Help Support Long Range Hunting Forum
We all grew up being told that the bigger in dia the bullet deforms the better. The old classic rounded mushroom. The fact is the larger the bullet mushrooms or opens compared to caliber and sectional density the faster it slows down. As the bullet slows down it does less and less damage up until the point that is slows to a stop at which point it does no damage. The next problem is the nice rounded mushroom shape vs a flat frontal area. The rounded shape will part its way through the soft tissue not imparting as much disruption as a squared off flat frontal area the displaces soft tissue perpendicular to the direction of travel. So if you think about it the faster the deformed shape continues to travel the more damage it will do. If I could make a magic bullet I would want it to instantly deform on impact and then travel through the animal without losing any vel. That way the tearing of tissue would stay consistent all the way through the animal and not become less and less as the bullet slows down. This brings us to the next fallacy that we all grew up accepting as fact. Energy. It is really a small part of the equation, not nearly as important as we have all been lead to believe. I obviously takes energy to get the bullet to the target and energy to make it deform and move through the animal. The idea of "energy dump" is nothing more than campfire lore. If we take it to the logical end you can see the problem. If a bullet hits and flattens out to the point that it is stopped on the entrance hide of a deer, all of the energy of that bullet was 100% absorbed by that deer, yet he will run off with a nasty bruise. Now that we all agree that would be bullet failure with 100% "energy dump". If a bullet hits the deer and is unable to use it's energy to deform properly and parts it's way through the animal in its ballistic form doing little damage to the vital soft tissue. That is another obvious bullet failure, not because it failed to "energy dump", but because it did not disrupt enough vital tissue because of the shape or form of the bullet after impact. I think we can all agree on the these two obvious scenarios.
This is a 221g 8mm Hammer Hunter recovered from a blacktail shot end to end. This is perfect bullet performance. With our copper we are able to get this result throughout the range of impact vel. They always deform to the depth of the hollow point and square up the front of the bullet. What we are after, is this bullet deformation as fast as possible, in order to have that terminal form all the way through the animal. We want the bullet to change from its ballistic form to its terminal form as quickly as possible. Kind of like when the old timers used to load bullets backwards for dangerous animals. We want our bullets to take on that dangerous game form as quickly as possible after impact.
