The DemolitionRanch dude is one crazy mo’ fo’. But this attempt to shoot through a telephone pole with an AR-style rifle spitting out 7.62 ammo isn’t up to his usual standard of nutso. In fact, it’s boring. Literally. If he hadn’t sped-up the video we’d be looking at a Nutn’ Fancy-length saga. Or not. Anyway, TTAG’s readers are au fait with the best in high-powered weaponry, including belt-fed and crew-served weapons. So, what would be your first choice for quickly and efficiently taking down a telephone pole. [Safety Nazi note: try not to shoot at targets near objects – like cinder blocks – prone to fragmentation.]

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67 COMMENTS

    • My thoughts too – except that a bi or quad mount would be that much better. Apparently, they were used on a number of occasions during WWII to take down trees containing German snipers. Not playing fair, of course. But, effective.

      • They were apparently also very useful during the Korean War, to stop human-wave attacks by the ChiComs.

        4X 500 rounds (700 grains each) per minute = 2000 rpm out to about a mile.

  6. M60 worked well for this kind of thing. Short bursts are your friend. Not to mention walking your rounds to the target.

      • Don’t know why, but the video links aren’t showing up in my browser. 1) If this is a repeat of the two earlier videos, sorry, I couldn’t see yours. 2) The YouTube link originally listed this as an M60, but it’s obviously a Gatling gun.

    • Yeah, a good tripod-mounted M60 is a fairly efficient way to get this done. Lock it down with the T&E, use downward pressure to remove the slack, then just wiggle it side-to-side as you shoot; doesn’t take long at all.

      CJ, strangely enough, the last few times I did this (on trees) I was in Minnesota (that military range complex near Little Falls, I think it was called Camp Ripley?). They had a GREAT machinegun range there, and they generally left us Air Force folks alone when we came to quality our Air Base Ground Defense/Security troops.

    • Yep. Don’t use a gun to cut down poles and don’t use a chainsaw to hunt wild hogs. There’s a tool for every job.

      Lacking a chainsaw, I would opt for a D-10 Caterpillar bulldozer.

    • When you say little, you really mean little…
      I doubt the .22lr would even go through a telephone pole

      • It doesn’t have to go all the way through; all it has to do is remove wood chips, same as an ax or hatchet.

  16. What’s boring about it? Though not as ridiculous as some of his other vids, I still found it entertaining. I guess there’s always a troll out there who is unhappy with everything!

  20. NAA mini revolver (22 mag) with 1000 bricks of ammo and several weeks, or so, of spare time!
    Lacking that, maybe several sticks of TNT.

  25. Everyone knows that Matt is a doctor, right?

    His Vet Ranch vids are all sorts of awesome.

    • Are they gonna have a couple of them 88’s at the Festival. I’ve got one foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peel, but I just might get up enough strength to make it there, if I could put a couple rounds in a surplussed tank.
      Dam! that would be fun, say good buy to Tannerite.

  27. The M203 with HE rounds always came through for me out to 400 yards, but the M2HB would do it as well way out to 4 times the range of the M203. However, when we Combat Engineers really wanted to breach a target, the CEV with its 165mm HE gun would breach much more than a telephone pole! But since we are on the one-upmanship ramp, and since I was in the ADM platoon (atomic demolition munitions), we did have both a 20 kiloton and a 55 kiloton device at our disposal—capable of taking out all the telephone poles over a several mile area all at the same time (could take out a complete dam on a reservoir). Ours were old school—atomic (fission) not nuclear (fusion), so you flyboys could obviously do it better and from a longer distance, but we had to do it up close and personal.

    • Of course, the LAW with its 60 mm rocket could be fun as well. Do not forget about the MAW and the HAW (bigger brothers to the LAW) for a fun time.
      I did take out a 4-1/2″ pine tree once with a single shot from a .308 WIN—I was a bit surprised that it would do that, but about 2 seconds after the shot, the tree came toppling over.

  29. When I was at CST, we gunned down a small dead tree considerably thinner than a telephone pole during a range day, and it took at least an hour of 30-some gunsmiths banging away with an arsenal of ARs, AKs, .50 BMG rifles, black powder rifles and muskets, every type of pistol imaginable, you get the idea, to actually take it down. Really, the only firearm remotely practical, excluding anything firing shells instead of bullets, is one of the electric Gatlings, I’m not sure that even an M2 or other high caliber MG would do it in anything close to a timely manner. I personally put a few dozen rounds from an AR50 into the tree that day, and it hardly seemed to faze it.

  30. Hmmm…If I was gonna do the telephone pole chop with something that is reasonably accessible to shooters, it would probably be with a Barrett .50 BMG rifle. If I could use anything I wanted, it would be an M40A1 106mm recoilless rifle with a HEPT round. When I was in Vietnam, the company commander used to take the occassional target practice shot with a 106 at trees about 800m away. The HEPT round would hit the tree and explode, and the tree trunk above that point would jump about five feet in the air and then fall down. Awesome!

  33. I can tell you that ramming one with the corner of a M113 at 30 or so MPH is not enough to knock it down. Busted it pretty well though (and rattled me fairly well also – luckily only suffered a split lip).

    I like all of the suggestions!

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