gmack,

I'll look at your points one by one, avoiding all references to propellers.

Different bullets can make different size holes, and these are not directly correlated to kinetic energy.

One of the quickest-killing bullets I ever used in the .338 was the 200-grain Speer spitzer, but it had to be loaded down a little, to 2700 fps or so. Otherwise, at close range it could expand too fast and not penetrate, thus affecting how it killed. But at 2700 it pentrated and put a big hole through stuff, on average killing more quickly than, say, the 230 Fail Safe or any other bullet to penetrate a LONG way. And at 2700 fps, it developed LESS kinetic energy than standard .338 loads....

From what I have seen, expanding bullets will kill well out to where they still expand well. So that is pretty much the effective range, whether we are shooting a .308 Winchester or a .300 Weatherby. Of course, there is still the question of HITTING the animal correctly.

A bullet with the same kinetic energy as an arrow won't penetrate deeply enough to kill big game. In fact, if the same weight as an arrow, at the same velocity, it probably wouldn't even break the skin. So once again we are back to penetration.

Please go back and reread what I wrote in at least a couple of places. Certainly differences in killing power exist, but if an expanding bullet goes through both lungs (and perhaps the top of the heart, or the blood vessels leading from it) then in all probability the animal will remain standing (or running) for at least 10 seconds or so. This is how long it takes blood pressure to drop in the brain.

But some people apparently expect animals lung-shot with a .375 H&H (4500 or so foot-pounds at the muzzle) to drop in half the time as animals shot with with a .300 Savage (2250 foot-pounds). It does not work that way, due to too many other factors. If it did, then this thread wouldn't have even started, and there would be nothing to debate.

As explained earlier, shooting a 1-gallon water jug (8 pounds of incompressible water inside thin, limited-stretch plastic) is not the same as shooting a 200-pound deer, 700-pound elk, or 1500-pound moose. The water in these animals is inside stretchable organs, often separated from each other or containing (in the case of lungs) a lot of air.

Probably the closest animal we have to a 1-gallon water jug is a young rockchuck that's been eating lots of fresh, irrigated alfalfa. These will explode like a water jog--but oddly, are more likely to explode when shot with a .220 Swift (1600 foot-pounds at the muzzle) than a .416 Rigby (three times as much muzzle energy and eight times as much bullet weight).

So I stand by what I wrote, and you quoted: "There is no DIRECT correlation between kinetic energy and how quickly a big game animal will die from a good heart/lung hit." Or even explode from a mid-section hit.

Also, I do not believe any of us so far have developed a "killing model." Maybe a radio-controlled miniature airplane with a grenade aboard? (Dang, and I wasn't going to mention propellers!)







“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck