Best Ammo For .40 S&W

[Tok36]

I borrowed the list from this site here. Its a good read. When I was shooting .40 S&W, my guns were all loaded with Winchester Ranger RA40T (aka Black Talons). Now I load Federal HSTs in both my 9mm and 45ACP. I personally prefer the heaviest bullet grain available for each of my selections... so for .40 S&W it was 180gr, currently 147gr for 9mm and 230gr for 45ACP.

Good stuff, thanks for the link.

[bluzman]

It depends on what gun your feeding it into. My Sig P229 is good with Hornaday Critical Defense, my Glock 27 not so much. If shoots and feeds fine recoil is manageable, but starting to lean to the unpleasant side.

You need to find what works best in your gun, for you. Don't rely on ballistic gel tests alone to pick your defensive ammo, shoot in and make sure it is something your gun likes.

I'd recommend that you first determine which hollowpoint rounds feed, fire, and eject flawlessly from your chosen handgun. From those, determine which ones are the most accurate. If at that stage you still have multiple rounds to choose from THEN start worrying about which brand and grain weight.

These quotes summarize the best advice IMO. If your firearm doesn't consistently handle your HD ammo, no matter how great a reputation it may have, then you're setting yourself up for a very bad situation. FWIW, I typically make sure that whatever JHP ammo I plan to use with a given weapon has produced at least 200 consecutive flawless shots. JMO

[ElDub1950]

It depends on what gun your feeding it into. My Sig P229 is good with Hornaday Critical Defense, my Glock 27 not so much. If shoots and feeds fine recoil is manageable, but starting to lean to the unpleasant side.

You need to find what works best in your gun, for you. Don't rely on ballistic gel tests alone to pick your defensive ammo, shoot in and make sure it is something your gun likes.

^ Definitely! Reviews, gel tests, ballistics reports can give you suggestions on what you might want to try, but until you run a couple hundred of them through your gun, don't believe anything.