Originally Posted by Coyote_Hunter
Originally Posted by TheKid
Why would you feel more apt to wound one with a 223 but not with a 45/70? Using a good bullet takes that doubt out of the equation and the rest is just shot placement. Good placement is good placement regardless of caliber.



There is more to it than just shot placement - not every shot goes where intended and one needs to be prepared for that. For inside 300 yards, Ill take my .45-70 because size matters.

Compare a .458" 350g bullet @ 2000fps MV to a .224" 75g bullet at 2900fps and assume no expansion. The .45 cal bullet has 3108fpe at the muzzle and 976fpe at 300 compared to 1400fpe and 903fpe for the .22 caliber. The .45 is twice the diameter of the .22 with 4x the frontal area. In terms of momentum the .45 wins 700 Kg-m/s to 217.5kKg-m/s. Which one do you think will penetrate more if heavy bone is hit?

If both expand to double their original diameter, the .22 has a frontal area of 0.64 sq inches compared to 2.54 square inches for the .45.

I killed an elk with my .45-70 at 213 lasered yards. The 350g bullet obliterated sections of the near side front leg and near side rib, then shatterd a far side rib before coming to rest under the hide.

Would a .223 do that? I wouldn't trust one to do so.

WTF???

I'm tempted to mark the various things wrong and send this back to you to have you correct your work. The area of a circle is Pi times the square of the radius. An example: the radius of a doubled 45 caliber rifle bullet's cross-section is .458 inches. Square this and get .209764 square inches. Multiply that by 3.14 and get .65865896 square inches, or about 2/3 of a square inch. Pretty big, really, but no where near the 2.54 square inches you quoted. You'd need to start with a 90 caliber bullet and double its diameter.

I'll answer your question at the end though. NO, a 223 wouldn't do that. What kind of idiot would expect it to do that? What kind of idiot would imagine that a 223 is going to do the same damage as a 45-70? And lastly, what kind of idiot would assume that the damage a 45-70 does is the only amount that will kill an elk?

I can hit a half-liter water bottle at will with a 223 and a good rest at 300 yds. Can you do that with a 45-70? Do you understand the difference between a splitting maul and a scalpel? What's funny here is you aren't even comparing apples and oranges. More like apples and tuna fish.

I belong on eroding granite, among the pines.