Providing good shot placement..... what do you consider the minimum amount of energy needed for a humane kill on a whitetail?

MuleDeer ?
Elk?

I have to assume this is a serious question, so I will respond. An arrow will kill a whitetail deer if punched thru the heart lung area, and kill it humanely and usually within under 100 yards of where you shoot the animal. There is not much energy in an arrow. I am now hunting with a 5.56 NATO rifle shooting 62 grain monolithic bullets at 3000FPS. Its only supposed to be good enough for fiddler crabs and lizards however it kills good sized deer pretty much as fast or faster than a 30-06 in my limited experience, of course 10 years ago I did not know that...

Enough to push an expanding bullet through both lungs.

Here is a brief synopsis of the rifle and energy requirements from the latest American Journal of Deer Hunting, published in Polebridge, Montana.
Take the price you pay for a bos of 20 cartridges, idexed for inflationtion to their 1999 level in Canadian dollars, and that is the maximum size animal those cartridges are good for.
Then, to calculate the maximum range you can shoot, average the price of your rifle(manufactured suggested) with the price of the scope (excluding mounts) and that is the maximum range that rifle and cartridge is good for.
You can see the entire article on www.gettafookinclue.com.

This is the one and only correct answer.

Ft-lbs of energy is a very poor indicator of bullet effectiveness.

A typical expanding bullet will normally make a 14-16" wound channel. If that wound channel is large enough in diameter, say 1/2" or so for NA big game, and if it transects one or more major organs with large blood supply (lungs, liver, major blood vessel) or the central nervous system, the animal will fairly quickly die. It is not more complicated than that.

I put the minimum at the .38-40 WCF. The .25-20 and .32-20 are iffy killers on deer. A little too light. The .38-40 seems to kill deer at modest ranges well though.

Pretty much what others said ,forget the energy thing .
if it has enough remaining velocity at target impact to expand and push through both lungs it is enough.

Craig

concur

22 Hornet, I had an uncle who in the last decade of his life, put 45 gr Speer SP's that I hand loaded thru the ribs of white tails some times 6 or 7 a year. One shot only, that guy was never with out fresh venison. He could also shoot too. I once watch him hit a golf ball off of a cedar post almost 200 yards out, off hand. The man was a horror to be around for more than an hour but shoot, that he could. It got so bad that he could not go to the local turkey shoots anymore. The 22 Hornet was an old Savage 340 where he got it I don't know, all I know is I get a phone call, load me some ammo would you. Never did pay for the bullets powder cases or loading dies I didn't have at the time. For some reason he when to that cartridge, I guess for noise. The old poacher.

A lot of States (so we teach in hunter safety class) say 500 foot pounds or the equivalent of a 175 grain bullet out of a .357 mag. Where handguns are legal, (like where we hunted in N.C.) a .357 mag was minimum. A lot of States also specify .243 as a minimum bullet diameter.

Snares work really well at whatever energy the deer aplies to them.

I prefer a 3# trigger myself.

I'm currently shooting the speer 115gr gold dot at 1850fps in my 32-20. While this is certainly not a long range load, I'll gladly put it through the lungs of any whitetail inside 50 yards.

I've got a rancher friend who knows almost nothing about ballistics who regularly shoots deer with a 22 hornet. He has never lost a deer shot with it. He got a 17HMR last year and I've had to beg him not to shoot deer with it. He does have a pre-64 270, but its too loud and kicks too much to use all the time.

FWIW, our state regs say 1,000 ftlbs for rifles 500 ftlb for pistols for Deer. 1,700ft lbs for Elk with the addition they must be larger than .243 caliber for Elk (Pistol regs are the same). That's not a whole lot. It used to say a .22 cal minimum for deer but i cannot find it only the muzzle energy as outlined above so I guess you could use a .204 Ruger for deer if you wanted to the way I read it.

That's interesting ... why split them and not simply require a 500 ft-lb minimum?
Cheers...
Con

This was a debate at the time clock the other day and was curious what others had to say on the topic. Thank you.

I agree with most of the above. ft. lbs. of energy doesn't kill, penetration and expansion does. But, while not perfect, the energy numbers are a rough guide to how much expansion and penetration you'll get.

All things equal, more energy = more penetration and expansion. That seems pretty accurate when you compare similar cartridges. If comparing 30-06, 270, etc I'd say it is pretty close. When you compare 223 to 45-70 or an arrow, the numbers can be misleading since they get their penetration differently.

The numbers I've always heard are 1000 for deer, 1500 for elk. Obviously it can be done with less, and there are many other factors to consider. But those numbers seem reasonable to me as a general guide.

I'd go with the minimal amount as required by state laws, or Mule Deer's answer. Whichever keeps you legal.

Nebraska is 22 caliber and 900 ft/lbs at 100 yards for white tails/muleys. 26 caliber and 2000 ft/lbs at 100 yards for elk.

What the state law requires.

You'd certainly think so, and I did for a long time. It's not the case. Within normal limits, it actually works the other way around for penetration. Of course, there are two "levers" for adjusting kinetic energy, mass and speed. But if you're sticking with just one bullet type, speed is the key variable.

An expanding bullet that impacts at 1500 FPS will out penetrate the same bullet at 2500 FPS. That's because the slower bullet does not have enough speed to reliably open, and it just pencils on through. And the 2500 FPS bullet will out penetrate a common cup and core bullet at 3200 FPS.

Common cup and core bullets open reliably at 2100 FPS (impact speed...some open at 1800). From there to about 2800 FPS penetration is very constant, about 14-16" depending on the type of tissue. So anywhere in the range 2100-2800 FPS, the wound channel is the same. Adding more speed does not lengthen the wound channel.

Above about 2800, penetration drops off because the bullet opens too much, too fast. Smack a critter with your 7mm Mag using a regular bullet at 50 yards and you'll get a lot less penetration than you would with your 7x57.

Premium bullets change the game. Many of those open reliably at 1800 FPS, and hang together up to warp 9.4. But, by and large, the wound channels they produce are very close to the constant length, regardless of impact speed. So it doesn't matter whether the bullet hits at 1900 FPS or 3100 FPS, the wound channel is the same length. Within those limits, a faster bullet does not get you more killing power, it gets you a longer flatter trajectory and the ability to carry enough speed to a more distant target.

Going to a fatter bullet gets you a fatter wound channel. A big critter like a cape buffalo has a lot of blood, and you have to poke a bigger hole to get it to bleed fast. For North America, 1/2" or so seems to be big enough, or so I'm told.

The game is getting a fat enough wound channel that is long enough to transect a major vital organ that will bleed a lot, like the heart, a major artery, the liver, or the lungs. Fatter bullets make fatter holes. Adding more speed does not make longer holes, it makes shorter holes.

Haven't read all the posts, but P.O. Ackley wrote that 1,200 pounds /feet of energy is the minimum for deer and 1,500 for elk. Of course, this was before premium bullets were so common and it is the energy at the animal (not muzzle)

Oh yes, a solid hit in the vitals with a bullet of less energy is better than a miss-the-vitals with a 375 H&H!

djs,

If P.O. Ackley ever killed a big game animal, he sure didn't write about it much.

As I recall, the info about foot-pounds for various animals in his book (I have had a copy since 1972 or so) was written by an engineer who hadn't killed very many animals himself.

PO didn't hunt much from what I could tell. The reason I never paid much attention to what he wrote about cartridges.

Back when we used to drink a lot of likker at night in the camphouse I've sometimes killed 'em of a morning when I had hardley any energy at all.

Here I posted the information above and Game and Parks just changed over the weekend how much energy is needed to kill our elk and bighorns in Nebraska. Sigh.

Went from 2000 ft/lbs at 100 yards and 26 caliber or above to 1700 ft/lbs at 100 yards and 25 caliber and above.

250 Savage doesn't quite do it, but the 300 Savage is now on the list without hotrodding it. Yes!

Doesn't changes like this make you feel good about what the wildlife specialists know?

The exception to this, as you alluded to, is when using a bullet whose design stops expansion at a certain point, whereby added velocity does increase penetration. An example is the TSX.

You can't drive a TSX too fast

I believe that Mule Deer's comment and Denton's explanation of it say all that need to be said.

Well, exactly

Never used an X on anything but paper,but suspect Scott is right...

The biggest trouble with minimum energy figures is that they fail to take bullet structure into consideration.

Over on another website, there is a rather thorough series of tests done by an astute member,involving Raptor Bullets by Cutting Edge...it seems to demonstrate that the old rules regarding velocity and penetration are sort of "out the window",at least with those bullets.

I'm the best looking guy on the 'Fire

Equally true...

I edited my last to make your latest post more germane.

LMAO! We can always expect the unexpected from you Scott....

But who am I to argue?

The most modest also.....

I have killed Coues whitetails that weighed 90-120 lbs. on the hoof using a .270 with 130-grain NPs and a .280 AI with 140-grain NPs. I have also killed Kansas whitetails that weighed over 280 lbs. with a .222 Rem Mag (ballistically indistinguishable from a .223) and 52-grain Nosler SBs. All them were taken with one shot and none were lost.

We agonize way too much over minor details, but I guess that's what makes it entertaining for some of us.

I thought the minimun caliber for KS deer was .23 or larger?

Not if you have a scientific collecting permit. You get to shoot a lot more of them, too.

True.

The TSX makes constant length holes over a very wide range of impact speeds. Good catch.

Neck shots seem to work very well.
Bo