Gday nksmfamjp
I'll confess straight up I hate gel & I've never had anything to do with it or the fbi or really don't know a lot on there full criteria only snippets on a little I've read
My hate
goes back when some one used it as a promotional tool & said in the article this is what it will do in critters
Well I was sucked in bought a heap of pills worked up loads & headed off culling for a week
Man alive what a train wreck first day , I lost critters had critters walking off a long way & apart from ****g me made me sick
I cut my ranges way down & was extremely picky on my shots & I lost my job on that property as my numbers were well down
That was one hard pill to swallow & vouched I'd never use it & to this day I have never used it
But I have confidence that a lot has been learned from those early days but once again I don't know if we can take it as gospel that a pill will behave the same in gel as critters
As the critter has different viscosities of tissues & those produce different resistances then add bones & some angles or bone structure will protect vitals
A Cape buffalo is great example as their ribs basically have no gaps between them
View attachment 551331especially the further forward they are & to try & get a pill to penertrate these consistently is one that is hard to do
So I just go about testing on different critters trying to replicate that potential shot angle & what it does on rib bones ( horses are great )
Here's a pet cow for easier illustration
View attachment 551332& shows the rib diameter but it's not just hitting a rib it's where you hit it & the angle then you eventually work out which pills work & which are less than ideal to a complete failure as if the transition zone is to long you watch a pill slide off these ribs
Now move to you've seen a lot of gel tests where the hammer exits the 20 od In mark & I have a theory on that , really don't know just guessing off observations in the field in critters
So when the hh , sh , ph &ah lines shed petals they predominantly shed them in around a 270 degree pattern ( very few 360 degrees ) this pattern puts tork on the pill & as it looses its stability in the gel along with the velocity the pill is drawn to one side & most likely I would assume the way of the rifling twist hence your exit of the gel block
Now move to critters & it's one I test a lot for as if your pill lacks straight line penetration it's useless imo of giving consistent results now this I've not seen in critters unless you have a compromised meplat ( levels of this before it becomes bad ) now the compromised meplat is nothing related to hammers this is industry wide issues & bones or shedding or mechanical broadhead issues are where you see these issues occurring
Now tumbling also is one I watch carefully as that also give's erratic results
Now some of the hammers were terrible & actually $h-t today it's somewhat changed as
This information was gathered & relayed to the hammerboys which the vast majority were fixed I believe ( I don't know & not privelaged of all the details on all those pills )
Now move to the hht
This pill has been immune to mechanical broadhead problems & so far has failed to produce one nose over where the hh ah line did have the issue occasionally & that decreased as hp size increased
Note what size hp Berger has as that's a clue on where it fails
I just checked my notes & 4 figures of critters ( various large game not wallaby & not starting with a 1 ) with the 215 Berger in a 300 wm & frontal rib slide was a issue on that pill among a couple of other issues & why I liked the amax better as it was a more consistent pill overall
So to me gel has a place for seeing what a pill does from a consistent media but I don't think it shows the true what does happen in critters
Some time ago on a coyote thread I put up don't dismiss those results on yotes as useless as information for large game ( I should've put not all ) I believe it can be useful but just like gel we will need to interpret a touch but some parts of a pill behaviour I believe it can be helpful
I've tuned my research on how pills act on wallabies today & I had some train wrecks also initially on this thought process but I learnt what to look for & today they are part of my evaluation of a pills preformance along with the various other critters I do to complete those trials
So gel im not as hard on it today but man I don't trust it as nothing like a critter to show the truth
Yep critters are my gel & I still doubt I'll use it but do enjoy watching it
Hope it makes sense
Cheers