Educational Zone #108 - Wolf Gold, .32 ACP Ammo Evaluation

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Educational Zone #108 - Wolf Gold, .32 ACP Ammo Evaluation - Page 1

This will be a short report, because there isn't much to say.

Here is the pistol.

It is a KelTec P-32, which fires the .32 ACP cartridge.

The reason for this pistol is that it is very small and can be carried very easily.

It is usually used as a Back Up Gun (BUG). It is not anywhere close to a real fighting handgun and the caliber is very weak for a centerfire cartridge.

But it is better than a sharp stick.

I usually carry this cartridge in it, the Winchester 71 grain Truncated Cone cartridge.

Why not a Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)?

Well, because in this small round, JHPs will often fail to expand, and even if they do expand, that will often cause them to fail to reach the FBI standard of 12 inches minimum penetration.

I would rather hit a vital organ with a truncated cone bullet, than have a JHP fail to penetrate deeply enough.

My friend Joe bought some Wolf Gold, .32 ACP, 71 grain, Round Nose FMJ bullets.

He only wanted these for target practice and thought the less-expensive Wolf ammo would be all right for such use. We were to see otherwise.

The rounds were noticeably weak when shot.

You could tell from the report and recoil that they were unusually weak.

But the biggest problem was that they were so weak that they would not cycle the action on the pistol.

Now this pistol runs 100% with the Winchester ammo, but these Wolf rounds would not even completely open the action and eject the spent rounds.

In addition, we both felt powder and gas blow back when we shot the pistol and theorized that it was because of a failure of the brass cases to completely seal the chamber and that allowed gases to blow back past the cases.

I have experienced this same problem, to a lesser extent, with Wolf steel cased .30 carbine ammo, here: Wolf .30 Carbine Ammo. At least I could shoot those rounds in my Ruger .30 carbine revolver, but there is no other use for the .32 Auto rounds.

By the way, I shoot a lot of Wolf ammo in other calibers and have no problem with it, so I am not prejudiced against Wolf ammo.

Conclusions:
1. Cheap ammo is not always worth even the lesser price.

2. Having to hand-cycle ammo kind of spoils a shooting session.

3. I cannot recommend Wolf Gold .32 Auto, even for practice.