Gday Steve
Nice explanation
I might complicate things a bit but I hope not
I think this was the classic high shoulder shot that so often gives very dramatic results. The bullet penetrated far enough but did little internal damage. I suppose if he hand been 1" higher the spine would have been impacted and his finishing shot would have been within minutes instead of six months. Hard to say he was really off his mark. His shot did hit the lungs. The problem here is bullet performance. Not bullet failure. This bullet worked as designed. Problem is the bullet squished / expanded too much on the impact causing it to lose to much velocity. It lost so much velocity that as it passed through the lungs it no longer made a large enough permanent wound to cause the vital tissue to bleed enough to shut off the CNS. Also the nice rounded mushroom gently parting its way through the vital tissue doing little tearing. This is the problem with the theory that bullets should not pass through an animal in order to "dump" all of their energy into the animal. Bullets do not have sensors that tell them when to expand and when to stop. Every bullet begins to rapidly slow down upon impact lessoning the ability to do damage until it stops and no longer does any damage. If somehow this bullet could have magically hit as it did but then retained all of it's velocity all the way through the animal then the result would have been much different. We all know that no bullet can do that, but by design this bullet and other "energy dump" bullets are set up for failure when the impact velocity is too high or the initial impact is too dense. In this case both. High velocity impact on the shoulder. A bullet with more integrity that has more control over the amount of deformation and shed weight would have lost less velocity on the impact, passed through the vitals with more retained velocity creating a larger round channel that would have done more lung damage and spine damage. Then likely passing through the animal creating the exit hole. The exit hole is not what kills this animal. The retained velocity that made it possible to exit is what would have killed it the first time, 6 months ago.
I don't think there was failure here by hunter or bullet. Just poor bullet performance.
This is the one we need to delve deeper to get the greatest understanding
First off let's work with the situation here
Hit the shoulder & looks like a knuckle shot or just on top of it on the thicker part of the scapula on a upward angle
This has caused with this type of pill also frangible & even the bonded @ these impacts & weight old SD comes to play here & resistance which created a dump of the majority of the energy in the shoulder
Broadly speaking Move to monos regardless of type ( mushroom or shedding ) @ these velocities & the bubble would have been longer & once through the shoulder & entering the chest cavity the damage would have been from a little to a lot more damage ( pill design here also has a bearing but not as much as lower velocity impacts ) or step up another 200 or 400 & mono also can suffer from the eneregy dump scenario & @ the speed here a fair chance bone fragment would have caused more damage internally
It's finding the velocity windows that actually kill well across all resistances we encounter not just killing that is the one we can learn more on & one that is fascinating to some myself included
The hard part for some of us to understand is pill preformance so let's look @ gel ( yep hate it but it's a great visual )
The bubble helps us understand a bit more & the permanent wound channel is just as good but I don't like comparing that to critters as so many resistances throughout a critters that a pill encounters so let's look @ this pic
& if we could guarantee that across varying resistances we could get this section with the yellow arrow in the critters vitals across various angles we have the ultimate pill design but a pill dosent magically stop there as you stated & we have tapered wound channels in every brand some long & narrow some short & wide others a good mix of the 2 it's when we get the last 2 blocks on the stopped pill side we get poor performance
Now we add the resistance side & these bubbles change again & where we can be left wanting a bit more to a lot & this in my opinion is where this pill was lacking & we got more of these last 2 blocks than the first 2 of where it mattered the resistance also shortened the first 2 blocks especially the first from what I've seen on countless animals & knuckle like hits
A exit from what I've seen is not just getting a exit as on the pic above if you can get a exit in the first block you've got a extremely potent pill but if the first 2 blocks are not in the vitals & the last blocks are in the vials & exit occurs that's useless also
It's getting the correct bubble to get the best result's possible & I need to make this clear not all bubbles are equal even though in gel they look very similar it's in critters that we see different results
Here's also a good comparison from Norma
on what pill will potentially do what on a average base now I can guarantee these will change on different resistances & Norma is not really to blame as they can't give a exact result across so many variables but what we have today is a better idea of where they will work than the old type pills we used to use & there recommended use on what critters I think it's our help in giving advice to the the newcomers on lines in the sand to be careful of eg when you hear keep off bone ! explain is better than saying nothing & let them get bad results
Hope that all makes sense & just how I look @ things
Looking forward to the other side of the coin
Cheers
