Experience with .30 caliber sabots with .22 bullets?

[substratum]

Have any of you reloaded a .30 caliber round with a .22 bullet using sabots, and felt like the result was worth the effort?

I was thinking about it for a .308 or .30-06 bolt action rifle, because it would make available a wide array of high-peforming .22 bullets (36 to 85 grains) along with the already wide range of .30 bullets on the market. If they perform adequately, it'd be like having two rifles in one, which is pretty appealing.

The bottom line is that I don't want to waste time playing with sabots unless those loads are capable of fairly high performance, say within 5% of the .30 bullets fired from the same rifle with respect to accuracy out to a couple of hundred yards.

Any experience with sabots, or thoughts on the matter?

 

[substratum]

Really? No one has experience reloading sabots?

 

[Bear44]

I have never done it myself, but one of the big ammo makers used to do it and the last time I checked there were some sabots made specifically for people to build this type of round with. The consistent problem that I have heard is with accuracy. Nobody has been able to do it and still have good enough accuracy to make the .22 load useful for what most people would want it for. I would also think that you would have serious issues with the plastic sabot fouling the barrel at the velocities you would be getting.

 

[substratum]

I have never done it myself, but one of the big ammo makers used to do it and the last time I checked there were some sabots made specifically for people to build this type of round with. The consistent problem that I have heard is with accuracy. Nobody has been able to do it and still have good enough accuracy to make the .22 load useful for what most people would want it for. I would also think that you would have serious issues with the plastic sabot fouling the barrel at the velocities you would be getting.

I knew Remington used to load the Accelerator in .30-06 with a .22 bullet, but wasn't sure what the reason they stopped was. I've seen several suppliers of the sabots, and they are relatively cheap, but it sounds like it's not worth fooling with. I appreciate it.

 

[BHJ]

I have not hand loaded any of the sabot rounds but have shot a couple of boxes of the accelerators. My 1-10 twist -06 that is easily under an inch with 168s would put them into a pie plate sized group at 100. It does the same thing with 125gr factory ammo too. I imagine if you worked enough load development you could improve it but Personally I just never thought it worth the effort. Where it's legal to do so you can just put a 168 into Mr. bunnyrabbits head and there is plenty left to eat.