.223 Remington from .30-30 Winchester?

Multitasking for Varmints

- Art Merrill

A.22-caliber sabot kit from E. Arthur Brown Company can step up .30-30 Winchester velocity into varminting territory.

Shooters old enough to remember Y2K may also remember Remington's "Accelerator" round a .30-30 Winchester, .308 Winchester or .30-06 cartridge that launched a 55-grain, .224-inch bullet via a .30-caliber plastic sabot. Remington introduced the Accelerator line in 1977, which had a run of about 30 years. Its purpose, of course, was to wring some viable varminting from a big-game rifle and cartridge. The Accelerator is discontinued, but handloaders can experiment with the concept with components still available today.

Remington's aptly named Accelerator added a blistering 600 to 1,000 feet per second (fps) to the aforementioned .30-caliber cartridges compared to its standard-weight bullet loadings. The .30-30 Winchester Accelerator boasted 3,400 fps; the .308 Winchester 3,770 fps; and the .30-06 version broke the 4,000-fps barrier at an advertised 4,080 fps. Those speeds were made possible by the plastic sabot.

Shotgunners know the sabot as the plastic sleeve that encases a bullet. For muzzleloader shooters, a sabot permits firing, for example, modern .45-caliber, jacketed pistol bullets in a .50-caliber rifle. Cartridge rifle shooters and hand-loaders are perhaps less familiar with the sabot.

The sabot (a French word for a wooden shoe and pronounced, "se - BŌ") concept goes back at least 200 years, when the French utilized it in 1824 to fire newfangled explosive shells from a naval canon. That sabot was made of wood, accounting for its name, though other materials, such as plastics, soft metals and carbon fiber are used in making modern sabots.

Wringing varmint velocity from a .30-30 Winchester can be done with sabots and .22-caliber bullets.