Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters How is Optimum Game Weight Calculation done?

By the way, the only way I can get that deer to come that close is by installing Scent Lok siding on the house.

Silly....if you got a power washer and some of the no-scent soap, you could get them in that way....

Scent lock Depends might help.

Agree, albeit without a PhD attached to my name.

A year or two ago I came up with a couple formulas to compare cartridges on the basis of wind drift and recoil (minimize wind drift and recoil), but those formulas aren't for general use (just for my use) because there are judgments that went into them (e.g,. bullets and loads to use for the comparison) that might not be what someone else would want to assume. The same is true for any kind of "optimal game weight" formula.

Where can you get those...?

Inquiring minds......

Incidently, a long time ago, there was a thread that discussed experimenting with unhooking bras years ago around the Bozeman area- I think "Quackenbush in the Bush" and plucking is more relevant to that thread than it is to bullet performance.

How many years ago....?


Wasn't around 1977-78......was it???????

They make Scent Lok depends? Wow- Heading to the store now!

Ask the whiskey ice vendor. I hear it's for his same clientele.

Many people make their living from firearms, ammo, and reloading components. Change sells, which is way there's an endless stream of new stuff coming to market.

Regardless of the vast and growing selection, few people start out with the experience to know what caliber/load combinations are adequate for some particular game animal at some particular range. That's where the formulas can help.

Chuck Hawks reviews the entire subject on his The Killing Power of Centerfire Hunting Rifles web page. About the Matunas formula Hawks writes "As skeptical as I am about killing power formulas in general, I like the OGW system as a predictor of rifle/load killing power because it shows a high degree of correlation with the observations of experienced hunters."

In my opinion, distilling the observations of experienced hunters into a simple formula is of great benefit to novice hunters or anyone wanting to gauge the effectiveness of caliber/load combinations they are not familiar with.

MacLorry,

Those formulas may be fun to play around with, and a novice might start to get an idea of what cartridges are sufficient for a particular type of game, but if a novice wants to know what cartridge to use, a formula would be just the start of the research.

On the negative side, a novice might get the idea that he needed to be prepared for the off-chance he might run into the granddaddy of all elk, weighing in at close to half a ton, at 400+ yards range and decide, based on some formula, that he better get at least a .338 RUM for any elk hunting he might do. That wouldn't be a good cartridge for 99+% of novices. There's more to selecting a cartridge than bullet mass and muzzle velocity.

It's like trying to distill the qualities of a woman into a formula- In other words, it ain't gonna happen. But the field research on women is more fun, although much more expensive..

MacLorry,

I live in Montana, where a lot of elk are killed every year. There are far more elk taken with .270's and 7mm-08's than .338 Winchester Magnums every fall, by people who have used the .270 and 7-08 over and over again on elk.

East of the Mississippi there are a lot of hunters who feel that the .338 Winchester Magnum is the minimum anybody should consider for elk hunting. Some of these people have even taken an elk, and sometimes more than one.

The consensus among the elk guides I know is that the majority of first-time elk hunters are vastly overgunned with the .338 Winchester Magnum.

There is a consensus there, and it is NOT the .338 Winchester Magnum. But when you check the Matunas formula it pretty much recommends the .338 for elk-sized game, especially past some range such as 379.4 yards. So where is this "high degree of correlation with the observations of experienced hunters"?

Plus, I fail to see how the Matunas formula would be easy to use for the average hunter wondering if his rifle is elk-adequate.

There has been a lot of BS spouted by various gun writers over the years, but mathematical formulas for killing power (or how long an elephant will stay knocked out) are right at the top of the BS pile.

I would not be so quick to discount Taylor's knock out formula, for the simple reason that probably no one alive today has as much experience as Taylor had on elephant and other large game animals.

It is doubtful that many, even in Taylor's time, had as much experience as he did.

I was reading a few pagers in his book yesterday. I have had the book for several years, but I have not read it all the way through, front to back. Yesterday was the first time I had read this particular part, and I looked it up to find out what Taylor thought about using the 7X57, with a solid, on Elephant.

I am writing this from memory, so I may have my facts wrong, but as I remember it, Taylor wrote something along the lines that an elephant hit in the guts with a .470 (or .577, or anything) was a wounded and mad elephant.

But, one hit in the brain with a 7 MM solid was a dead elephant, right there. But, a brain shot from a .470 or the .577 would have the same results as the 7X57 in the same place--a very dead elephant.

So would a .470, .577, or 7MM in the guts--a very irate elephant.

So, then, as it is now, it depends on where you hit them, although for a heart shot or other vital area other than the brain, the larger, heavier bullet would be more effective.

That would more than likely be true on buffolo and other large game as well.

Believe it or not, there are people alive today who have MORE experience in shooting elephants than John Taylor. This is because of culling operations. Some of these people have killed several times as many elephants as Taylor.

There were also contemporaries of John Taylor with great experience on elephants who thought his formula was BS.

The formula is not based on some repeatable and immutable law of nature, so there are going to be exceptions. If you read Chuck Hawks' article you'll find that he deals with the subject in depth while maintaining good balance and skepticism. It's Chuck Hawks's opinion that the OGW formula has a high degree of correlation with the observations of experienced hunters. In the end it's another gun writer's opinion, and one that's contrary to your own.

In my opinion there's a reason firearms are deadly and it has something to do with the bullet and how fast it's going. If there's no way to quantify "killing power" then how can anyone say an elk hunter is overgunned with the .338 Winchester Magnum? Obviously, people formulate an answer to such a question in their own mind. The difference is that Matunas, Cooper, Hatcher, Taylor and others have tried to share their reasoning with the rest of us. Their reasoning may be flawed, but it's not BS



The BigGameInfo site has more information on the Matunas formula and their Ballistics Calculator includes the OGW value for each range calculated.

Maclorry
Try this information - A study done in Europe on moose shot with various cartridges from the 6.6X55 up to the 375 H&H showed very little difference in how quickly the animals died. Factor THAT into the Matunas formula.

MacLorry,

I see from your profile that you're an engineer. I've run into other engineers who feel that somehow formulas should be able to predict bullet performance on game animals. That's fine. But shooting animals is a lot like predicting the weather: No matter what a computer can suggest from a lot of previous data, things change so infinitely and rapidly that even the best input will end up with different results. And every animal is different.

Cooper and Hatcher's formulas weren't for animals, but even then I know a lot of experienced people (some more experienced than Cooper and Hatcher) who don't think much of their formulas--and for the same reason a lot of African PH's don't think much of Taylor's KO formula: Their experience has shown them that any such formula is indeed BS.

And yes, it is possible to determine if any hunter is overgunned with the .338 Winchester Magnum. In fact it's a lot more possible than predicting how quickly a .243 or .270 or .338 bullet will kill an elk, or how long a .375 or .416 or .470 bullet will stun an elephant. You just have the hunter shoot at a 12-inch target and see if they can consistently hit it. If they can't, they're overgunned.

Because a lot of hunters can't shoot them very well....at least a lot of beginners...

I don't have it in front of me,and I won't waste time looking at Matunas' formula because I did that back years ago...I think as much of it now as I did then,which is to say,not much...

...but IIRC what it tries to tell you is that a 338(say)is good for elk at 374 yards, but at that distance a 7 mag(for example) isn't......which is mostly bunk.

I guess it also tries to tell you,that the 338 is good at 374 yards,but not good at 400....which we also know is "bunk".....

I'm sure there are other voids in the formula as well....

Taylors' TKO formula,if taken literally, will tell you that a 600 Nitro Express will kill an elephant deader than a 416 Remington....I never shot an elephant so don't know what to think of that....

BobNH - HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD ! !
I have had experience with ONE 338 Win Mag - a Ruger 77 Red Butt Pad - and I WAS NOT a beginner shooter/handloader. I shot very good groups with it but it WAS NOT FUN.

I dare say that IF I had hunted it I would have UNCONSCIOUSLY flinched because it HURT to shoot THAT GUN.

No matter the caliber, if a hunter can't shoot his gun CONFIDENTLY and I might add in fun - he is OVERGUNNED !