Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 10,000 Swedish Moose died to teach us this lesson.

Savage, thanks for the comic relief.

I would like to try one last example that IMO shows the relationhip of ft-lb energy and momentum.

A plane cutting through tha air has a mass and velicity. If it is not accelerating energy usage is at a "minimum" and is shed as friction/heat and low energy sound waves.

Now add more power, take the energy up, take the speed up. Eventually, depending on the density of the air, the wing design and whatever else, the laminar or smooth flow can no longer be maintained. The result is the sonic boom, where pressure built up at the leading edge of the wing causes a massive KE to KE transfer to the air.

My explanation for the division here; most of our hunting experience involves flying through tissue without reaching a threshold, using minimum energy, where the momentum model of dynamics describes most of what we see. The momentum model that predicts expanded caliber sized wound channels. However, chsnge the wing design, lighten that plane and/or drive it too fast for the density of material encountered and the ft-lb's that typically empty into the hillside beyond greet the animals insides.

The dynamics is so caliber, SD, velocity, bullet design and tissue type/density dependent that the value of high KE is overlooked as irrelevant. I think maybe the Berger VLD is a bullet that at proper velocity can dump KE where it's needed. And I think that others can have a valid observation if they see their magnum ft-lbs dump domething on its ass.

My rule of thumb on moose is divide it in three equal longitudinal pieces, If I think the moose is far away I aim for the upper 1/3rd line, if close the lower one third line. I mostly shoot off-hand and tend to shoot a little high when stressed, most shots are missed by high shots , over the back, anyway. I always aim for hair and even with a 35whelen that range is out past 350yds and if you have a fast one 400+ yds with a 24" bullet drop.

Well if I could drop them at a 1000 yards they would be dead also by the time I got there. TIC HaHa.

The speed of sound is 1100 ft/sec.
When the bullet leaves your rifle and gets to this speed-this is the effective range of your rifle.
It becomes subsonic, the gurus told me so.
I don't understand the connection between sonic booms and air planes. Jets are the only thing I know that can go faster than sound which is around 650 miles an hour or 1100 ft/sec.
Chuck Yaeger is the only fella I head of going the speed of bullets at around 3000 ft/sec. in our atmosphere other than the space shuttle.

Some lousy shot must have shot off its' antlers!

Partially true. A lot of the energy consumed by an airplane flying in low speed, level steady flight is used to accelerate air downwards. Recall Newton's 3rd Law concerning action and reaction; if a wing is pushed upwards by the air, in return the air is being pushed downwards by the wing.



Sonic booms have nothing to do with laminar or turbulent flow*. Sonic booms occur because of compresibility effects. When the aircraft travels faster than the speed of sound in the air, the pressure waves it emits as it flies along coalesce into a conical wave front (as seen from the reference frame of the aircraft). The boom occurs in the nonmoving reference frame; if you are standing on the ground when the conical wave front passes by, you hear a loud sound impulse. If the aircraft is nearby, the pressure wave has an N shape and you hear a "crack". If the aircraft is far away, the high frequencies are lost in the air due to absorption and scattering, so what you hear is a lower frequency "thump" or "boom".

* The caveat is that the internal dynamics of shock waves is believed by some to be dominated by turbulence. But a shock wave, by definition, is exceedingly thin, and attempts to get inside it with measurement systems have the problem of the observer effect. Readers should not conclude that the flow over the aircraft surface is turbulent, however; an aircraft or projectile can fly supersonically with a distinct shock wave and still have laminar flow over its surface.

Don't have time to thoroughly read all the latest posts, but let me see if I got this.

The sonic boom is what is deadly, right? The bigger the boom, the deadlier.

Okay, now I understand why magnum guys are so in love with their choices. It's that incredibly loud noise that makes them such efficient killers. And the fact that you can hear that noise a long way off that gives them their long range capability.

I've often suspected that...

Actually, the Weatherby trademark is deadly. If you just flash it at the animals, you don't need the sonic boom.

There is, however, a real chance that you will sooner or later run into an illiterate game animal.

Yes, energy is also expended holding the plane up. It was implied when I said energy use was at a "minumum"

Your science on the sonic boon effect is more accurate. The air flow over the leading edge of the wing does not necessarilly ever reach turbulence but approaches it (I didn't use the T word, I don't think) and I know there is laminar flow accross a wing beyond the speed of sound.

"Recall Newton's 3rd Law concerning action and reaction; if a wing is pushed upwards by the air, in return the air is being pushed downwards by the wing."

What I recall is that the wing "lift" is off the top surface of the wing, air pressure pushes up from the bottom. Aren't you thinking of a helecopter prop?

But I stand by my analogy that shows how energy can leave a bullets typical influence area as a shock wave and cause lateral damage that adds to killing power. You've pointed out the downside when using analogies. Thanks for your comments.

Have followed this thread , some good stuff, etc. After analysing it all very carefully this was what I came up with ....

" 10,000 Swedes ran throug the weeds at the battle of Copenhagen... 10,000 Swedes ran through the weeds, chased by 1 Nowegian"

Hard to say what he was carrying

No disrespct meant to anyone o Swedish descent

While I think we might agree on magnum vrs slower bullets I find analogies more difficult to champion than the actual topic. Nor do I find interjecting a Berger VLD suddenly into the topic anymore than adding another variable unless somehow you expand on that tangent.

To add that there are other questions that might challenge the moose study such as how many animals were not recovered after being hit with each specific bullet? This could be a great unknown as indeed they are lost or worse suffer along for days or months. The only animals measured here are the ones recovered.

Moral of the stoy is that Kenworths very seldom break the sound barrier, even though they make a lot of noise, but they are very effective on moose.

Also, there's more dead moose in Alberta than live ones in Idaho.

The Berger VLD is a bullet that appears to dump all available ft-lbs 2-3 inches into soft skinned animals, hopefully safely into a vital area. KE where it counts.

It sounded like you were aiming to shoot them in the hump itself, an area which produces many pounds of ground meat - (and, if you cut the supporting bones into soup sizes leaving some meat on them, the meat next to the bones is very tasty and tender as well.) I don't know for a fact, but I would imagine a moose could absorb a high shot there without dying, at least not in a timely and findable manner.

I am a lung shooter and am having a hard time thinking of more than one moose out of many I've killed which I did not poke in the lungs, indeed a very big target. While in autumn a rib/lung shot does sometimes affect a bit of succulent (fat) edibles, in winter, that really isn't a factor. Either season, it's where I shoot them.

Klikitarik- Don't tell anybody but I have a hard time telling distance. If a smaller moose is at 350, I think he's past 400.
If a large moose is at 400, I think he's at 300. That's why I shoot like the way I discribed. I'm somewhat handicapped when it comes to judging distance and that's why I shoot the way I discribed. Sometimes they get it in the hump and sometimes near the brisket.
I've been successful for many years that way and I'm to old to change my ways, and I don't trust them fangled gadgets that tell distance. By the time I figure out how to read the damn thing th e moose is gone. All I bring home is tracks for the cook pot. Don't laugh at me please. My brother allready does that.

My intention for the analogy was to give an example where an object with kinetic energy could release a shock wave to it's surroundings after reaching a certain threshold. A plane plows through air and a bullet plows through tissue; no they aren't exactly the same. This is just a theory that explains the contradictory observations.

Neither side is "wrong" in my opinion. Nobody said KE always matters or that it never mattered. Can KE put the lights out faster? I think an experiment could be set up to give either result with manipulation of the variables.

That's why a 416 Barrett is accurate to past 2500m, it never goes sub-sonic at that range, and the old 45-70's and there ilk are accurate in the day because they never went super sonic, thus avoiding all the turbulance in the transition.

Personally I prefer sonic for bergers made from the humps of scandanavian mooses,in spite of the laminar effects of compressible newtons made of fig.

I forget,what were we talkin about?

Britt

Game animals are not killed by "dumping" kinetc energy; they are killed by bullets that destroy vital organs.

please don't confuse us with facts