I thought you need at least 1200 fps for pass throughs.
Not for whitetail.
Maybe the long way.
This goes back a few years...
A friend of mine was the grandson of an old guy who owned a rendering plant in rural WI. My friend and I were aficionados of the then-new idea of firing heavy loads in our 45 Colt single action Rugers, and one dday we met at the rendering plant to shoot some dead horses to test bullet penetration. The horses didn't arrive at the yard dead, but they were very recently dead when we shot them with our revolvers.
We were shooting 270-330 gr hard cast bullets at velocities upwards of 1350 fps... I mean, we were pushing Linebaugh's limits.
All of our bullets traversed the horses crosswise, whether through chest or guts. Which was disappointing, as we really wanted to recover some bullets so we could measure them and weigh them and take photographs of them to prove the superiority of our bullets & ammunition.
So we did eventually get some of our bullets to stay in one horse, a big old Clydesdale gelding who was fairly long, the long way, as long as we shot through the brisket and aimed for the hindquarter.
The main result of that test, at least for my part, was to stop hunting deer with 325 gr hard cast bullets @1325 fps, which loads were hard on my hands, and apparently a tad more potent than shooting through a whitetail, crossways or stem-to-stern, required. I've killed several deer since then with 260-270 gr cast bullets toddling along at anywhere from 900 fps to 1100 fps and the deer are no more nor no less dead than those shot with transonic loudenboomers.
