What hits harder?

[jwp475]

A Buffalo that I took with a 500 Linebaugh shooting a 525 grain Flat Point Hard Cast at 1100 FPS for 1176 FPE . One shot and he was done there was blood pumping out of the entrance and exit hole... Thisw is not much Energy when compared to the neray 1 ton wieght of these animals....With the large bore revolvers you can see a visual impact on the Animal with hit

 

[Teutonic]

Anecdotely I have found that a 12 gauge foster slug has planted every deer shot with it immediately. I am convinced of one thing. Breaking both shoulders is the shot of choice to plant a deer where it stands.

 

[blackco]

jwp475,
First, the computer I'm on won't show most pics (security stuff) I really wish I could see. I have a GOOD idea though.

I am positive you and I are talking about the exact same thing! I use "energy" for lack of a batter term. It's energy that's "crushing and destroying tissue." (well put) I shoot big revolvers also; not nearly as big or as much as you, darn :-( I remember reading something a long time ago about pistol bullets, I think from Kieth, supporting the "wide flat point" of hard cast SWC big-bore pistol bullets (that's all I shoot). It said people who shoot rifles want a bullet that expands, a 243 that expands to double its original caliber is great results; that's 48 caliber and a "wide flat point." Low and behold, that's exactly what you are shooting out of your 475's, not even what you are shooting from your 500, and just a little more than I get out of my 454. What you have in mass(weight) they make up for in velocity. The problem with velocity is it disapears FAST in big animals (don't shoot a bear with the 22-250). I am a big supporter of shooting big animals with big-bore revolvers; I REALLY want to shoot a buffalo with my Casull. Since your bullet is already expanded when it makes contact with the animal (wide flat point) it is immediatly transfering energy (energy dump) into the animal (crushing and destroying tissue) which causes the visual impact to the animal.

Your evidence from pistols proves what I was trying to say and pistols demonstrate it quite well; the shape of a pistol HUNTING bullet transfers the energy (energy dump) into the animal quickly while the weight of the pistol bullets pushes it all the way through the animal (perfect load for the animal).

As I read back through this I appologize if it sounds derogatory or like a flame, IT IS NOT IN ANY WAY MEANT THAT WAY!!! I agree 100% with what you said, I just hope I didn't fail misserably in conveying that.

Teutonic, you're dead balls on. If the animal is within the effective range of a slug (I have NO experience) that's a great choice. It's awful hard for an animal to go far with no front legs. That was also the shot of choice for many moose hunters in Alaska shooting 30-06. A round nose bullet through the shoulders anchored the animal, then they would finish it if necessary when they got up to it.

 

[Stocky]

Elmer Keith and Jack O'Connor argued about this for at least 50 years. O'Connor claimed the faster bullet (.270 Win) did enough damage, for griz and elk while Keith considered anything smaller than a .338 a varmint round.

Read some of their old stuff, as well as "Game Loads & Practical Ballistics for The North American Hunter" by Bob Hagel. They all contain many pages describing the factors in play.

 

[4LClover]

I have always felt that bullet diameter, construction, and velocity are what make a bullet lethal.

-Take a .338 and 7mm bullet at the same speed and the amount of hydrostatic shock from the .338 will be greater along with the energy and wound channel.

-If both bullets are delivering the same energy the 7mm will probably be going faster and cause more shock.

-Arrows (slow) kill by blood loss because they cannot deliver shock like a bullet. A fast moving bullet in the same place will often drop the animal due to shock and then the bleedout occurs rapidly. My oldest son once shot an antelope in the neck Mel Brooks style, and chased it for miles. It got away. With a fast bullet it would not have taken a step.

-Energy dumping is great if you are hunting prairie dogs with bergers or VG's, but shock and tissue destruction are what kills. I have seen two different hunters shoot animals in the brisket just below the heart and both animals were DRT with zero blood loss. Shock from a high velocity projectile stopped the heart both times. The heart was swollen and blue. Wierd eh?

-Elk are not made of steel but a .222 will penetrate 1/4" plate at 200yds. wheras a 45-70 with more energy will not. A .45ACP can't even do it point blank.

-If energy dumping is so fantastic then why are solids used on large African game? Oooops, I hit the buffalo in the shoulder with my Berger bullet and dumped all the energy!

-Take a 180gr berger and 180gr partition and hit an elk in the front leg bone at 500yds and guess which one runs farther?

-put a small bullet hole through an animals heart and it quits working quickly. A lung with a small bullet hole can work pretty good for quite a while.

I think that everything you need to know about bullet lethality can be learned by watching slo-mo ballistic gelatin videos. This vid shows all of the components of bullet lethality in my opinion. Speed, shock, penetration and plenty of wasted energy! YouTube - Triple-Shock X-Bullet
Making a good shot always helps too.

Cool subject!

 

[Varminator 911]

That's easy, the 338 hits harder than a 270/7mm. That's assuming equal bullets of equal SD, say a 250 Accubond vs 140/160 Accubond with equal energy. The bigger 338 bullet has more momentum.

But on small "high strung" game like deer or mountain lion, the 270 will kill faster. Some animals are more susceptible to high velocity shock than others. But hell you can kill this type game with a 22 WRM.

If you go up to game that takes some real killing, say elk and bigger, well there is a reason they have minimum caliber laws in Africa. Bigger is better. And a 50 caliber flat nose solid, 65% meplat, kills tough game about as well as anything, unless it's a bigger caliber.

So I'm with jwp475 on big tough critters, big and slow is way more dependable than small and fast.

If I had to chose one bullet and caliber to reliably kill anything short of elephant, it would be a 300 TSX in 375 caliber with a 10 twist at 2700+ fps. Not a great long range load because BC isn't high enough. But a great killer.

 

[silvertip-co]

From one who carried a 264 for 25 yrs I can say that when I loaded 160gr round nose they seemed to kill better with less meat damage and were in fact more accurate, as long as I wasnt trying to shoot 600y across the Susquehanna or something. Now admittedly they didnt fly as flat as the 140s I shot a lot or as flat as the 129 I tried. But for sheer killing power the 160 rn were it.

Also they were a much longer bullet so tended to shoot smaller groups at closer ranges( which is not what the 264 was made for). But I tend to agree with your comment about bullet shape having an effect on killing power. Perhaps thats why old cals like the 257 roberts with 117 rn were so deadly on game. On the other hand I cant see my using rn bullets in my 7mm rem mag I recently acquired(again) . But I think if I was gonna hunt grizzlers I'd try to find some kind of RN ammo for it.

Ballistics and physics is wonderful sciences, but on game it just aint everything...

 

[drt4lfe]

Interesting thread.....me personally after many rifles and calibers...the best combo for whitetails I have found is .308 Federal Gold Medal 168 BTHP....I have killed 15 or so deer with this combo and all but 2 never took a step.
The bullet rarely exited using all energy on the animal. Massive internal damage....ranges from 50 to 300 yds...DRT ( dead right there )
I would use whatever round that uses as much energy on animal as possible.

 

[ScottB]

Interesting indeed!!

What about the PDog shot with a 17Rem vs. a 338LM?
The result of hitting the PD with the 17 Remington was explosive, while the .338LM just knocked it over(boring result). Although I know this question was orignally posed about shooting very large animals, the topic could be turned around when shooting the tiny ones.



Shot an 8-point at 75yards with an Armalite AR30M chambered in 338LM using a 250gr projectile. Bullet struck the animal broadside taking both lungs and the top of the heart(inspected while cleaning the animal), the deer spun around facing the opposite direction and walked 150yards and laid down. While it was laying there looking back at me, I grabbed the rifle my son(big stand alone stand-lots of room) was carrying and put the finishing shot on him. The .308Win with 150gr finished it.

The big Armalite was sold as the 308Win will do everything I need it to do at any range.






Scott

 

[liltank]

Shot an 8-point at 75yards with an Armalite AR30M chambered in 338LM using a 250gr projectile. Bullet struck the animal broadside taking both lungs and the top of the heart(inspected while cleaning the animal), the deer spun around facing the opposite direction and walked 150yards and laid down.

The big Armalite was sold as the 308Win will do everything I need it to do at any range.
Scott

I'm going to have to go with bullet selection. For that kind of distance a softer point bullet would have been the appropriate medicine. If you would have used a Sierra 215 GK or Hornady 225 SST your results would have been dramatically different. The bullet would have opened up as prescribed and did it's job. Bullet selection for a particular hunting style is paramount.

If you were using the SMK's, the chances are that velocity was entirely to high at that distance just penciling through. Should they be running around the 2650 to 2700 fps mark from the muzzle, chance are you would have seen a different result as well. Don't know, but physics are coming into play here that I don't truly understand. An old gun smith said you can practically make any bullet to pierce armor to some extent given enough velocity.

I remember being enamored by the .257 Weatherby Mag at one point. The reason was due its ability to cut through bullet proof glass with little to no deflection compared to the 308 w/ a 165 SMK (old info at the time). The result of this test just proved that speed was king to accomplishing punishing penetration, but at longer range it would have behaved just like a normal hunting bullet. Hope this makes sense.

Frontal area is important, but velocity should be worked into this equation as well. If you ever pay attention to the ballistics of the big dangerous game rifles, velocity is none to impressive. It is a softball being shot from a rubber band vs. a golf ball from a tiger woods driver. The softball will knock the target over, the golf ball will pass through. Which has more damage, both have required results for the acting application.

Tank

 

[arthurj]

I've been wondering about this for a while and I was leaving momentum out of the equation. I have been wanting an elk rifle and it is hard to argue with those that have been killing elk their whole life and say a big, slower bullet knocks them down better. I sit around and compare energy recoil, etc and want something smaller but I think I'm going to man up and get a braked 338 for that job. I do think that for deer the smaller faster bullet does the job better a lot of the time.

 

[bigngreen]

I've been wondering about this for a while and I was leaving momentum out of the equation. I have been wanting an elk rifle and it is hard to argue with those that have been killing elk their whole life and say a big, slower bullet knocks them down better. I sit around and compare energy recoil, etc and want something smaller but I think I'm going to man up and get a braked 338 for that job. I do think that for deer the smaller faster bullet does the job better a lot of the time.

Momentum is important on elk but you can take it to far, at a point you have to shoot them though the shoulders or with raking shots to be effective, if you shoot them though the lungs you will have to keep hammering except that you now have to hit a moving elk with a ballistic brick. Perfect example is I shot a 45-70 in a bolt gun that I would load to just under a 458. I shot from 520gr blunt hard bullets, to softer blunt 405 a 350gr round nose and 300gr hollow points. Hands down, no contest the 300gr fast hollow point was more devastating on elk, we're talking ruin there life kinda stuff. I loved shooting elk with that load, but the big heavy slow bullets would take a couple unless I crushed a lot of bone and ruined a lot of meat and often having to shoot them in the head with a pistol to finish them. With the fast 300gr hollow points I never shot an elk twice and never had on take a step, even running there front legs would stop at the shot and they would skid into home plate. I got tired of the recoil and it was poor on deer, and down graded and I don't feel I've left anything on the table.

I've seen guys trying to compare elk to cape buffalo which is down right ridiculous and will cost guys more lost elk than anything because of shooting though them with nothing more than a hole and they run way and die, or you fail to break both front shoulders and they hobble of packing one while you talk about how you hammered that elk with you elk cannon. I know cause I've done it and had to do some serious tracking to recover elk. Picking the right bullet is more important than the chambering IMO!!

 

[338 bruce]

I have been hunting elk now for 27 years. I started hunting with my 30-06, my first elk was standing broadside at 200 yds. I put the crosshairs on the shoulder and fired and it just stood there I fired again and it started to walk I fired again and now it was running I fired again and now I have an empty gun and four apparent misses. I reloaded as the elk ran behind a tree. I found the elk dead behind the tree with two bullet holes thru both front shoulders and all four bullets hitting. I was useing a 165 gn balistic tip at 3000 fps with the damage to the front shoulders as was to be expected. The next year I had a 338 wm and when a 338 bullet hits an elk you can tell. I have killed or been part of over fifty elk kills thou mostly cows and I can tell you bullet diameter does matter. Impact velocity is important only so far as to make the bullet expand. Any energy that hits the dirt on the other side of the animal wasnt used inside to kill. If you dont like the recoil then load down or shoot slower. Even my daughters 338 federal 200 gn speer at 2500 fps gets an elks attention upon impact. I killed an elk this year with my 375 tejas, 260 accubond behind the shoulder with no exit and it dropped in its tracks.

 

[liltank]

I was useing a 165 gn balistic tip at 3000 fps with the damage to the front shoulders as was to be expected. The next year I had a 338 wm and when a 338 bullet hits an elk you can tell.

I'm going to suggest using the 30-06 again, only this time use a 180 grain or heavier in an accu-bond, sst, partion, mono metal, or soft point (bear claw, hot-cor, SGK). Betcha see a difference in impact and damage. You should also get pass through with these bullets and get the elk to notice. I would never suggest a 165 ballistic tip for elk. That was one of the down falls of the ballistic tip when they first came out. People liked the accuracy, but didn't like the results when moving from varmint and target, to big game.

Tank