My typical coyote hunt with an AR, or any other rifle or shotgun, starts out by picking a good setup spot and calling them in. This hunt with Advanced Armament Corporation’s new 300 Blackout rifle would be anything but typical.
It was a good time of day to begin a hunt, about 90 minutes before sundown. It was the right place, in West Texas near Brownfield. Things deviated from the norm when I buckled my seat belt and the pilot of the 4-seat chopper powered up and blew dust everywhere. We were on a control mission to help eradicate fawn-eating coyotes that had decimated the local mule deer and whitetail populations.
A 5-mile flight to a broad expanse of sand hills put us on alert for any movement or shadows that looked out of place. Pilot Kyle Lange scanned one side while I watched from the left-hand seat. Suddenly, I spied a fat female coyote at the same time Kyle spotted the male of the breeding pair.
Since the stiff 14 mile-per-hour wind favored a turn toward the female, we broke off as the pair tried to put distance between themselves and the chopper. The female ran through the brush alongside of an old barbed-wire fence as we closed the distance and slowed to equal her ground speed. At 40 yards, I picked her up in the Trijicon ACOG .300 BLK’s reticle and waited for the center dot to find fur. At the precise moment of their intersection, I broke the sear of the AAC’s trigger and watched her roll and flip tail over head and come to an abrupt stop. The 110-grain Barnes handload was devastating. “Good shot,” Lange said, “but it’s all downhill from there.”
Shots at running game are a challenge for any rifle shooter, but doing it while moving at high speed from any number of angles ratchets up difficulty several notches. Then, add innumerable lead calculations, and the task gets mind boggling. As we clawed for altitude after the first kill to spot the fleeing male, we finally regained visual contact. As easy as I made the first shot look, this one would be at the other end of the spectrum. The coyote was running across the wind and angling toward the downwind direction, which made flying a bit tricky for Kyle. Just as we closed the gap and I was drawing a bead on the running coyote, it dug in and skidded to a halt and ran back under the chopper. We circled back into the wind and found the coyote again running flat out for the county line. We closed the gap again, only to have it slam on the brakes and run back under the chopper just as I was ready to pull the trigger. It wasn’t the last time the sly dog pulled this trick. Five times in all, it slid to a halt and did a 180, seemingly accustomed to avoiding airborne pursuit.
Finally, the tricky male got tired and stood its ground, snarling and jumping at the chopper. The only problem was that it kept a mesquite bush between himself and the chopper. Since I wasn’t having much luck getting an open shot, I started pouring .300 BLK rounds through the bush. About the ninth round, I connected, and we circled and I put a final 10th finishing round through his boiler room. Over the next several minutes, we jumped three other coyotes and I killed them all with one or two rounds each.
The next couple of days of copter coyote control tallied 40 coyotes for AAC’s MPW .300 Blackout rifle and gave me ample opportunity to evaluate its effectiveness on killing coyotes. When I got the timing right and broke the sear at the opportune moment, the new .30 caliber round was quite effective.
Gun Details
AAC’s 16-inch MPW .300 Blackout is a matched upper and lower receiver gas impingement carbine that first appears like most other AR-15 clones, but when you look closely some important features take this rifle to a better-than-average modern sporting rifle. The 16-inch AAC 300 BLK upper is designed for use with a carbine receiver extension, standard GI buffer spring, and a carbine buffer.
Components are of premium quality. The 1:7 twist barrel is nitrite treated to provide extreme corrosion resistance and high hardness for a long life, and test reveal that it outperforms chrome-lined barrels for longevity without the potential impediments to accuracy. The muzzle is threaded 5/8-24 and includes an AAC 51-tooth Blackout flash suppressor with the complete upper. A Knight’s Armament free-floating URX III free-float handguard helps maintain accuracy while providing for the mounting of accessories.
The bolt carrier group’s nickel boron (Ni-B) UCT EXO coating has a very high hardness and lower friction than either chrome or nickel Teflon. There is also a base layer of high-phosphorous electroless nickel that ensures the extreme corrosion protection that is absent from other Nickel Boron carriers that use a single, thinner layer. The bolt itself is Carpenter 158 phosphated shot-peened steel to ensure precise dimensions with no concerns for hydrogen embrittlement in the critical lug area. A special green o-ring that is tested to not bind even at -40 degrees F is standard. The extractor spring is made from premium ultra-strong wire and is a low fatigue design to ensure the longest possible life. The extractor pin made from 300 ksi S2 tool steel – not the much lower strength S7 more commonly used. Finally, a properly-staked carrier-key with Permatex gasket-seal compound ensures no gas leakage. The trigger is a Geissele providing great feel and reliability, and the 6-position CTR stock and MOE pistol grip is made by Magpul Industries.
The optic that made perfect sense to mate with the 16-inch AAC .300 Blackout rifle was ACOG’s new .300 Blackout optic. This 3x scope features an amber crosshair and bullet drop internal markings that work equally well with subsonic or faster rounds. This 11.64-ounce scope includes a TA60 mount that fastens to any Picatinny rail. The reticle is illuminated with both fiber optics and tritium to light up the amber crosshairs in any lighting condition.
Performance
Live targets provided a wealth of terminal information that just can’t be obtained with a chronograph and holes in a paper target. I have sent a few thousand factory rounds and handloads down range over the past several years from a .300 Whisper, a.k.a. .300 Fireball, a.k.a. 300 AAC Blackout, and I typically get adequate accuracy well under 2 MOA out to 200 yards with subsoincs and a bit further with faster loads. I wanted to try a couple of new factory loads to see how they performed on coyote-sized game. The first load chosen was Remington’s 220-grain subsonic that averaged 1,079 fps. Measured with an Oehler 35P chronograph, the standard deviation registered 51 fps, with a 148 fps extreme spread. On game, the big, slow bullets killed coyotes with ease, but without the need for a quiet suppressed load, the lack of speed was a hindrance rather than a help. On paper, this load’s best 5-shot group at 100 yards measured 1.126 inches.
At the other end of the factory load spectrum for this cartridge, Hornady’s 110-grain VMax averaged 2,364 fps. The standard deviation was 19 fps, and the extreme spread was 57 fps. This is an excellent coyote round, and at more than twice the speed of a subsonic load, it reduced the required lead for running game. The best 100-yard group measured .942-inch.
Since I needed to be prepared to fire hundreds of rounds on this hunt, I cranked up the reloading press and loaded a mixed bag of rounds to try to catch up with speeding coyotes. Since I wasn’t concerned with shooting subsonic loads, I wanted to drive every bullet loaded as fast as possible with the diminutive case.
The first handload consisted of 12.2 grains of H110 driving a 208-grain Hornady AMax an average of 1,456 fps. It had an extreme spread of 28 fps, and a standard deviation of 8 fps. Although my shots would typically be less than 50 yards at running game, I wanted a comparable measure of accuracy at 100 yards. With the small standard deviation, I wasn’t too surprised to find that this load would print MOA, with the best 5-shot group measuring .955-inch.
The next load was with 125-grain Remington “pink” spire points, which averaged 2,139 fps. The standard deviation was 25 fps, and the extreme spread 61 fps. This load hovered around MOA, and the smallest group measured 1.123-inch.
The last load was my favorite for hunting; the solidly built 125-grain Barnes TTSX loaded with 17.7 grains of H110, which averaged 2,373 fps. The standard deviation was 30 fps, and the extreme spread was 100 fps. A great hunting load, this load hovered around 1.5 MOA, and the best group measured 1.282 inches.
A natural accessory with this carbine is AAC’s 7.62 SDN6 suppressor. I’ve been shooting an AAC Cyclone .30-caliber suppressor for several years, but I wanted to try a more compact can, so I chose the SDN6. It is ideally suited for the .300 BLK round, with a sound reduction of 39 dB with this cartridge. In the confines of a chopper, not only did I appreciate the gunfire suppression, but my pilot welcomed it, too. All of my range work and aerial shooting was conducted with the SDN6 in place.
Not only is this suppressor compact, at 7.66 inches, and only adds 6.1 inches to the weapon’s length. Its 20-ounce weight is favorable in comparison to the heavier Cyclone, too. The diameter is 1.5 inches, and it attaches via a 51-tooth ratchet mount to a Blackout flash hider.
After four flights, the coyote body count was quite impressive, but the last morning was special. Taking off at sunrise, we hoped to get in some flying time before the morning winds made it unsafe to be airborne. Not long into the flight, we were circling over a dried-up lake that had been a previous hot spot. After repeated hammering, we only jumped and killed two coyotes before moving on. A few minutes flying time to a fresh area found it loaded. During the next hour, we jumped about a dozen and a half speedsters and I managed to put 11 of them in the bag.
Just five flights producing 40 coyotes for the .300 Blackout is a lot of shooting crammed into a short period of time. This rig functioned beautifully and will provide many years of fun shooting with this fantastic round.
SPECIFICATIONS
- Manufacturer: Advanced Armament Corporation
- Model: MPW
- Caliber: .300 AAC Blackout
- Action: Direct Gas Impingement
- Barrel: 16-in., AAC 51T Blackout flash hider
- Weight: 6.4 pounds
- Length: 31.6 in.-35.4 in.
- Stock: Magpul CTR
- MSRP: $1,600
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