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

The day that you can prove two dead animals that have been shot with a 300 Roy and a 308 and both dead...not kicking, breathing, or sticking their tongue out at ya cause ya didn't shoot one with a magnum,will be the day the hell freezes over.

DEAD IS DEAD........not deadlier or deadliest, or god I wish he was more dead.....

When you can get your magnum to kill, gut, and wall-mount your deer, then you'll have a case, point, and a new fan by your's truely. Until then, I await the sight of the deadest animal that is more dead than the other dead animals.

I can explain it. However its complicated. Later.

A buddy who has passed away now did not like recoil at all. He was a little guy who shot an Remington 243. It was some short barreled compact model. He wanted the lightest load and I used to shoot the 75 gr Sierra HP a lot so I loaded them up with the min. charge of 3031.

He shot a buck with that load and the deer ran out of the woods and died at the tailgate of his truck. He really liked that load but what did he know?

Simply because a cartridge doesn't make deadly, but the man behind the gun who can place his shot does.

Give me a 22LR and I'll harvest every game animal Oregon has to offer, but we all know they ain't deadly and that can't happen because if a 308 isn't deadly enough, the damn 22 hasn't got a chance.


Well crap guys....I want to see some "DEAD" animals...I'm not talking about ones that are just lying there within feet of the hit, not breathing, bloody, and allowing you to take pictures of yourself with them, but honest to goodness dead ones.....So dead that you killed their cousins, brothers, and sisters at the same time. And ones that are mounted on the wall don't count either, cause that's not ironclad proof of deadly.
And whatever you do, don't post any pics of deer that are presumed dead by a bowhunter. We all know you can't kill anything with a bow and arrow....Heck it ain't even a firearm, let alone one that counts as "deadly".

Well tonight I think I'm gonna have some non-dead deer roast over some non-grown potatoes, and some near-dead deer beer, minus the hops and barley....you boys have fun.

ROTFLMAO.......

Yeah....it's complicated.

how did this thread get to be so funny?

This quotation explains it to those who understand it.

" All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer
German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

Maybe we should ask Mike378 to recite the story of 2 Aussies that went into the late Don Black's gunsmithing business and ordered a pair of .223 rifles made to their specs.

They took these rifles to Africa and shot a truck load of animals, one shot a piece each.

Or the countless Kiwi cullers that shot red deer for decades with the .22 Hornet. God knows I have read a lot of those stories over the years.

Magnums are there for those who want additional bullet weight which can be driven at the same velocities as the standard cartridges using lighter or medium weight bullets.

A .300 Winchester can shoot a 200 grain bullet as fast as a .30/06 with a 180. Trajectories will be similar, recoil and blast will favor the .30/06 from an operational standpoint, but there is no animal that can be taken with one and not the other, which I think is the point being lost here.

Dead is in point of fact, dead.

This reminds me of the John Wayne shootout with Kirk Douglas beside him; Douglas said "Mine hit hte ground first", Wayne responded, "Mine was taller".

AGW

If you spent more time finding "REAL DEAD" animals, rather than searching aimlessly for a good quote that fell short of magnum velocities, you'd have me buying a new rifle......

For god's sakes man....don't put any field evidence into this discussion....we're talking about 10,000, wish-I'd-been-deader moose here.

Matt,
My apologies.

John

I wonder if any of them were killed by near misses from hypersonic bullets.

In Sweden a lot of moose drivers use dogs -- som special breeds and even some very small terriers. The chances of loosing a hard hit animal in the thick stuff or swamps decline when dogs lead you to the downed animal. This factor plus the ease of shooting a 6.5 accurately w/o recoil flinch would make me a lot more confident using the Swede on a larger animal in heavy cover there -- irrespective of any data on distance run after fatal hits.

Around home, my evening hunts w/o dogs see bigger bores in my hands as I feel more confident about puitting the deer down in their tracks rather than skying off into the thick stuff and failed light. So far, the .338 Federal and Whelen have done the evening bang flop job pretty well, while ,in the past I have lost several hard hit deer to the jungle and dark when using a 257 Bob. I now reserve the lighter calibers for early and mid day hunts.

1B

Mule Deer
As someone else pointed out the permanent wound channel surface area is the correct measure, not its volume. That measure increases far slower than frontal area as you increase bullet diameter.

In the example of .308 vs. .338 the surface area on them (when expanded to double) increases wound channel surface area by 9.7%, but frontal area is increased 17%.

Dumping blood is the issue and the speed at which it leaves determines blood pressure drop and the frontal zone of bleeding is where the drop take place.

As we have discussed before, the docs I get to discuss this with (cardiac surgeons and anaesthesiologists specializing in cardiac surgery) remain steadfast in saying a cut to the aorta is the fastest non-CNS death. A severed aorta with heart intact will drop an animal in an average of three heartbeats.

The question I have about the moose study involves the small number examples like the 358NM. I wonder how many of the small sample were done by the same shooter. On a multi-year study with limited numbers of 358NM shooters it could really be nothing more than a marksmanship study of a better shooter.
art

Art,

All interesting points--especially about the low numbers of .358 Norma shooters, which of course might also apply to the .300 Winchester as well.

I wonder if the aorta damage applies to big game animals as well as humans. Obviously any damage to the aorta stops things pretty quickly, but as a confirmed autopsier, I have postmortemed many animals that died at least partially due to severe aortic damage that went the "normal" 25-50 yards before keeling over. Many I have actually seen fall, and quite often they make the lope/run, then stagger a little while before falling. Normally the whole process takes longer than 3 seconds.

I got the information about blood pressure dropping in the brain from another study, that gave the normal range as 10-15 seconds, with an average of 12, after massive trauma to the center of the circulatory system. While I normally do not start a stopwatch when shooting, since reading that study the animals I have observed fall from non-CNS shots have certainly seemed to go down mostly within that time-frame.

The key to the fastest damage is two-fold as I have quoted the docs repeatedly. First, the big leak needs to be there for speed. Second, to guarantee the big leak stays the big leak as long as possible the pump must keep pulling on the suction side of the system.

Destroy the heart muscle and the pump stops. Leakage will obviously drain the residual pressure but not nearly as rapidly as an intact pumping heart.

Clearly, a large percentage of aorta damaging shots are going to do the same to heart muscle.

We discussed the fact we were referring to critters, not humans and there answers were oriented that way. They pointed out the fact ungulates have but a single pleura housing both lungs where humans have one for each. They cut up critters also and have a better reference point when watching shot animals...

I find the whole thing extremely interesting. One of the best days I remember involved a horse guy and I cutting up a moose and doing a thorough comparative anatomy lab there on the mountainside.
art

I have heard the claim by "exit hole" hunters that an exiting bullet helps collapse the lungs in big game animals, due to the single pleura. The theory is that without the exit hole, the lungs have to fill with blood before seeing much effect. They may have something.

On the other hand, the quickest-deadest I have seen animals die from lung shots was when they were shot with Berger VLD's that essentilly minced the lungs, and often did NOT leave an exit hole.

On a lung shot, through and through, isn't it the cold air rushing in causes some shock as well as the loss of oxygenated blood to brain and muscles. Also, I didn't hear anyone talk about bullet / speed combinations that hurt the animal. Eg: if i bounce a softball off your chest that generates 10 ft/lbs of energy you will feel it for sure, but if I use something long (S.D.) of the same weight it will hurt more than the softball. So with the same amount of force I can hurt you with varying degrees of 'hurt'. A big hurt will cause more pain , pain mixes up your nervous system, puts it on tilt. I think this is a contributing factor in knocking an animal down.

As with shooting moose or other animals in general, there are many ways to shoot them dead. So too with lung shots. While it's true that a decent lung shot seems to effectively kill moose, I tend to think - even though I can't quantify it- that some lung shots work better (faster) than others. I have seen lungs both ways on dead moose: fully inflated or nearly so with blood loss being the killer, as well as collapsed lungs, again with blood loss being apparent and seemingly significant. There are obviously many things which can affect the speed of an animal's demise. However, collapse or total destruction of the lungs seems never a bad thing in accomplishing that. Since entrance holes are often smaller regardless the caliber or speed, an exit hole does seem to encourage lung collapse. Then again, perforating the diaphragm seems to also work.

MD
I do not see the lungs as ay factor in speed of killing, aside from their role as bleeders. There is plenty of oxygen in muscle and blood in the muscle to carry an animal for literal minutes.

Of course they may be saying the lungs filling with blood causes the BP to drop.

As to quickest kills with grenades and no exits... The descending aorta and the pleural branches thereof are huge potential bleeders with blood supplies to more than half the critter...
art