The 10mm is a polarizing cartridge. Many enthusiasts (including law enforcement professionals) consider the 10mm’s recoil too stout to be reliable for self-defense. Many others believe the 10mm’s recoil is negligible, and are comfortable putting so destructive a round to work when their lives are on the line.
Your wrists are strong as solid oak, and your frame can absorb a freight train’s impact. That’s why you fall into the latter category of 10mm shooters, and it’s also why you need the best 10mm ammo for training and self-defense.
Whenever they’re available, we often find ourselves recommending a few certain 10mm loads to our customers. If you’ve been wondering what to load in your Glock 20, SIG P220, Bren Ten or any other 10mm firearm, here is what to look out for!
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Best 10mm Ammo for Self-Defense
Good 10mm Ammo for Bear Hunting/Protection
Best 10mm Ammo for Training
A 10mm handgun can be temperamental. While you can put up with the infrequent failure to feed or extract at the range, you’d really rather not have to put down your firearm until its magazine and chamber have both been emptied. Here are the 10mm range loads we find most reliable for training, target shooting and plinking.
Blazer Brass 10mm 180gr FMJ
Made in Idaho, Blazer’s Brass line of ammunition lets you enjoy CCI’s highly dependable primers without also having to find out whether your 10mm handgun does or does not like Blazer’s unique aluminum shell cases. Blazer’s FMJ bullet has a protected base, so its jacket prohibits hot propellant gasses from vaporizing the lead in its core. Your barrel will still foul, albeit at a noticeably slower pace than with conventional FMJ bullets.
Prvi Partizan 10mm 170gr FMJ
Prvi Partizan is based in Serbia, and many enthusiasts consider their ammo the gold standard as far as range training is concerned. Their 10mm load has a slightly lighter projectile at 170 grains. It accordingly gets a faster muzzle velocity – and not necessarily heavier recoil as the result, but certainly a slightly flatter trajectory which can help with your accuracy. Many people worry that a Serbian manufacturer loads magnetic bullets, but PPU does not put any steel in their cores, jackets or cases.
PMC 10mm 200gr FMJ-TC
PMC is based in South Korea, where their primary job is to ensure their army has enough ammo to deal with their neighbors up north or just across the bay. As an ISO 9001 certified company which manufactures all of their components from raw materials, PMC’s ammo is impressively consistent. Their 10mm range load’s FMJ has a truncated cone nose profile. We find that even finicky 10mm pistols feed FMJ-TC bullets like clockwork, and we also like the way they stamp neat, clean holes through paper targets.
Federal Champion 180gr FMJ
Good old Minnesota. We love your people, we love your hotdish, we love your Federal Premium. This is elemental 10mm range ammunition. It doesn’t do anything particularly fancy or remarkable. It just works, and when your targets are incapable of harming you that’s really all you need it to do.
Best 10mm Ammo for Self-Defense
Self-defense is when you really need that 10mm pistol to purr like a happy kitten. Don’t get us wrong – a middle range manufacturer’s standard jacketed hollow point bullet is still going to wallop a threat with about double the minimum recommended energy for personal protection, so even if the JHP doesn’t expand with perfect symmetry it’s still going to leave a mark. That said, there’s little reason to compromise when it comes to the ammo you might one day ask to save your life. To that end you want the best reliability in terms of feeding, ballistic performance, terminal ballistics and extraction. Here are three of our highest recommendations.
Hornady Critical Duty 10mm 175gr FlexLock
This is cop ammo from Nebraska. Both Hornady’s Critical Defense and Critical Duty lines of ammunition feature nickel-plated brass cases, which reduce friction to ensure more reliable feeding and extraction – as well as resist corrosion in storage and the magazine. Both are loaded with low-flash propellant, which preserves the shooter’s night vision so they can still see their target after firing the first shot.
But only Critical Duty ammo features the FlexLock. It’s a jacketed hollow point bullet, which has a red polymer plug in its nose cavity that prevents it from clogging with debris which could inhibit terminal expansion. The FlexLock also features Hornady’s InterLock band. It keeps the bullet’s core and jacket even more securely affixed to one another than the InterLock ring. Alongside the FlexLock’s tough high-antimony core, the InterLock band promotes extremely reliable penetration and subsequent weight retention through barriers as tough as sheet metal.
Federal Personal Defense HST 10mm 200gr JHP
Federal’s high standards for their engineering, technology and quality assurance protocol always set them apart. They wanted to take a large share of the law enforcement market when they designed their HST projectile, and they had the know-how they needed to pull that off. Personal Defense HST ammo is just about the best there is.
The HST bullet utilizes a shank in its jacket to prevent core/jacket separation, so it avoids fragmentation following high-velocity impact. The HST’s nose cavity is specially designed to avoid clogging – without a polymer plug – which helps the bullet consistently penetrate to the ideal depth and expand to the ideal width as called for by the FBI test protocol. The virtually barrier-blind bullet is seated in a nickel-plated brass case, with a carefully standardized primer and propellant charge to ensure reliable ballistics. (What’s the difference between Personal Defense HST and Law Enforcement HST ammunition? That’s simple: only the packaging.)
Speer Gold Dot 10mm 200gr JHP
There’s a theme here. Alongside Hornady Critical Duty and Federal Personal Defense HST, Speer Gold Dot is one of the most popular lines of ammunition among law enforcement professionals. But the Gold Dot bullet is unique in our list because it is the only one with a true bonded core and jacket.
The Gold Dot bullet begins as a pressure-formed lead core. It is then subjected to the Uni-Cor process, which electrochemically bonds the core to its copper jacket one single atom at a time. Only penetration of auto glass can cause the Gold Dot bullet to shed any significant amount of its weight, so it excels at retaining the momentum it needs for deep penetration.
The Gold Dot bullet’s nose cavity is formed by a series of two die presses. The first presets the width to which the JHP can expand; the second determines how quickly it can expand. In this way the Gold Dot delivers extremely reliable terminal ballistics, which are just what you want when everything is at stake. When teamed up with this 10mm ammo’s expertly loaded nickel-plated brass cases, sealed primers and uniform propellant charges, the Gold Dot bullet excels at personal protection applications.
Best 10mm for Bear Hunting
Federal Solid Core – Syntech 200 Grain Hard Cast Bullets
Heavy at 200 grain and designed for maximum penetration. When you need a 10mm load for bear protection, this is the good stuff. With about 1,200 feet per second of muzzle velocity, you’re looking at ammo that packs about 600 ft-lbs of energy at close range. That should be enough to do significant damage to most black bears that you’ll find and is among your best bets in 10mm offerings against grizzlies too.
Underwood Ammo – 220 Grain Hard Cast
Another solid pick for protecting yourself from dangerous game – Underwood’s 220-grain load delivers about 1,200 feet per second of muzzle velocity. That’s about 700 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle!
Conclusion
This list isn’t exhaustive. American ammo manufacturers including Buffalo Bore, Corbon and Underwood exclusively produce high-quality self-defense 10mm ammo, and several foreign manufacturers’ JHP loads are nothing to sneeze at, either. And if you’re looking for 10mm ammo that is suitable for defense against bears, check out Federal Solid Core label ammo with Syntech jacketed hard cast bullets.
Just make sure you test out your self-defense ammo before you need it. Ultimately, your own review of a round’s performance is the only one that truly counts!
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