Your 9mm is a high pressure round, use bullets that allow you to benefit from that high pressure.

You're also limited by the short bbl of your firearm. The heavier the bullet the harder it is to keep the velocities up in that short bbl.

A 160gr bullet in a short bbl's 9mm doing 800fps/850fps isn't going to cut the mustard. People are getting the same things from their snub nosed 38spl's and have found that combo to be anemic.

I've done a lot of testing with short bbl'd firearms along with casting & swaging (jacketed & lead) my own bullets to test with. At the end of the day anything over 135gr's in a short bbl'd 9mm was taking away from the effectiveness of the high pressured 9mm turning it into a 38spl.

This is not a hot load by any means, a 125gr hp in a 3.2" bbl'd 9mm doing 1050fps. I've easily loaded these same bullets over 1150fps+ without using extreme loads.



7"+ of penetration in wet newpaper and over 1/2" of expansion with excellent weight retention.

Keep your eye on the prize:
Anything under 900fps is pretty much useless. The 147gr hydra-shok bullets are in that range and are borderline at best at those velocities. The only thing the hydra-shok's have going for them is the hp design that was made for low velocities. Hence 135gr hydra-shok for short bbl's (1060fps rated) and 147gr hydra-shok for standard length bbl's (1000fps rated).

Really you should be starting with light bullets, around 100gr and working your way up to the 150gr bullets testing different hp designs as you go. It's nothing to get a .355" to expand to 1/2" or better. Getting penetration with that expanded bullet in a short bbl'd 9mm is another story.

Something else to check:
Most 9mm's have oversized bbl's & even if they don't it doesn't hurt anything to use .358" lead bullets in a 9mm. I have 3 different 9mm's and 1 of them (that taurus pictured above) needs a .358" bullet (oversized bore). Got tired of loading ammo specific bullets for that pistol and .356" bullets for the other 2. Now I size/load everything .358", life is good!!! Not only is it simper to do, I can now use the same .358" bullets in the 9mm/38spl/357's. Tons of reloaders are doing the same thing over on the cast bullet website.

Jacketed bullets ='s no to .358" bullets.
lead bullets ='s yes to .358" bullets.