Let me begin with a brief story. Many years ago I was chatting with my local gunsmith when one of the town's hunting blowhards came in yapping about a recent varmint hunt he went on. In the course of all the yadda, yadda, we were trying to tune out, he made a remark about how a lot of critters got away from his whateverthehell rifle he was hunting with because his bullets were simply going TOO FAST to open up! When he left we had a good laugh and ever afterwards when one of us missed we claimed it was because our bullets were going TOO FAST.

My experience with bullets not performing is always a case of wrong, tough-jacketed bullets used on the wrong animals. Conversely, if a bullet was going to expand at all, the faster it went the more it expanded until it reached a point where it virtually exploded on impact.

Then late last week I was half asleep and reading something about ballistics on the internet...(danged if I can relocate it) and I thought it started talking about how sometimes the wound created by a bullet could be ENHANCED by actually SLOWING the bullet down!

Since then I feel all confused and kinda like I just learned there is no easter bunny.

Have I missed something about bullets and ballistics all these years? I confess I don't always pay attention like I should...but does anyone have any facts about this phenomenon or even know what I'm talking about here? WHEN is slowing a bullet down more deadly than speeding a bullet up? Or have I just been working too hard and need some time off? HELP.

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A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

"WHEN is slowing a bullet down more deadly than speeding a bullet up? Or have I just been working too hard and need some time off? HELP. "

If you use soft bullets designed for slow cal. like 308w in a 300wheat. it may (expload) in the bow of a big animal before it penetates the vitals.

The problem with varmint bullets may be what thin jacketed varmint bullet are driven to extreme speeds so they open up in the air and only a small part hitting the animal

Curious minds want to know.

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A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

[This message has been edited by Pecos45 (edited 05-08-2002).]

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JD

Prairie dogs are largely bags of fat with little bullet resistence. Most controlled expansion bullets simple pass through them sometimes with little effect. However, take a Nosler Ballistic Tip Varmint bullet or better yet a Berger MEF and you get explosive expansion. The rats suddenly seem to have been feasting on nitro when you hit them. We refer to is as the red mist. This is exactly what you see.

Follow the simple rule - The correct bullet, traveling at the correct velocity, delivered to the correct area of the vitals.

Obviously I'm working too hard. I'll take this matter up with the boss today.

Thanks guys for telling me I'm not losing my mind.

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A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

Maybe you were reading about FMJ military bullets on the net, don't they tumble, thus creating a bigger wound channel when they slow down?

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Walk softly and carry a big bore!

Whatchoo talkin bout, Willis?

My faith in this board is shattered. *sniff*

But, don't let that lead you into the trap that slowing a bullet down cannot be benificial to bullet performance and killing effect, because in 99% of the cases slowing a bullet down will indeed protect the integrity of the bullet.. Slowing a 375 H&H 300 gr. bullet down from 2650 to 2400 FPS for use on Buffalo is a real good idea. The lower velocity is just more reliable on Buffalo as the you normally get more penitration and better bullet performance even with monolithics..Velocity is the enemy of penitration and bullet performance, in fact its only redeeming factor is trajectory and trajectory is the least important factor in hunting.

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

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JD

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Thanks, Mark G

"Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything." Genesis 9:3

My experience over the years agrees with what most of you have expressed. Faster can be good up to the point bullets start exploding on impact...unless you are hunting some small varmint that you don't care about a body count. Sorting the issue of bullet performance out can be a frustrating one. I ran into this years ago with a .243 and Sierra bullets. At that time, their 6mm bullets were eratic as hell. Hunting jackrabbits, one would explode and the next would go thru like an AP. You never knew what to expect. I'll have to say as a whole Sierra bullets have been the most erratic and Hornady the most consistent with their expansion characteristics.

Atkinson, you pretty well hit the nail on the head of what I'm fishing for in this thread...and you confirmed what I only guessed at, i.e. that velocity was NOT the sacred cow for killing very large, very dangerous animals. And as you very wisely stated, the only advantage to velocity is improved trajectory...and this is the least important factor in hunting.

I like that, Ray, and wish I'd said it first.
It's every bit as good as my signature line that:

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A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

While this may not be too important on some of the lesser varmints, it can be a serious concern on larger hunts. The good thing about this website is there is a lot of experience out there to ask about this bullet or that.

Know thy bullet

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A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

quote:

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Originally posted by Pecos45:
simply going TOO FAST to open up!

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One other thought, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but if a bullet is of very heavy construction and shot at a light-skinned animal such as a pronghorn, isn't it possible that it won't open if no bones are hit? It makes sense on paper!

As far as not expanding is concerned, at any velocity over 2200 fps I can't think of a bullet made that will fail to expand (unless it hits sideways or is damaged in such a way to inhibit its normal functioning). The toughness of the game animal has very little to do with it for high velocity impacts.

If this sounds like hogwash, then consider this.

One guy jumps of the diving board into the hotel pool. A second guy jumps off the 35th floor balcony into the same pool. First guy gets out and has a drink. Second guy makes a big SPLAT noise like he landed on concrete. The difference is just velocity.

Viscous mediums are funny like that.
Remember what Newton said," For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

It's just water, fighting back

As far as the blowhard's concerned, I have a theory. His loads must be so hot, that his bullets are exceeding the speed of light. When this happens, his bullets cease to exist as Matter and become pure energy, which passes harmlessly through the vermits, and then slows down below litespeed, where it becomes a bullet again, and hits the dirt with a poof of dust, appearing to be a missed shot.

[This message has been edited by elmo (edited 05-09-2002).]

https://www.eabco.com/Reports/report03.html

it sounds interesting but I dont have any idea if there is anything to it.

Exits wounds were very, very small. I tend to believe that exit wounds are smaller than the expanded diameter of the bullet. When I shot my moose with my Whelen, I could barely put my pinky finger in the exit wound, but I know the 250 Gr. Hot Core expanded just fine. Hide is funny stuff. FWIW, Dutch.

The way the ballistics people explain it to me is this: You have a bullet flying thru the air, point first hopefully, and stabalized by the twist imparted via the rifling. All is well. Then the bullet strikes the target and once this occurs things start getting a wee bit unstable.
Since the center of gravity on any bullet and most of the mass is way towards the REAR of the bullet, the result of this instability is that the heavier (rear) part of the bullet starts taking over and begins swinging around towards the front. Obviously various occilations and yawing around can occur as the bullet tries to achieve this end-first result.

This phenomenon is probably not nearly so drastically seen in expanding bullets simply because in an expanding bullet the front of the bullet largely MOVES to the rear and they become one and the same.

The effect is going to be more clearly seen in FMJs and bullets that don't expand or do all this "shape shifting."

One of my favorite places to mess around and test loads used to be in old deserted junk yards where I could shoot at all sorts of THINGS. I've seen with my own eyes how bullets sometimes make a round hole going into something and leave a perfect silhouette of a bullet going absolutely side-ways on their way out the other side!
The only way to achieve this is "tumbling," swapping ends, violent yawing and such.

Bullets can and do sometimes perform some strange wanderings as they pass thru an animal and are acted upon by various mediums. Whether we call this "tumbling, yawing or square dancing," I'm convinced it exists. I've seen too many examples of it to deny it. Recovered lots of cast bullets that were somewhat mushroomed on the nose of the bullet and then "mushroomed" again SIDEWAYS as they hit the next hard object going sideways.

But your right, shooters shouldn't believe everything they hear or read. If something sounds goofy, it may BE goofy. This is why we talk about them and hash them out and compare notes.

Good hunting!

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A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

[This message has been edited by Pecos45 (edited 05-10-2002).]

As far as "tumbling" bullets are concerned, the cause is rightly described as instability. Instability is introduced by hitting the target first of all and aggravated by the density of tissue, which is 1000 times greater than air. The rotational velocity of the bullet is generally insufficient to stabilize long (especially pointed) projectiles, so unless they deform they will typically begin to gyrate or yaw in an effort to achieve a stable flight orientation. This is a bigger problem (obviously) for non-deforming spitzer FMJ military bullets than for soft points or round nosed bullets (although very long round nosed bullets can be unstable too if the twist rate is slow). The impact velocity also plays a role. Below about 2000 fps, the tumbling does not occur, even for the pointed types.

Noslers and monolithics will blow off the front from time to time, in which case it means you were too close and velocity was too high or you should have been using a heavier bullet.

I have seen many failures with BarnesX as described and I think the bend the nose shut from time to time...I know this, when a X bullet works it works beatifully, when it fails, fails miserably...I believe it is pure quality control, happens when companies get to big and have to rush production.

One thing you can take to the bank and animals up to and including elk, moose, Kudu and that is there is no such thing as 250 or 300 grs. of failure. Use enough gun and when the bullets come apart the still kill'em quick.

High velocity is very deadly 95% of the time on high strung light antelope and deer. 5% of the time it is a disaster. Velocity kills like lightening when all works well and it is impressive to watch...on the other hand I like a tough bullet capable of shooting through what I am hunting from any angle and my kills are not spectacular, but they leave good blood trails and are 100% every time if I shoot well.

I have absolutly no use at all for velocity on big mean tough animals like Buffalo, Elephant Eland it fails most of the time on these bad boys.

Ideal to me is about 3000 FPS or 2800 FPS is perhaps better in the med. caliber rifles and 2200 FPS to 2400 FPS in the big bores..Never have much trouble with these velocities. Bullet integrity is preserved at these speeds with good bullets and bullet integrity is the holy grail of the hunter, not caliber...

It took me 55 years of extensive hunting and many, many animals to come to this very simple conclusion and all the math and theoretical jargon goes out the window. Worse yet I knew the answer all the time.

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Ray Atkinson

ray@atkinsonhunting.com
atkinsonhunting.com

quote:

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Originally posted by Harald:
Below about 2000 fps, the tumbling does not occur, even for the pointed types.

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Harald, WHY does tumbling never occur below 2,000 fps. What's magical about this velocity? I am not arguing, just genuinely curious. And I've seen pistol bullets with the "double mushroom" effect I mentioned above. However, pistol bullets are often not the most aerodynamic of shapes anyhow.
AND, now that I think of it, I can't recall if the "double mushroom" was a double impact on a bullet TRYING to travel straight or if it was a richochet inside some of the crazy things I used to delight in shooting at junk yards? Can't honestly say.

But I'll say this much, I never expected to get this many replies to my thread and the discussion has been interesting.

I think Atkinson makes a good point when he states HV bullets kill with spectacular results (when they work)...but good heavy hunting bullets are going to be more reliable on game elk size on up.

So many shooters in the southwest worship at the shrine of High Velocity because it's possible to get some very long range shots. (If we are foolish enough to take them.) But as a result of all the "velocity at any cost" mentality, there are a lot of crippled animals not cleanly killed because of poor bullet performance of one kind or another. I believe for sure any hunter going after anything from an elk sized animal on up, we should select a GOOD bullet and forget the velocity quest.

If we think about having a rifle that would shoot 5,000 fps and perfectly flat out to 600 yds......what sort of hunt would we have? We might bring home the bacon but what sort of hunt would it be? I suggest NOT MUCH FUN. We would have just about taken the HUNT out of hunting. It would be more like drive...shoot and go home.
IMHO

I totally believe in my "signature post" below.

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A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

But somewhere along this "IFY" road it gets sort of like going over Niaagra Falls in a whiskey barrel. I know people have gone over the falls and lived to tell the tale.
But most of them woke up dead!

Are we talking hunting or circus stunts? I personally think we owe enough respect to the animals to try to kill them as surely and certainly and painlessly as possible.
And I've seen some spectacular failures with the wrong bullets. Doing the job when it arrives is VASTLY more important for a bullet than just getting there QUICK...and then mucking things up for the animal and the hunter. IMHO

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A well placed bullet is worth 1,000 ft/lbs of energy.

quote:

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Just remember Kinetic Energy = � mv2. Velocity is squared therefore if velocity is doubled, energy is 4 times as much. Whereas, if mass is doubled and V is constant KE is only doubled.

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If that formula is correct, and I'm not saying it's not, then why is there so much arguing about velocity? I'd have to say, as most are here, that it's bullet choice for said velocity and not too much speed.

Game animals have a LOT of water in them... let's say we have two identical .308" 180 gr. Nosler Partitions... same weight and sectional density... one impacts an elk at 2,600 fps and the other an identical elk in the identical spot (my, aren't these cyber-elk cooperative!) at 3,000 fps... the bullet going 2,600 fps will generally out-penetrate the faster bullet for all the reasons Elmo listed, and may do a better job killing. I believe Ray, through hard-won experience, is saying the same thing in a different way.

Obviously there's a lot of other factors like rotational speed, etc. BUT, I believe the above is the most critical aspect of performance... on big animals in particular, a bullet MUST penetrate deeply to be a reliable, year-in-year-out big game killer... that's probably part of the reason the 30-06 works so well on elk though most of us are loathe to admit it!

Me, I like the 338 Win Mag and Partitions!

Brad

http://www.molonlabe.net/johns/power.htm