While I have hunted Africa and North America and taken game the size of zebra, wildebeest, cape buffalo, kudu, etc multiple times, I am sure my sample size is too small to be statistically meaningful.
On my African trips have used a lot of different cartridges and bullets ranging from 243 Winchesters and 7 x 57 Mausers to 378 and 460 Weatherbys to 500 Nitro Expresses. Bullets include Hornady softpoints, Nosler Partitions, Swift A-frames, Trophy Bonds, Woodleigh soft and solids, etc.
For some reason, perhaps personal, still respect the thoughts of Elmer Keith and Bob Hagel figuring their experience level was pretty high. I had the opportunity to talk to both of them extensively and that may prejudice my thoughts. Realize there have been some bullet technology improvements since Keith's and Hagel's prime time.
Have a little experience tracking wounded game over a day or more of rough terrain and chasing (not tracking) a wounded cape buffalo across umpteen miles with many ought-to-be fatal wounds from a 500 Nitro Express. Not entirely defendable, but was wishing I had a 585 Nyati or 577 Nitro as I put more holes in him that day and he ignored me.
One time I designed a fractional factorial Multivariable Test (MVT) involving bullet weight (175 v 300), bullet construction (Hornady v Trophy Bond), bullet velocity (2500 v 2800), animal (zebra v wildebeest), etc and enlisted other hunters to help me execute the MVT. We carried laser rangefinders, GPS system, and stop watches to measure distances between the shooter and the animal when shot and for the distance and time the animal traveled after being shot.
More trips to Africa are needed to enlarge the sample size, but no one seems to have the time and patience for large scale experimentation any more. Too much time taken away from golf, I guess.
A distant second approach would be to enlist the authors of Rifle Bullets for the Hunter (the bullet book) to help execute a well designed MVT with similar factors to the above African test. Whereas we will not be measuring time and distance traveled by a real animal, we can measure depth, breadth, and volume of the wound in The Bullet Test Tube and pretend it is a plumbing problem for blood and oxygen. With that, we can determine the plumbing leak rate and have some sort of measure of destructive value.
Logic has nothing to do with hunting campfire time, but we might stretch it a little and think there is a relationship between plumbing loss and time to expiration. I myself can cite field exceptions to this idea (two cape buffalo in particular coming to mind), so maybe it is not worth the time.
Well designed experiments are far superior to unorganized data collection, but no one likes to do the work necessary.
Seems like with all the government grants handed out for nonsense, we ought to be able to get enough for a five-year study involving extensive culling operations around the world.
Oh, well, back to analyzing other data on a Sunday afternoon.
