Mostly for around my home. What say you on the “best” ammo I can find? Thanks…
I am a fan of the M1 Carbine and I currently own two of them. I have magazines loaded with PPU SP for my Jeep carbine. The biggest issue with the M1 Carbine is that a lot of them are limited by what SP ammunition they will feed.
You asked a tough question. Hopefully someone who has seen an attacker shot with a M1 Carbine loaded with SP ammunition will respond.
This thread has a lot of good info on .30 Carbine ammo.
PPU, Hornady, CorBon and Federal all soft points
I recently acquired a USGI Inland M1 Carbine. I am working on getting it reliable, as it occasionally will fail to feed, but I think the bolt needs a good cleaning as does the chamber. I am using Korean mags, and they have a good rep, but I may get some USGI mags just to see how they work. I should probably replace some springs also, as the rifle has sat in someone’s safe for over twenty years, and I don’t know the last time it was shot, nor serviced. Anyway, it does shoot well, and I can get through several mags before a failure. As soon as I can get comfortable with it, I may use it for an HD carbine, and will try some soft points. I have been using PPU ammo so far, and have reloaded for it, but think my crimp must be wrong, as my reloads won’t ignite. 
Pilot1,
Once you have performed your initial cleaning, try to avoid removing the action from the stock frequently. You should not have to remove the action from the stock for cleaning any more frequently than every 500 rounds or so. You can clean the weapon with the action in the stock. A chamber cleaning brush with 90 degree cleaning rod is a good tool to have on hand. An Otis cleaning kit or other pull through cleaning kit is the way to go in my opinion.
A thorough cleaning and a new operating spring will do wonders for a M1 Carbine and on occasion a new hammer spring is necessary. I have learned that oil is a more suitable lubricant than grease for reliability. Keeping the chamber clean is more critical for reliability than with other service rifles. The Korean magazines work really well in most carbines and I would look at cleaning and springs before spending any money on magazines.
If you are getting light primer hits with reloads, check the brass length, because the case headspaces off the case mouth. A dirty chamber and brass length have been the two most prominent factors with light primer hits in my opinion.
I’ve high jacked this thread enough. If accuracy drops off or the POI shifts significantly at 100 yards after 1,000 rounds, PM me or start a new thread and we can cover recoil plate adjustment. Inside the home or 25 meters it makes no difference one way or the other if you are going to use the carbine for home defense.
T2C
Sticky???
… I don’t think this question is asked often enough for that. 
My dad always liked CorBon for his.
In my experience with several milsurp M1 Carbines, they tend to be unreliable with anything other than FMJ. Because of the feed path, softpoints and hollowpoints tend to get hung up. And it can vary from individual magazine to individual magazine.
You really have to testfire a significant number of the rounds with the exact magazines that you intend to use. It gets frustrating since the ammo you may find an ammo that shoots reliably for 50-75 rounds, only to have it fail to feed between 75 and 100. Then you try another brand of softpoint or hollowpoint, only to have it happen again.
Below are three rounds of ammo for comparison. The first found is an FMJ round. The Middle round is a Privi Partisan SP that failed to feed. Notice a wedge shaped gouge on its nose. This was from when the round caught on the feedramp when it failed to feed. Also notice that the soft lead tip has flattened out somewhat compared to next round over which is a fresh from the box softpoint.
I also noticed that when I manually ejected chamber softpoint the tip often exhibited some misshape or flattening. I didn’t have any better luck with hollowpoints in terms of feeding reliability.
It got to the point where I gave up on trying to find a softpoint or hollowpoint that ran reliably. I had the luxury of doing this because the M1 was not close to being my main home defense gun. If I had to use either of my M1 carbines for home defense I would do so with FMJ for reliability reasons.
You definitely need to test different SP ammunition for reliability. I have a Quality Hardware carbine that will feed anything and everything reliably. Most M1 Carbines won’t.
Remington 110gr SP. Saw somewhere (DocKGR?) where it was the equivalent of a .357 Magnum 158gr hunting round terminal ballistics-wise.
However, good luck finding them and then they’re about $1 per round. I have a box of 50 and don’t have a carbine anymore!
Little bit old of thread, but so are these M1 Carbines. My recently purchased 1943 Underwood would not feed any soft points at all, so I did a good cleaning and lube, then loaded some snap caps in a mag, and slowly nudged them out of the mag to see what could be causing the problem. The feed ramp where the nose of the bullets meet was no where near smooth. I spent about a hour with a dermal and a small polishing wheel and it now will feed any soft points I have tried.
I carried a M1 Carbine in Korea, and a modified M2 in Nam, and love the little gun.
I would say any soft nosed ammo that feed reliably will work very well.
Here are three Remington Soft Nosed bullets recovered from deer. Shots ranged from 25yds to 100yds.
Hunting rounds are effective at these ranges.
I know the Barnes X bullet (solid copper hollow point) does very well in all the other calibers (rifle and handgun). Not a stretch to think it would in .30 caliber also.
I remember that Jim Cirillo of NYPD stake out squad fame said of all the weapons they used in shooting AR15’s. shotguns, 1911’s, 38’s a M1 carbine with 125 grain soft points put down people the best.
Thanks for posting that, hamour.
I have also had good luck with the Remington soft points. And I agree, testing is key. I usually try to buy ammo that expensive on sale, at least after the first couple boxes…
I’m fond of the Remington 110 SP as I use the same projectile in my reloads, loaded to the same OAL as the factory ammo for my practice ammo. Zero feeding problems with the factory ammo or reloads. Inland BTW.
Keith