I’ve viewed .300 AAC Blackout as an excellent round since its inception. I’ve also acknowledged that it isn’t a magic “wonder round” that can do it all. It is another good tool to have in the tool box and excels at its intended function. As with any new offering, it has taken some time to mature as many of the early loading used adapted .308 projectiles which were not designed to perform well at .300 blackout velocities. Time has passed and many ammunition manufacturers have seen the popularity of the .300 blackout round and they have responded by designing new projectiles tailored specifically for optimal performance within the .300 blk envelope. Some very good rounds have been released since that time. I was recently given the option to take a look at one of these rounds, the 110 gr. Controlled Chaos round, by Reaper Outdoors.
The projectile in the Reaper Outdoors .300 load is the 110 grain offering from Lehigh Defense. This is an all brass projectile that is designed to penetrate to a certain depth, then expand quite violently, transferring energy in such a manner that it can temporarily shut down a targets circulatory and nervous systems. Some impressive gelatin testing results can be found on the Lehigh website here. The advertised data shows this round coming out of a 16″ barrel at 2315 ft/s and staying supersonic past 350 yards.
I wasn’t able to get a hold of enough rounds to do my usual battery of testing: zero, three 10 round groups for accuracy and a real world flesh test. So, I got a quick zero and hammered out a few informal groups. As I only had access to a short range on the day of test fire, I was only able to group at ~30 yards. Anything worse than one ragged hole would be a failure but the Controlled Chaos round didn’t let me down. I fired one round into the hard packed dirt at point blank range, dug it out and stuffed it back into the brass casing for display (pictured below). Dirt being a much better barrier than meat, the bullet stopped about 4.5″ deep with one shard disappearing into the ether never to be seen again. Take a look at the bullet below and imagine that tearing through a nice big buck.
Given a very limited number of rounds with which to conduct testing, I don’t feel like I can give a true assessment of this round. I do feel like I can say I’m excited by what I’ve seen so far and can’t wait for deer season to start so I can take out the last few rounds and hopefully get a metal on flesh test complete.
