� "Hydrostatic shock" is a misnomer but not a fallacy. It's a fact of physics that any pressure that's applied (in the case of a speeding bullet, dynamically, not statically) to an incompressible liquid is transferred undiminished to all surfaces of that liquid. This is what "explodes" a water-filled can or jar that's hit by a high-speed bullet. Static application of moderate pressure gives us the useful hydraulics of automobile jacks, garage lifts, front-end loaders, dump trucks, etc.
� This dynamic hydraulic shock does have an important role in killing game � but it's not always on-stage with the rest of the cast. A bullet that strikes an empty, flaccid chamber of the heart, for example, can just poke a bullet-diameter hole in it. If the same bullet hits a heart chamber that's turgid with blood, the dynamic hydraulic effect occurs and devastates that heart chamber. The same effect would result from impact with a bladder turgid with urine. Apparently, the blood and other fluids within the smaller vessels throughout the animal's flesh don't "explode" with as much dramatic effect as a blood-filled chamber of the heart.
� The lethal effects of bullets � like those of arrows, spears, and lances � include the results of other mechanisms of impact (great and immediate hemorrhaging, for example), not just "shock."
