Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Killing versus stopping

Not trying to stir any pots (although I suspect some will be stirred anyway) but the discussion in the over 60 thread prompts me to ask at what point “killing power” gives way to “stopping power”.

I’ve only seen a fraction of the game killed that a lot here have, but it has been my consistent experience that placement is indeed the largest part of the equation. E.g. a 375 H&H driving a 270 gr. Swift A-Frame into the guts of a 125 pound impala does not kill it or even prevent it from running off, but a .30-30 in the aorta of a deer will drop it in seconds. The Swedes did their study of various calibers on elk and there was almost no difference in how far the game traveled (17 yards total IIRC) between the 6.5x55 on up to a .375 H&H.

Yet guides still pack large .45+ caliber rifles to STOP the game.

So why do we see so little difference in the ability of well placed bullets of various diameter to cause the death of an animal by starving the brain of oxygen versus what must be a difference in bullet diameter (not velocity so much) in non-CNS hits as a factor in making them immediately desist from a rage induced desire to kill someone? Obviously placement still plays a part but I guess my question then is what is the reason for using a big bullet? Folks have been coming up with various "stopping power" formulas for years but I don't know which one is the latest in vogue.

Btw, it's not like I don't have opinions on this, just thought this might provide a topic for polite conversation.

Perhaps Phil Shoemaker can weigh in, I recall he’s stopped a bear or two, although he might not be the best choice since I understand he's traded in his .458 WM Old Ugly for a 9mm handgun...

Sometimes, to effect the desired placement (ie, get the bullet to the place you want it), it's necessary to drive the bullet through a significant mass of intervening tissue. The general consensus of opinion is, that can be easier to do with a bigger bullet.Myu guess would be, there's a certain benefit too, to be realized by the increased impact dynamics of a larger projectile. Think about the difference in being whacked over the head with a wooden baseball bat as opposed to a broom handle going twice as fast. Just speculating, of course, I've managed to overcome the temptation to do any actual research into the matter.

Big difference in stopping someone OR something that wants to kill you and you only wanting to kill something. A good center double lung shot will kill anything on the planet, given enough time. It will not kill say a charging grizzly in the time it takes the bear to you. It has been proven many times, heavy , well constructed bullets penetrate deeper making it more probable to get to the CNS or skeleton support system.

Not a gun writer, but I recall that the late Finn Aagard, who was a renowned gun writer, tabulated some statistics along this line and came to the same conclusion as the OP.

On an elephant hunt in Zim this past April, I shot an impala ram through the shoulders with a 500 grain Barnes monolithic solid from my .470. While mortally wounded, the animal ran about a hundred yards before it died. That same rifle (.470) and load instantly dropped a bull elephant in it's tracks a few years prior with a frontal brain shot.

IMO, a .270 Winchester loaded with a 130 grain Partition would have killed the impala much more quickly than the .470 did. However, the .270 would have had no effect on the elephant if employed in a frontal brain shot. The mass and bullet construction of the .470 solid was needed to punch through the approximately four feet of honeycombed skull bone to get to the elephant's brain.

As any carpenter will tell you, it is important to have the correct tool for the job and not all tools are created equal. Don't use a hammer where a screwdriver is required.

Hmm ,I seem to remember some guy named Bell who regularly killed Bull Elephant with a brain shot with a 7X57 or 6.56X55.It must have been a fluke as it was only around several hundred kills.JM Hunter used a Thirty Thirty on about 10 Bulls one shot kills.All must be lucky shots??

If you read WMD Bell's writings, those were not frontal brain shots. Bell knew the anatomy of elephants perfectly and used side brain shots for most of those kills, all with solids.

BTW, how many elephants have you personally killed and how many were frontal brain shots? What rifle and ammunition did you use? How many of those elephants did you shoot with a 7x57? Just curious.

Regarding stopping, I'm in the camp of bigger to get to what you want to hit when you don't get the angle you want....basically bigger for more penetration. Not that I'm experienced in stopping mad things.

From experience I can say there is a difference in killing quickly and stopping quickly. A heart/lung shot deer can travel quite a ways but dies fairly quick. A high shoulder shot deer is stopping a lot sooner, but it may not die as quick (lots of variables on the placement of the shoulder shot).

In my limited experience, the deer/antelope sized animals respond to "stopping" power so-called beginning with a 30 caliber expanded hole. It may not kill them any quicker in time, but it sure seems to put the whop'em to them more so than anything smaller.

That is also what JJHack has corroborated in his African experiences on herd animals. He prefers that someone hits them with a 30 caliber or bigger to recognize that they got whopped, and to allow for easier tracking.

Not very scientific, but primarily just anecdotal observations over the years.

"Just speculating, of course, I've managed to overcome the temptation to do any actual research into the matter." That's a very useful statement, I hope you don't mind if I borrow it profusely in the future.


The only game I've "stopped" was some charging (or more likely confused) ground squirrels although I have put the lights out right now on a couple of running deer someone else had hit badly, a .30-06 with 165 gr. Hornady Interlocks in the front shoulders worked just fine for those. I did fail miserably to stop a genuinely pissed off charging right at me Florida razorback; missing him with a .22 revolver was just as ineffective as missing him with a .458. Some rule about God and fools probably saved my bacon in that instance.

So just thinking out loud here, but I'm wondering if we aren't at a time to change our opinion of what it takes to be a stopper, a stopping rifle, whatever you want to call it. Some replies here note that the big bullets commonly associated with the breed are used to ensure penetration to the vitals through heavy bone and muscle, but in the end isn't this an example of placement? You have to be sure to hit the animal where it lives so it dies. For years the mantra for handgun fights was to get something starting with a 4, but nowadays with bonded bullets and such it seems the 9mm can be just as effective. A fellow on here who I trust implicitly for BTDT advice on those matters carries a Glock 9mm so I can't think of a more reliable endorsement. Again, placement being key.

On the other hand, bigger bullets make bigger holes, bigger holes let more blood leak out quicker resulting in a quicker death. But my experience and the vast experience of others on game large and small still shows very little difference in the rapidity of termination given good placement and the sudden stopping of forward motion given good hits in the skeleton.

I know I'm going around the same circles trod by writers since before I was born, but am wondering if we really know what is it about the larger bores that makes animals go "all loose" real sudden like as I think Teddy Roosevelt described as opposed to just keeling over after a few seconds. Or, if the penetrating and bone breaking capabilities of smaller bores due to better bullets might give them the effectiveness that heretofore was only the realm of large solids?

Good question--what makes an animal "go all loose" when whacked with a bigger bore? It sure seems to me that the whomp'em factor is real. It takes more to do more on a bigger animal.

Now whether any of that actually reduces time to death is probably unsolved.

Having shot deer with a 223, they often don't even react at all, run a little ways, stand around, and then drop over dead after 10 seconds. They seem to die in the same 10 seconds if shot with a 30-06, but I'll sure know that they were hit in the meantime. Same 10 seconds for a 375, but they will simply be "all loose" and just standing there until they fall over. This all with lung shots or very light bones around the edges, not CNS or busted out vertebrae.

If my life is threatened, I'll go with stopping power. I do want to be efficient when it comes to killing, but I'm not taking the 30-378 out for ground squirrels. A near hit or the boom alone is enough to deck them. While they're holding their ears and going "what the hell?" one can walk up and step on them.

FWIW my experience has been that dropping an animal on the spot comes down to a combination of bullet placement and bullet performance. Bigger bullets don't seem to help if either placement or performance isn't up to the mark.I have, for example, had cases where a big bullet through what should have been a vital area hasn't resulted in dropping the animal on the spot, because, as far as I can work out, the bullet hasn't caused enough damage on the way through. Cases which spring to mind include a fox shot square through the chest with a .30/06, who ran away probably 50 yards into cover, and took some finding (dead when I got to him though), and some pigs shot with bullets which performed well on buffalo, but didn't seem to be opening on the much smaller pigs, resulting in quite poor killing power. Of course there also has to be enough performance (enough momentum and bullet integrity) to get in far enough to damage something important too, and I wouldn't be alone in experiencing failures on that front too.

FWIW for putting an animal on the ground DRT I prefer, as a general thing and if the opportunity is there, to put a shot into the CNS, such as either with a neck shot or shot through the shoulder blade to the spine. I've put a good number of animals of various sizes nose-first into the dirt with one or the other, including from full gallop. The bullet through the shoulder blade to the spine will often scatter bone fragments into the artery and nerve junction (brachial plexus) in that region as well. Of course the price to be paid is that you damage more meat, where that is a factor, than you would with a shot into the chest cavity. The shot to the chest also gives you rather more room for error.

I've also shot the odd critter square in the brain as it came towards me, and that seems to take the fight right out of them.

I am not a gun writer. However, that won't stop me from expressing my opinion.

To me, stopping means; "to stop momentum in my direction - now". That can mean shooting a charging bear, buffalo, etc. to break the shoulder and now their path is turned, or stopped - allowing me to put another shot into them, perhaps more precisely aimed (this one to kill them). In my mind, stopping a charge like that will be easier with a large caliber, heavy bullet than it would be with a 100 to 140 grain bullet - even if placed in the boiler room. To clarify, to me stopping calibers begin at .338 (250 grains) and go up from there.

Of course a shot to the brain or CNS would be better than one to the shoulder, and would certainly stop a charge. However that may be more difficult to hit in the heat of the moment (the head bobbing up and down) than the shoulder. But I am not speaking from personal experience.

I recall many accounts in various books where the author tells of a charge where the animal was turned / stopped and then finished off (if that first shot didn't also kill the animal). That is the scenario I envision.

I have only been charged once in my hunting life, and that was by a very confused / frightened squirrel. You will be happy to learn that I was unharmed by the crazed beast. I fired at it in self defense, as it ran straight at me, and it met the full force of a load of #4 shot / 12 gauge at approximately 10 or 12 feet. I was about 14 or 15 yrs old at the time.

gundog

For man stopping, liberals fail to realize bad guys are crazy or on drugs. Pellet gun in my foot will change my mind. But a bad guy might not see it that way.

Chris kyle talked about how he would shoot Muslims 5 or 6 times with 223, but they were full of opium.

Shutting down vitals is a big part of it. Double lung shot they will die. But there has to be some gain from blunt trauma. How much is over kill, howuch is needed for your area, or all the variable a hunter weighs.

50 call is probably going to cut some yards off. But.what else is important?

Zerk, just curious, did you serve in the military?

I did kill frontal brain shot a bull jumbo in Zim with a 375 H&H mag at the time 1999 the the new line of Hornady "Heavy Magnum" 300 grain Hornady solid. Punched clean out the back of the skull.

Not to mention the fact that Bell, by his own admission, wounded and lost a few with that caliber.

This is not a difficult question. It's actually quite simple. We have very good scalable examples. Start with the ubiquitous .22lr and small varmints. You can shoot small varmints like chipmunks and gophers/squirrels. A 40 grain round nose lead bullet will kill them handily, but as a "bet your life on it" stopper that prevents them from crawling/running off it sucks. Sort of on the order of the big "stopping rifles", mostly works, but not always. But...Trade that 40 grain RN lead bullet for a 32 grain Hornet bullet and move it at somewhere north of 2000 FPS and it becomes a near perfect instant incapacitator. In my experience, it is effective on coon/woodchuck/porcupine/skunk size varmints, even if it no longer vaporizes them like it does with red squirrel and gopher size varmints.

Step up to a .243 or larger and shoot Mr porcupine with a tough bullet like a TSX?TTSX and it won't vaporize him or if it's not a vitals hit Mr porky can still waddle off, but back off the weight and use a lighter bullet and you're back to instant incapacitation with a body hit.

Step up again to 25-06 or .270 and start using frangible bullets at high velocity and while the vaporization in not so complete as the squirrel/gopher, it is still damned impressive on up to coyote size animals and can make a godawful mess of 150-200 lb deer as anyone who's shot deer with a 7mm RM or 300 WM with lighter, less sturdy bullets has learned.

You probably can't scale that up to the size and speed it would take to incapacitate a big bear or Cape Buffalo instantly and still fire it from your shoulder, but the body weight vs energy expended would likely be pretty linear. So, the stopping rifle tends to need someone with the skill to break the right parts to stop what the simple body hit cannot. You could certainly "stop" a leopard with certainty with a body hit with a bigger rifle and still fire it from the shoulder, but any toothy critter that's much bigger and I am going to put my money on the shooter instead of the weapon.

Probably as many as you have.My point is that it has been done with small calibers and it wasn`t just a fluke.

All I know is that I liked having the 375 Ruger when I went after AK grizzly bears.