and I call him. His house burned up a couple of weeks ago though so he's never there now. That gives us about 75 yards. We can get 100 if we shoot from inside the house on the kitchen table, across the patio, through the carport, between the mustangs, and under the plum tree out to his yard behind the clothesline.

I know that's a lot to take in, but it is what it is. You just have to remind me to open the sliding glass door to the patio. I need to put another sticker on it.

To the water. At the speed of a bullet, hitting water is like hitting bone, or worse, like concrete. We know now that the fusion will be effective on a deer holding a primitive wooden shield for sure. I just wonder what would happen with the expansion if the deer were wearing two pair of Levi's and liked farva beans and was a cannibal. ? Of course without the primitive shield. I have an old lambskin jacket and extra jeans I've decided to shoot because the jacket is old and worn out, and the jeans, well, I may never wear a 32 again, and if I do, a few holes won't matter.

I want to test the Hornady 55gr, the fusion you have, anything else anyone wants to test that they can send me five of, or five or ten projectiles to load up.  I'm also looking to test several 6.8 bullets, Speer 90gr TNT, Hornady 110gr OTM, Nosler 110gr AB, Nosler CC 115gr, Sierra 115gr MK, Barnes 85gr TTSX Tac load, and Sierra 110gr Prohunters.

I want to retest some .45acp loads, and if anyone wants to send me a handful to load up and shoot to test I will . I'm looking to get a buddy's stash of old Black Talon to test some.

Any 9mm is welcome as well, factory or projectiles, I have dies and powder for it too.

What I am doing is the jug tests with jugs and nothing else, then adding four layers of denim, then adding the lambskin leather jacket over that for the third test. I did a few with XTPs but I had a video upload issue so I didn't get to upload them and post them.

OP it would be nice to meet you and shoot with you, and fun to do this stuff, plus an extra hand, one of us shooting and the other filming.

I can work up a script of sorts, basically a guideline of what needs to be said in each video to cover the bases, but leave most of the dialogue up to each of us, which would surely produce a few bloopers and good laughs for the guys here on the forum.

Let me know what you think.

Zhukov,

Any idea why RMR would pull the Fusion bullets??

Have you found a way to increase the velocity of your reloads to closer to NATO spec?  MSR and Fusion is only going 2690 - 2750 fps from a 16 inch depending on temperature and under 2900 fps from a 20 inch.  

Even at this fairly low velocity it does a good job on coyotes.

Generally these bullets are pulled from lots that had some type of quality control issue like it was loaded too hot, too long of an oal, not enough sealant, etc...

FBIT3 would be the Trophy Bonded Bear Claw, which has a much stronger and thicker jacket compared to the Fusion.

This sounds like my kind of science! Thanks for the invite, Pavlov, but I can't even carve out enough hours to get my stands put up. I look forward to seeing your results, though.