With rare exceptions, you've got to have complete penetration for a hunting handgun rd, so that you get an exit wound/blood trail to follow. You DO need a certain minimum of muzzle energy in order to achieve that threshhold of performance. Where that minimum is, I neither know or care. I want the maximum, cause I go deer and hog hunting in order to test my defensive carry ammo on man-sized critters.
TFF. You just can't make this stuff up!! (Except if you are a personal friend of colonel Cooper and invented IPSC, along with inventing the internet.....)
