Always have to chuckle when I see Bob's sig line.
roundoak: Yes....many times I have felt so insecure about carrying a 270 that I have held off shooting because the animal was too small,in which event I would have over-killed it;or too big so that I would not have killed it dead enough...this may not make sense unless you realize there are varying degrees of "dead".......
.....the solution has been to get a rifle that was smaller....or bigger....as the case may be.
I have always been happier using a 7x57 because it is not as fast as the 270,and therefore kills with the first degree of "dead",as opposed to the second degree which is "too much" on smaller stuff.....
and because it has greater frontal area...(.007) is a LOT
) it kills to the second degree of "dead" on
much larger animals ...thereby making it much more suitable on a wider variety of game...which die to varying degrees depending of course on the degree of "dead" required to kill them.....
Have you noticed the same things....yourself???
Huh!?
You bring to mind an event that, up until your brilliant explanation, I have been unable to adequately describe. Was a morning when my son used the previously mentioned 50 gr 4350 load (H version) with a 140 Accubond on a nice 10 pt buck. Buck was killed precisely to Dead, Degree 1. At 100 yds or so bullet entered the right shoulder doing minimal meat damage then proceeded to do deadly work on the heart and lungs before exiting. Proper degree of dead was so perfectly met the buck was only able to turn, stumble, and fall downhill about 12 ft. If we add a Percentage Scale within Degree, I would further estimate he was perfectly killed at Dead, Degree 1, 50% +/- 2%.
However, on the same morning another hunter in camp used a .340 Weatherby with 225 gr BT factory load to shoot a 100 lb doe at about 20 yds. Here I would estimate the result to be Dead, Degree 5(max), 98% +/-2%. The entrance wound created by spalshback was almost the size of a dinner plate while the exit was the size of a saucer. Most everything between the wounds was gone. Regardless, the doe did not realize she was dead before her corpse had run 20 t0 30 yds, according to the shooter.
And therein lies my question. Can Degree of Death be diminished by the escape distance traveled or lack of falling or stumbling at the shot? And can it be increased according to volume of biomass removed by the projectile? Before we start flinging around these estimated Degrees of Death perhaps we should first better define our criteria. All in the interest of science.
