Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Bullet weight??

Everybody has tried and you are refusing to listen... the strawman runs strong in you...

What is it you want to know?

But I repeat myself.....

Have I ever shot a bullet at 100fps or heard of someone who has? No. But that only helps validate the point I was making by referencing 100fps. Nobody does it because velocity is an important factor (along with mass and bullet construction) in determining how the bullet will perform. Which is exactly the point I was making.

Shooting bullets at 100fps might be adequate for taking mice. For elk I use a rule of thumb of 1500fpe. It would take a 10-pound bullet at 100fps to generate 1500fpe. Not very practical and range would suck.

Do any manufacturers design centerfire bullets to "perform properly" at 100fps? One could argue the point since solids for DG and hardcast are designed not to expand or to do so minimally. They would perform pretty much that way if shot at 100fps, too.


When selecting big game bullets I look at a variety of factors:

1. For weight I tend to lean toward mid-range bullets for any given caliber. "Tend" being the keyword.

2. For velocity I look at the performance range of the bullet. For expanding lead-core bullets I tend to use 1800fps as the minimum impact velocity. For monos I tend to prefer more, about 2000fps. Again, "tend" and "prefer" are the key words. For most bullets I shoot, 1800fps retained much further downrange than I'm willing to shoot. Some start out much slower than 1800fps.

3. B.C. is important to me only because higher values helps the bullet retain velocity - and therefore energy - downrange. But it is the downrange energy that is important to me, not the B.C. a millisecond before impact.

4. Bullet construction is much more important to me than specific B.C. or velocity or energy minimums. I prefer bullets that will expand reliably but in a controlled and limited manner over as wide a velocity range as possible. North Fork SS bullets are great at that although B.C. suffers. Other favorites in terms of my use are Barnes TTSX, Nosler AccuBond, Speer Grand Slam, Swift A-Frame and Swift Scirocco II - pretty much in that order.

You didn't answer the question "does shooting a bullet at 100 fps make sense to you?"

That's the answer I'm waiting to hear.

"Shooting bullets at 100fps might be adequate for taking mice. For elk I use a rule of thumb of 1500fpe. It would take a 10-pound bullet at 100fps to generate 1500fpe. Not very practical and range would suck."


But I'm repeating myself...

If you need a single monosyllabic answer to understand the answer, it would be "No". But using 100fps as I did to prove a point is perfectly valid. If energy doesn't matter then velocity doesn't matter either.

LOL, "again you duck and dodge." This is the big game forum, who said anything about shooting mice?

For big game, shooting a bullet at 100 fps makes no sense. As you tried hard not to admit above.

So when you asked me whether I'd shoot a bullet at 100 fps, you were asking me whether I'd do something that makes no sense to you.

Does that make sense to you?


Never mind, stupid question. Of course it makes sense to you.



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Quoted for posterity:

The short and long of it is B.C. never killed anything, velocity never killed anything, mass never killed anything and momentum never killed anything.

Destruction of vital function is what kills and that requires energy - energy that is transferred from the bullet to the target.

Many moons ago I bought a drilling at a gun show and the previous owner had a long series of notes about every shot he had taken with it.

Included were pages of scrawled calculations... well, lists of muzzle energy combinations between the rifle with various bullets (8x57JR) and the two 16 gauge barrels, (different shot sizes versus slugs versus buck shot, etc) as well as other calculations for the use of the .22lr insert for a shotgun barrel!

I just realized I might have bought Coyote Hunter's drilling!

SItka deer is right, the strawman runs strong in you. No surprise there, it's all you've got.





No one said BC or any of those ever killed anything. BC was down the list of my preferences for bullets.

But it's interesting that you left accuracy and shot placement off your list and tout "energy" as the one thing that matters. Because you can have all the energy you want but if you shoot an elk in the ass you won't likely recover it. Which is the objective of everything else that goes into it. Shot placement trumps energy but it's nowhere on your list. No surprise there either.

And it's telling that you believe the most important thing about BC is that it helps retain energy. Ask any knowledgeable shooter why BC is important and that's not the answer you'll get.

I'v never said "the one thing that matters". What I've said repeatedly is that destruction of vital function is what kills, that such destruction requires energy and that a bullet's energy determines the maximum amount of work (destruction) that it can do.

For a bullet to destroy vital function obviously requires adequate placement, so I have not left accuracy out. If vital function to be destroyed, accuracy must be adequate.

Higher B.C. values help bullets shoot flatter because they help the bullets retain more velocity and therefore energy. Reduced wind drift is a result of the higher retained velocity and energy. For most of my hunting I've used relatively low B.C. bullets and they have worked very well because they retained adequate energy in spite of their relatively low B.C. value. B.C. alone never killed anything. If it did, a high B.C. bullet in your pocket would be as effective killing game as one with 1500fpe.

Does using a high BC bullet in your pocket make sense to you?

Pocket pool aside, I mean.

Just making the point that high B.C. values don't kill anything. If they did a high B.C. bullet in your pocket would be deadly.

High B.C. values have never been that important to me because lower B.C. bullets have worked just fine at the ranges I'm willing to shoot. I'm more interested in the totality of the solution than a single factor thereof. Adequate B.C., velocity, mass and bullet construction, not the highest, fastest, heaviest or even the "best" construction.

Well that's something we can agree on. And the more I use them and see people like Scenarshooter and others who kill stuff for a living using "target bullets" successfully and in high volume, the less important I think bullet construction is. For North American ungulates anyway.

That's it! I am selling all my guns and buying calculators! Numbers kill!

Let us know how that works out for you.

Think I'll stick to my firearms. They're pretty efficient at delivering the necessary energy to the right places.