It's dynamic hydraulic impact � why not call it that?
We still know 'way too little about what kills game, why some critters die so easily, why other critters absorb so much and take so long to die.
� In 1956, I shot a spike bull elk broadside with a 180-grain Bronze Point from a .30-06 Ackley Improved. The entry and exit holes were about 0.308 inch in diameter. The elk turned and ran down-hill until his hind legs out-ran his front legs and he tumbled into a heap and couldn't get up. I finished him with a brain shot from an S&W .22 Kit Gun.
� In 1957, I shot a six-point bull elk broadside with a 220-grain Core Lokt (same .30-06 AI) and blew the top half of a vertebra away. The bull just ran off. I tracked him until I couldn't. I ran across his trail again three days later and tracked him until I got another broadside shot that blew the top of another vertebra away. Down he went but struggled to get up. He continued trying to get up while I brain-shot him twice with a Ruger .357 Magnum � once in the back of his head, once from the side, both from within two yards. As I stood amazed, he slowly died.
� That same year, using my 220-grain Core Lokts and IMR-4350 in his .30-06, my partner Loren Netzloff blew the entire front quarter off the far side of a mule-deer doe, making a huge fan of blood and lung tissue in the snow and leaving the heart exposed to the air. The doe ran off up-hill and over the ridge. Confident that she wouldn't go far, Loren brushed snow off a stump and sat down to enjoy a smoke. Then he took-up her blood trail and followed it for two or three miles across one ridge after another. When he caught-up to her, she was lying in the snow but alert. She jumped up as he approached, ran a few steps, then stopped to look back at him. He shot her in the head, and she dropped � finally dead.
� In 1959, a friend of mine brought a mule-deer doe through the F&G checking station where I was working. His first shot had blown away the entire off-side front leg, from the shoulder blade down. The doe had hobbled away so fast that he was amazed. His hasty second shot blew away the entire off-side hind leg. The doe continued to run, alternately bouncing off trees along her right side. Finally, with nothing further to bounce-off, she fell.
Experiences like these � not the more-frequent immediately successful kills � are why old-timers like Keith prefer super-whompers to the merely adequate killers. Any cartridge that usually kills well also fails occasionally. Some fail less often than others.
� And let's not forget that in World War Two, a Zero pilot flew for hours and safely landed his aircraft with a .50 Browning bullet in his brain (and survived the war, IIRC).
