Press release:
Bradenton, Fla. – Liberty Ammunition is unveiling the first hunting round, the .308 Winchester, in their new Animal Instinct ammunition line at the 2016 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jan. 19 – 22, 2016. The Liberty Ammunition .308 Win is the fastest at 3,500 FPS, and exits a rifle with a muzzle energy of 2,700 FPE. This lead-free copper monolithic, fragmenting hollow-point Liberty Ammunition round is the next generation of one of the most popular whitetail hunting and long range rounds in existence.
“Animal Instinct ammunition is optimized to deliver the most extreme energy transfer at impact, while still providing exceptional penetration, giving hunters that ‘ONE & DONE’ capability they seek,” Matt Phillips, VP of Sales and Marketing for Liberty Ammunition explained. “Animal Instinct’s match grade accuracy and noticeable low recoil allows the hunter to be more proficient while making the shooting/hunting experience more enjoyable.”
The .308 Winchester was introduced in 1952 as a sporting round to fit a standard short-action rifle. The highly accurate round quickly found favor with big game hunters and shortly thereafter was adopted by the U.S. Military for the M14 rifle. The new Liberty Ammunition Animal Instinct .308 Win. is lighter than its competition at 100 gr. Animal Instinct .308 delivers more lethality in a flat shooting round with match grade accuracy, all in a low recoil, easy to manage package.
Hunters, law enforcement officers and military operators alike, will all benefit tremendously from Liberty Ammunition’s Animal Instinct line, providing them pinpoint accuracy, significant increase in lethality, and low recoil for more control
Liberty Ammunition Animal Instinct .308 Winchester Specifications:
Product Number: LA-HA-C-308-045
Description: Copper Monolithic, Fragmenting Hollow Point, Lead Free Hunting Round
Weight: 100 gr.
Velocity: 3500 FPS
Kinetic Energy: >2700 FPE
Accuracy: 1 MOA @ 500 yds.
Terminal Effect: >5″ W x 16″ D
Check out the entire line of high performance, lead-free Liberty Ammunition, as well as apparel products, at www.libertyammunition.com.
How would this change the gross point blank of a shot? Does anyone know how this might affect bullet drop out to about 500 yards?
I’d be interested in that, as well. In general, my experience with the “versatile” .308, is that I’d rather just standardize on 150 or 165/168 weight, and get a .243 or Roberts for 100 grain class loads. Messing around with zero, just to shoot some inevitably expensive exotic, just doesn’t seem worth it.
1 MOA at 500 yard guarantee?
That’s quite the claim with a 100 grain pill.
I’m extremely scepticle.
Maybe it’s a typo and it’s really 1 MOA at 50 yards?
I wonder where (or if) they are doing that testing. I lived near Bradenton for awhile and I don’t recall any ranges that long…
Ummm…. what? The only 1000 range I know of in the West Central FL area (The Manatee Gun & Archery Club) is just outside Bradenton. Depending on where exactly they are located it could be less than a 20 minute drive for them, certainly under an hour.
They had Bob Lee Swagger test them. 😀
Never knew it existed. It’s been forever since I lived in Manatee County, but we’re thinking about moving back, hence the question.
Thanks for the info.
Our neck of the woods (SW Fla) is full of private, older, clean fill digs that probably avg 600-800 yds min. in straight line width or depth.
It’s just getting to be ‘best buds’ w the owners/gate keepers that’s the catch…
All you need is one of those perfectly calm days that hunting season is known for. 😉
I’m with you on the doubt. A 100-grain .308 pill at 3,500 FPS – if it even goes that fast – will have the ballistic coefficient around .300 (based on the 110 grain Hornady GMX .308 registering .305) or less. If this actually starts at 3,500 FPS, it’ll still be going almost 2,000 FPS at 500 yards, given standard ballistic chart conditions (59 degrees F and all that), and good for a little less than 900 foot pounds. A 1:10 rifling twist might make this bullet do bad things to a barrel. Or to accuracy. I’m going to stick with Eagle Eye for accuracy and hunting, but I’d shoot it out of somebody else’s gun to check it out.
My skeptical reticule alert is flashing red, too.
“Try our new, non-circular wheel!”
The “safety wheel” – It’s square! Ride performance suffers a little bit, but it’s great for braking!
Dang those are pretty 🙂
One and done for Werewolf hunting?
Yankee? Is that you?
A bunch of bullet fragments in your meat? Sounds like a winner to me.
Yeah I was about to question the same thing. I can’t see how a fragmenting round would be useful for game. It’s not like a .308 doesn’t work…
Better yet, just use a rifle chambered in .243 Winchester shooting 100 grain soft-point bullets: you get the same “light” recoil and “one shot stop” characteristics (out to 300 yards anyway) and a MUCH better ballistic coefficient … without any fragmentation concerns from this .308 Winchester bullet.
For anyone who is not aware, the .243 Winchester case is simply a .308 Winchester case necked down to .243 caliber.
“It’s not like a .308 doesn’t work.” I want that engraved on my rifle. Best quote ever.
“It’s not like a .50 BMG HEI doesn’t work.”
Fixed it for ya… 🙂
Call me crazy, but you don’t want a round to fragment when hunting, right? You want it to stay together for maximum energy delivery and to keep the round together so you don’t have to pick pieces out of the meat later.
Also, generally you DO want an exit wound when hunting, at least generally, so all this “transfer all your energy inside the animal’ is a bit of marketing speak that does not translate ALL that well to the real world either.
I’m skeptical that a 100 grain, high velocity round is going to be (a) effective enough to displace the competition and (b) popular with hunters on principle.
Old school bullets like the Sierra Game King are tried and true killers with multiple decades of earned reputation, and continue to be both effective and popular. New, “modern” bullets don’t kill game any deader. While some of the new designs have niche uses, they simply will not remove other designs from the market.
This is the new ammunition in the “Dental and Oral Surgeon Approved” line, approved as their kids are needing for dad to pay for their university degree and BMW…
Look at it this way; while trying not to bite down on some fragments, it’ll let you savor each mouthful of meat longer,
Not exactly, it depends on where the fragmenting happens. Yes, if you shoot a deer or larger animal with a varmint bullet, you will get a really nasty shallow wound that likely wont be immediately fatal. However, if the bullet punches through muscle/rib cage and into the vitals before fragmenting you quite often get a very dead animal, very quickly. That is the entire principle of Berger hunting bullets. Delayed, but massive expansion/ fragmentation that roughly begins on the near side of the major vital organs. It is brilliantly effective. Animal dies very quickly from the massive internal shock. Will these do that? No idea.
If it works like their pistol ammo, it is likely to blow up on the surface before reaching vital organs like a varmint bullet with a tiny remnant of the base traveling through the body of the deer making a roughly caliber sized hole through whatever it encounters. That would be bad.
Could be useful on hogs, then. The faster you turn out their lights, the better…
In sorry but those are just pretty to look at.
‘One and done’….are they talking about barrel lifetime?
Ballistic Coefficient? Inches traveled before “explosive” expansion/fragmentation begins?
Sound like a Barnes TSX and a Berger VLD had a bit too much to drink one night and well… you know.
Might be worth a look to try out on hogs or coyotes first if the BC is nice, sounds too gimmicky to me though. Their handgun ammo based on the same principle hasn’t exactly been setting the world on fire.
Barnes bullets or bust.
Accuracy: 1 MOA @ 500 yds.
Hahaha!!!!!!!!!!
Phone call to liberty ammunition:
Caller: Hello – my shots aren’t within the specification.
Liberty: What do you mean?
Caller: I mean I’m not getting 1 MOA @ 500 yrds.
Liberty: Sounds like its you or your gun – not our ammunition.
Caller: How can I prove that it is not my gun or me?
Liberty: Good question.
nice to look at but i’ll pass
Yeah, hung up on the fragmenting thing for something I plan to eat. Besides, for hunting with 308 I am a fan of heavy and slow. Someone gonna have to do some convincing to get me to stop using 165g game kings. The last one I pulled out of a deer sticking out the back side of the hide looked like it was perfectly expanded in a water bath for a ballistics test.
On the accuracy do they mean 1 moa at 500 yards = 5″ group? Or, do they mean 0.2 moa = 1″ group at 500 yards. There is a wee bit of difference there for those that can really shoot. In my case, however, I’m barely a 1 moa shooter with a 1/2 moa rifle so what difference does it make at that point?
MOA at 500 yards would be just over 5 inches.
“@ any yards” doesn’t make sense. 1 Moa is the same at 100 yards as it is at 500. 1 MOA is 1 MOA. I don’t know why theses ammunition guys include the “@ 500 yards” nonsense.
A projectile can be less accurate at some distances than others.
My two favourites are the PMC’s 6.5×55 139g SP and 8×57 Turkish reloads with Hornady 170g round-nose SP.
Both gave very reliable one-shot-stops with no exit wounds on goats and pigs.
Liberty Ammo is a gimmick round company. Anytime I see them advertised I always see some horrible joke with no punch line.
with something this extreme I think the barrel rifling twist rate is going to have a significant effect…….a “fat’ light bullet at extreme speed is going to need a very slow twist rate (maybe 1:15 or even 1:17), and most .308s today are in the range of 1:12.
Most of my .308’s are 1:10, my 2 AR’s are Armalite & JPE barreled home brew, 2 Savages are that, 10BA & 12 Varmint Low Profile, but my 12 F/TR is 1:12. The 12 Palma model is 1:13
Now the burning question that I’m sure Nick Leghorn has already mulled over… How’s the bullet performance in a .300 blackout load?
Liberty, feel free to send me a few boxes of these bullets and I’ll load em up and see how they do for zippy little blackout supersonics 😉
Ballistic coefficient and weight are very much related. This is an outright lie unless the tests were performed in a vacuum.
These look interesting- wonder if they are at SHOT.
http://www.alloutdoor.com/2016/01/14/oath-expanding-fragmenting-slugs/
Geeze, you ain’t kidding!
2.25 oz slug at a claimed 1200 fps, 3100ft-lbs. …Machined *brass* case, re-loadable 1,000X…
I sure hope TTAG Expeditionary Forces gets a look-see at those puppies…
I’m really having a lot of trouble trusting ammunition specifications from an ammunition maker that seems to know exactly dick about ammunition.
With a .243, hand load some 100gr, 105 gr, and or just about duplicate the performance claimed, and save some coin! basically all bullets suffer from or with wind problems! how does this bullet do in a head wind? a tailwind? Cross winds @ 1K!
personally I don’t really give a rats behind about claimed speed as best accuracy comes about 2500 in most of my target rifles for range I have too boost to about 2700. as for hunting 2500 fps out too 300yds gives me all the Penetration and expansion I can use,
past 300 there are too many variables from a standing position with old man maladies!
I also agree with the Gentleman on the 165gr in a .308 hard too beat all around!
,
– Liberty Ammunition is unveiling the first hunting round, the .308 Winchester, in their new Animal Instinct ammunition line at the 2016 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jan. Where did you get this information?
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