I know this review is going to be kind of long but I want to make sure and cover everything. So, before anybody comments I’m already acknowledging that it’s a long review, but there’s a lot of info to cover. Who of you has not heard about the debate over the 9mm in its effectiveness? I mean, the debate has gone on forever. Real quick, some history about the 9mm, it’s been around a really long time, early 1900s came out with kind of the broom handle, the Mauser, but the Luger is really what brought it sort of into its own. It was then the most popular, and probably still is today, for like submachine guns, for the military, the Germans used it a lot in World War II, it’s got a really long history.
What’s interesting with this debate it’s still the number one pistol round. There’re very few people that I know that don’t have a 9mm. The question is if there’s so much debate and so many people are concerned about its effectiveness why is it still the most popular round? This really all started in the 80s with a shootout in Miami involving the FBI, there was an assailant that had been shot several times and didn’t go down, and unfortunately killed several FBI agents. That got the FBI really looking into the effectiveness or stopping power of the 9mm and did they want to continue using that.
The problem was the initial studies and what law enforcement and military all carried at that time was Full Metal Jacket. The big question was is it basically just punched a hole straight through, well, that’s sort of what Full Metal Jackets do, and so the initial research was based using Full Metal Jackets, then about 20 years later technology had changed, bullet types had changed, FBI had already switched to the 40 Smith and Wesson, and they went back and redid the research using hollow points and some of the new technology and ballistics, and that changed everything. What they found was with the right bullet the 9mm was much more effective than they thought. They also had issues with the 40 Smith and Wesson having almost too much punch or penetrating depth and if you actually look up the ballistics and some gel tests for the 40 Smith and Wesson it almost doubles the depth of penetration of the 9mm, which really doesn’t solve the problem.
If it has a good bonded hollow point or mushrooms, you’re still getting the advantage of the extra power, but what was happening was that accuracy was going down with the 40 Smith and Wesson, there were some qualification issues because of the recoil, and that also played a part in the FBI switching back to the Nine. The gold standard for their depth of penetration, sort of the golden zone, was 14 to 16 inches, and, if you look at the 40 Smith and Wesson, it goes way beyond 16 inches of penetration as does most 9-millimeter, except if you have a good hollow point, especially like a bonded hollow point, the depth is going to be less but you get good mushrooming, and basically when it mushrooms, the 9mm can mushroom out almost to 45-caliber diameter, at least the ones that I have tested, they expand quite a bit.
With the advancement of technology nowadays we have every kind of bullet you can possibly think of. One of the problems with just the basic hollow point is jacket separation, if the jacket comes off of the lead, the jacket quickly falls behind, and the lead will keep going and you’ll have the penetration, but that lead is soft and as it continues to go it basically rounds out and it loses sort of that irregular shape, which is what really gives you the stopping power or causes the trauma, and is delivering the energy that you want into the target. Now what you see is a huge popularity with bonded hollow points and core lock things that will essentially attach the copper jacket to the lead so that it doesn’t separate.
Outside of that there really are not a lot of different options as far as hollow points. Not too long ago, Federal came out with a new round, and they were really thinking out-of-the-box, it’s called the Syntech Defense, it’s a segmenting hollow point. I have done several reviews with this on CCI and the 22 and have done extensive reviews on the 22 and the 22 Mag with their segmenting hollow point, and I have found them very effective, especially for hunting small games. I even took a 30-pound bobcat with a .22 Long Rifle that was in my chicken coop at 25 yards and it stopped him. Federal’s new Syntech segmenting hollow point is 138 Grain, it’s polymer coated, and the idea is it breaks into three, actually four separate projectiles, you have three petals that break off and go about six inches, and then the core continues on, which retains about two-thirds of the weight, and that actually penetrates then up to 18 inches, which then falls into the FBI’s recommendation for penetration depth.
This particular round has been around for a while, I’ve actually done several reviews on it, I’ll talk about that in a bit. What I want to do is ‘proof is in the pudding’, I want to take this round, I’m going to put it in some gel, I already know what it’s going to do, and the proof is in the pudding, I wanted to show how effective it was, I took it to Oklahoma and went hog hunting. Let’s check it out!
Why is the 9mm the number one pistol-round?
I’m Drew Case, welcome to Beyond Seclusion where I only give you my honest opinion, and it is what it is. Here’s the question everybody knows about the debate, it goes on and on, and almost everybody has an opinion. The big question is why is the 9mm the number one pistol round out there? Why is it most people’s choice? I mean, everybody that shoots, hardly anybody that I know does not have a 9mm, so why is that despite the debate, and even some people not necessarily liking it, I guarantee you most of them still have a 9mm.
The 9mm is the number one choice for a lot of reasons. I think the first and foremost is the light recoil and the number of rounds that you’re able to carry. It’s hard to argue against you a 45 and a 9mm with like the 1911, where I’ve got seven rounds and the old-fashioned traditional mag versus 20 rounds in the 9mm. Most would agree that shot placement trumps everything, it trumps caliber and trumps bull bullets, but if I’ve got a decent bullet, and I’m a good shot, I much prefer to have the 20 rounds versus the seven. With like 45 and some of the other technology they’re doing double stack and we’re getting up there in the round count.
Another reason that the 9mm is popular is the cost of the ammo. To have good shot placement I need to practice, I need to be a good shot. Well, when I go to the range this is going to cost me 10 bucks or is it going to cost me 40 bucks, and the 9mm is readily available and we can get it in every configuration that you can think of from 90 Grain to 147 Grain, but we can buy it in bulk and we can buy it cheaply. It has a low recoil, which then usually equates to accurate shots, but also accurate follow-up shots, because if you do the research, we’re not very good with our accuracy in a crisis situation, it’s good to have 20 rounds available versus 7 rounds.
One of the other reasons that the 9mm stays popular is when we move into the larger calibers or the more powerful ones, the recoil goes up, and the accuracy for a lot of people goes down. There are a lot of you who are shooting experts, professionals, in which case a 45 or 40 Smith and Wesson accuracy is not an issue, but for the average person, they need to have time on the range and they’re just not going to get it, and they’re going to have better accuracy with the Nine, and I believe that that was actually critical in the FBI switching back to the Nine from the 40 Smith and Wesson was the issues that they were having with qualification for the shooting.
The Proof Is in The Pudding
I always say “Proof is in the pudding”, I have actually reviewed this round before and I’ve done a lot of reviews with nine mil with bonded hollow point Speer up, until this their bonded hollow point was my number one choice. I may throw in some videos from some of the previous reviews if not you’ll want to check those out, a neighbor had a cow that died of natural causes in the field and that was the first time that I tested the Syntech on actual tissue, and the results were shocking, the core did exactly what it was supposed to it, actually went through a full-size 1000 pound heifer hit on one side of the rib cage and stopped on the other side, which then was a double lung shot and did exactly what it was supposed to. And the three petals actually penetrated really well into the lungs and did exactly what Federal claims that it does.
I went hog hunting in Oklahoma, and the proof is in the pudding, I wanted to show what this could do, and I felt pretty confident in what it could do, so what better way to prove that than to shoot a feral hog? Everybody knows about the debate with the 9mm, everybody also knows how tough feral hogs are, crazy.
A little chat with Mat:
Matt and I were talking, yeah, this is not unusual for hog hunting, and we just got that hog without so much as a twitch with a 9mm.
– Drew: And you’ve seen them run, how far was something like this?
– Matt: I’ve tracked them three, four hundred yards.
– Drew: It was that a decent shot or was it a crappy shot?
– Matt: It was not a bad shot.
Shot placement, but the whole purpose of that video was the bullet type, I put a lot of emphasis on the bullet. Is it bonded? Is it going to have jacket separation? Does it fragment? Is it mushrooming? Anyway, interesting.
– Drew: Matt, that one, showed me so what you got here, man!
– Matt: Got a shell that has been spent, and the pigs walking along, find it, pick it up in their mouth and chew on it while they’re walking around.
– Drew: Spin that around. This is why I chose to shoot a hog with a nine mil, I mean they’re tough, they’re so tough that they pick up shell casings and chew them for fun.
If I can stop a feral hog with the nine mil, that is proof. Before we do that take a quick look at the specs and techs, you know exactly what we’re dealing with here, and before I forget, Federal, if Federal is watching this, I would really love to see them come out with this in a plus P, and maybe a couple of different grains of bullets, but this 138 Grain I think is perfect, but I would love to see the plus piece so that we get a little more foot pounds of energy.
Federal Syntech Defense 9mm Specs:
| CALIBER | 9mm Luger |
| GRAIN WEIGHT | 138 |
| BULLET STYLE | Segmented Hollow F |
| MUZZLE VELOCITY | 1050 |
| TEST BARREL LENGTH | 4” |
| PACKAGE QUANTITY | 50 |
| USAGE | Self-defense |
Product Overview
Syntech changed the range forever. Now the technology is revolutionizing protection as well. All-new Syntech Defense provides dynamic terminal performance with a hollow-point bullet that separates into three segments and a deep-penetrating core on impact. The core penetrates 12 to 18 inches through bare ballistics gel and heavy cloathing-a critical benchmark in self-defense situations and the best terminal performance of any round in its class. The petals create three secondary wound channels, each more than 6 inches deep, adding to the terminal effect. Like all Syntech loads, an advanced polymer jacket eliminates lead and copper fouling and drastically reduces damaging heat and friction in the barrel. Its Federal exclusive Catalyst primer provides hot, extremely reliable ignition without the use of lead.
• Best terminal performance in its class
• Hollow-point bullet separates into three segments and a deep-penetrating core on impact
• Core achieves 12 to 18 inches of penetration in both bare ballistics gel and through heavy clothing
• Segments create three secondary wound channels more than 6 inches deep
• Blue polymer jacket reduces barrel heat and friction and eliminates metal fouling
• Extremely reliable Catalyst lead-free primer
Federal Syntech Defense 9mm test at the range
I’m getting my Prodigy here ready to go hog heading. I want to have this zeroed at 25 yards using the Federal here. Let’s take a look, this had been zeroed at 50 using some range ammo, but I want to make sure that we’re dead on at 25 yards, let’s take a look.
This is the four shots with the Federal, I’m gonna do a couple of clicks up, and see if we can get it, I’d like to get them right about here. Let’s give it a go!
Yeah, that’s gonna work just fine!
Ballistic gel test
Let’s just quick-shoot some ballistic gel and see what it does. We’re gonna do the ballistic gel test, I wanted to use the exact same pistol that I went hog hunting with, and here is the ammo that we’ve been talking about. Let’s see what it does, proof is in the pudding, or in this case, proof is in the gel.
We have 16 inches of gel block here and the core went right through, it came out the back, we retained two petals, we’ve got one there and one down there, and the third actually came out the side right here, and the petal depth is seven and a half inches. The other one made it nine inches, and the spread pattern of the petals is five inches as well, so we have basically a triangle of five inches between each of the petals and then the core going through past 16 inches.
Ham test
I was working on a review for AAC’s 300 Blackout ammo and the Jackal, and I happened to have an extra ham. I just figured out one more example of what this round can do. Let’s see what this does with this ham.
Well, it’s not the most scientific, but that is quite interesting, let’s get it up here. There was the entrance, here’s the exit hole, and it is what it is, guys.
Syntech Defense 9mm Hog-hunting test
If you follow my channel, I’m always about proof is in the pudding, let’s take this hog hunting and you can see for yourself.
This is a decent-sized hog it didn’t even get up. So, these guys, you see them get shot with a rifle and take off, and keep trucking, he just rolled over.
Let’s take a look here, so I hit him, got him here in the shoulder, and it came through, look at that, that’s what it did, then that’s where it went through, and it started expanding, we had some petals and came through, and the center part went out, but we did find a petal, one of the petals in the heart, actually was there two holes, there are two holes in the heart, and then we got our exit here and it came out.
This is what I’ve been telling you, guys, about this round and what it’s capable of doing. That’s what we say, proof’s in the pudding, or in this case proof is in the hog.
In comparison to the 10mm
Some of you are going to say “Oh, yeah, but it was the perfect shot” and I could have done the same thing with a full metal jacket in the perfect shot. I got two other hunts that I did with 10mm, check these out real quick, bull hogs ran anywhere from 30 to 50 yards with a perfect shot with a 10mm double lung, and one of them was running up the hill, double lung, and took top of his heart off and still ran 20 yards or more.
There you go, guys, it is what it is. I don’t know if that changes anybody’s mind, it confirmed what I already knew. Some of you, you’re never going to change off the Nine anyway, but like I said, it is what it is. I hope you enjoyed the review, and found it helpful. If so, be sure and hit that subscribe button, guys, it really helps the most. Be sure to like and comment.
Until next time, happy shooting, remember to educate our young people about shooting and gun safety, and every time we’re on the range, every time we’re shooting, hunting, or doing anything with a firearm, everybody’s watching us these days. That makes us ambassadors for the Second Amendment, so be a good Ambassador, and be a safe and responsible gun owner.
