I've read it is, I've read it isn't. Right now search is down, so if its been covered before (I'm sure it has) I've missed it. Can anyone shed a little light on this for me?

Just because an animal, say a deer, is about 60% water does not means that shooting one is anything like shooting a milk-jug filled with water or a big, juicy watermelon. Muscle tissue is extremely elastic, pure water is not.
Not convinced? Read this.

http://www.mindspring.com/~ulfhere/ballistics/myths.html

9.3

Crazyquik,

I have shot enough animals, with very high velocity cartridges, to know this indeed is a myth.

This works on the smaller animals, but once you are up to deer size game and bigger, it becomes much less effective.

The very term is questionable, hydroSTATIC .At 3000 fps things are hardly static. There are velocity factors but to kill an animal you have to penetrate into the vital organs and do damage to those organs.

Hydrostatic shock refers to fluid that is incompressable.
The projectile strikes the animal, velocity, plus bullet composition induce shock waves through the wound channel created by that projectiles passing. Depending on the compostiton of that projectile and velocity of the projectile used, will determine the amount of shock wave effect in the wound channel as the projectile passes through. How do you rationalize Hydrostatic shock is a myth?

Since all warm blooded mammals are comprised of 80% fluid, that mammal is suject to devastating hydrostatic shock effects when struck by any projectile with specific tissue disrupting qualities. The degree of the wound inflicted will be determined by the velocity and the composition of the projectile used. In my view, hydrostatic shock is no myth, but is real and will create massive tissue damage to aniaml or human when applied by the use of a specificly prepared projectile delivered at high velocity.

It is the mantra of the hyper velocity, small bullet group. As with most urban myths, there is a small kernel of truth to it but it is not applicible to BG hunting.

Well, it seems there isn't a concensus on this board about it either.

Great link 9.3, and here is an interesting quote from it.

Quote:

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The sound speed of water (which is very close to that of soft tissue) is about 4900 fps. Even varmint bullets do not have an impact velocity this high, let alone a penetration velocity exceeding 4900 fps.

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I often hear ~2200 fps being throw around in these discussions, as this is supposed to be some near-magic threshold where bullets over this velocity have much more killing power than those that impact at say 1900 fps.

Personally, I dont know, that's why I'm asking. I haven't shot enough game with bullets that impact at less than 2000 fps to know if they kill as well as those with impacts at greater than 2200 or not.

Lets see whether we get any value out of this question.
That means to me ,we dont argue about the term 'hydrostatic ' as it maybe implies something that isnt meant or proven.
What I like to state ,is that the wound of a bullet induced rifle shot is greater than the dimension of the bullet.
The wound isnt simply a laser type hole that disrupts blood vessels in its path,the wound channel diameter is far bigger.
I believe from cursory inspection,that high speed bullets cause a larger trauma than slow velocity bullets,if everything else is same.
If true,than that difference is attributable to some transfer of energy,if you like,call it hydrostatic shock.
I have seen whole shoulders of deer sized animals and bigger,ruined for eating,because of this trauma,The meat is very hemorhagic and assumes a jell like appearance.

sheephunter

I won't speak about hydrostatic shock, as I don't believe anyone knows the answer. But, that being said, the more I study this issue, the more I am begining to believe that the larger the animal, the more important caliber, bullet weight, and velocity becomes.

It seems to me, that for small animals such as varmints, super high velocity with small calibers are the ticket; ignoring trajectories issues. As the animals become larger, velocity becomes less important and caliber and bullet weight become more important.

The 460 Weatherby has had some spectacular results on Cape Buffalo, but also some spectacular failures. Slower velocity bullets seem to have fewer game failures. Then again, no one has really done a totally comprehensive study on terminal ballastics that I have found. Perhaps those 460 failures are only spectacular since folks expect completely different results. Failures seem to be discussed far more than successes.

For really big game, it appears that big heavy bullets around 2200 to 2400 fps muzzle velocity seem to work really well. For medium game, higher velocities of 2600 fps seems to work well. For deer it seems that impact velocities much over 3000 fps seems to do quite a bit of damage to meat more often than not. I think the solution is to determine which combination of caliber, velocity, and bullet weight does the least damage to meat while still dropping the animal in his/her tracks.

This isn't meant to be a big/heavy vs small/fast arguement. Clearly, the spiffy newer bullets are moving things to smaller calibers and this has been going on for the last 175 years or so.

Until we really understand terminal ballastics better, I think no one will have a true picture. However, if it was my butt on the line, I would rather have a 600g 500 NE in my hands than a 500g 460 Weatherby! Better yet, I would rather have a good PE who had a lot of experience at sorting things out such as this.

RobertD

While it's not "hydrostatic shock" animals and people for that matter get knocked out or dizzy and fall from a blow.

If you have watched any boxing or been in a fight you know. Also I have shot a number of animals that fell when hit by a bullet and then got up.

It's just getting our wind knocked out of us you could call it. Of course if the bullet also made a lethal wound the animal could die from blood loss while being knocked out.

Just my opinion and opinions are like body parts...
I've seen deer hit multiple times in the vitals with high velocity rounds keep going and when they are found there isn't enough meat left to make a burger. I've seen deer hit with a 30-30 in non-vital areas drop on the spot. They were all dead but the balance of bullet construction and velocity seems to be more important. High velocity does cause "hydrostatic shock" but that doesn't stop animals, it just ruins meat IMHO.

My quickest kills have been with very high velocity cartridges.However I believe that the reason for this is that the combination of high velocity and very fast opening bullets results in more damage to the animals internals.

I'm not sure it's a myth, but not sure it's entirely true either. I think a lot of the "shock" from high velocity rounds is from bullet & bone shrapnel. On the other hand, I do know that high velocity bullets make much bigger than expanded caliber size holes in game. I've seen many deer taken with shotguns & muzzleloader that start out bigger than a well expanded .30 cal bullet at low velocity (i.e. 2000 fps), but the wounds are almost never as severe/wide as those from high velocity rounds (i.e. 27-2800 fps+), even when using barnes-X, or other premium bullets, where there is no bullet fragmentation. It almost seems to me that velocity has a bigger impact on wound diameter than caliber. I AM NOT saying high velocity makes up for bullet weight when it comes to penetration on large game, but I do believe that velocity contributes more to the equation than simply flattening trajectory. I attribute this "larger than expanded caliber" hole to some kind of shock, but not sure if the correct term is hydrostatic or not.

-Lou

In a somewhat different arena, you might check out The Terminal Effects Forum for wound information. From my experience in cleaning shot animals, there can be a lot of hydrostatic damage but this is not what kills animal (or people) immediately. You can have hydrostatic shock without even having penetrating wounds. Many people near bomb blasts die from it, but it is usually several hours later. Or you can suffer a fractured spleen playing football. A large mammal can put a lot of distance behind it with just hydrostatic shock. According to my "in-training veterinarian" wife, next to interupting neural function with a brain or spinal shot, the quickest way to stop an animal is through dramatic depressurization of the blood system. Thus, one would like to create as many bleeding wounds, preferably large arteries exiting the heart and in/around the lungs as possible AND give that blood plenty of exit opportunities quickly. Which leads to the conclusion that you need to push a bullet as fast as you can without crossing the threshold of where it "blows up" and will preferably exit the animal (two holes, especially an exit, let out more blood than one). That's why the newer premium bullets perform much better at higher velocities, because they will keep penetrating while creating shockwaves though the body. One of the wildebeast videos show this principal but I can't remember which one it was.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth. And my favorite whitetail/hog load is a .308 150 gr. FailSafe; I haven't recovered a bullet yet.

Let's do it the other way around and talk about what causes death in mammals from trauma. The quickest is circulatory failure...the heart stops or fibrillates, blood pressure falls, conciousness is lost and respiration stops.

If the heart itself is not wounded, stopping or fibrillating is a neurological response to trauma. This is probably where the "shock" effect of bullets comes into play. If the heart regains a normal rythm, circulation will maintain life unless there is not enough oxygen getting into the blood (lung damage) or the blood drains out to a point where pressure can't be maintained.

I have shot 80 deer with 80 shots with my 338 win mag.It hits them like a freight train ,most flip in their tracks.Here is the think the further out I have shot deer the bigger the whole is.This is with Winchester 200 gr power points going around 2950 fps.I have shot small deer around 300 to 425 yards it poped the deer at this range.The deer at closer ranges had littler holes.I read John Taylors maxium up set of a bullet was 2400 fps.It was that below that speed that the bullet had less upset and expansion.I also shot a caribou at 400 yards with my 338-378 with 250 gr Noslers it flipped it in its tracks.I then let my 11 year old buddy shoot and he accidently shot two caribou with one shot a 400 yards.The second caribou had a hellous hole through it .Its weird what bullets do in game sometimes.I have had two 338 bullets stop in lengthwise shots at deer.They both were less than 15 yards away.The ones I shot at 300 to 425 yards tore more flesh open like the deer had been hit by a truck or something.You never know what a bullet will do to game till you shot it.I had a 165 gr Remington 30-06 corelock turn around in a deer shoulder and come back at me that was at about 10 yards.

I've seen many animals die from massive destruction of bone and vital organs, but I can't say I've seen one die form anything else.

FT/LBs, hydrostatic shock, etc may come into play, but when you brake both shoulders and destroy the lungs, you have made a kill.

.

Myth? Yes.

Hey Guys! If you are reading this thread with interest or have posted a comment bout it, you owe it to yourself to read the entire article on terminal ballastics at:

http://www.mindspring.com/~ulfhere/ballistics/wounding.html

This is very very good stuff. Thank-you Redlander and 9.3x62 for posting it.

RobertD

.

Does this translate to better "killing power" no ! as there are many variables, what we do know is that impact velocity definitely affects tissue damage, the higher the velocity the bigger the area of damage.

Alf,

In my opinion it is a rapidly expanding bullet that does the trick. Of course this can be as a result of high velocity. However, a fast expanding lower velocity bullet and especially one that is very blunt or with a flat nose does a lot more than a slow expanding high velocity bullet.

As I remember many years ago it was called hydraulic shock.

Mike

Basically, there might be a lot of different opinions as to what 'hydrostac shock' means to different people. In my world it is how a .308 diameter bullet expands to .55" and causes a 2-3" diameter wound path. Physical contact with the bullet and fragments can NOT explaing the larger hole. Only shock with sufficient strength to stretch tissue beyold its elastic strength can explain that, and that, IMHO, is hydrostatic shock.

A lot smarter people than me are answering this but I have to say that Saeed hit the proverbial nail as far as I think. It is what we are calling hydrostatic shock that causes p-dogs and other small animals to fly apart when hit right. The amount of energy/pressure in the wave front exceeds the elasticity of the small tissues and they tear apart. As soon as you get to larger animals (chucks on upward) the effect becomes diminished because of the proportional difference in body size/tissue strength to bullet/energy. To achieve the same effect in a deer one would need a gun/cartride combination beyond what a human could carry and for buffalo we get to anti-aircraft size guns or tanks. The reverse is true to a degree as well. Shoot a dove (legal disclaimer: not really) with a 220 Swift at about 100 yds and all you can find is feathers, feet and wing bones. So yes, hydrostatic shock kills but none of us has the tool necessary to impart enough of it to larger mammals. Just my observation.

Me thinks that we want to look at different objectives,all related but not the same:
1 killing ability and mechanism for killing
2 tissue damage,that might or might not lead to immediate death.

By virtue of the fact (?) that there is usually,at least with high speed bullets,more tissue damage than the diameter of the bullet hole,we can safely deduce that there is a transfer of energy from the bullet to the tissue,and that the area of surrounding tissue damage is larger than the bullet path hole by a large factor.That energy transfer is accomplished by waves,I think thats what some call hydrostatic shock.
On the other hand ,I have heard that soldiers got shot with WWII type non expanding bullets ,and did not know it immediatedly.akin to a relative slow and non expanding bullet leaving a small wound channel.

Above addresses wound trauma.Now looking at (immediate)death secondary to trauma:I believe it is not plausible to be caused by hemorraghe,that takes time.
Immediate death is almost always due to a nervous system event.That can be possibly a brain shot,a spinal injury or
probably a "massive" insult to the nervous system.
By the latter I mean that the body senses a big traumatic event,like a hit,sometimes it reacts with pain,other times with fainting,and if more probably with death.
This would possibly be engineered by the sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous system.

If you see how a big animal simply folds when shot right,you will know that this is not a result of bleeding.

The animal that dies from bleeding is the one you track for some time and distance.

From all that ,I think- one has to buy the idea of a shock related injury,in addition to the nice round hole.
Shock can mean 2 different things
1 mechanical shock from waves,energy transfer
2 nervous system shock,secondary to trauma

It also stands to reason that the mechanical transfer of energy is larger if the bullet is not conical but square or expanded at the tip.

we use the same term ,shock,but the meaning is quite different.

sheephunter

Myth? No. Deadly? No, but I believe it does assist in the terminal results. A poor shot will end with poor results regardless of the bullet.

Back to my point. If you don't like the term shock then how about a knockout punch? Have you ever been in a fist fight? Have you ever played football? I have. People get the wind knocked out of them by force. They fall down and are knocked out. This is certain.



The connection is that a bullet hits an animal and blows a hole in it and the animal falls down and maybe is even knocked out by the results of the bullets impact. Meanwhile the animal, unlike the boxer or football player has a hole in it and is also bleeding a lot.



Thus the connection between a blow that causes the animal to loose consciousness and the subsequent bleeding.

I believe it to be a fact.A higher velocity bullet will leave a larger wound channel /destroyed meat/ although it created an even larger temporary channel.For instance,you don t have to always hit the spine to cause paralysis.

So,,, if there is truth to the hydrostatic shock theory then wouldn't the Barnes X bullet be the ultimate high velocity killer? With its.. Inverted?.. frontal area upon expansion wouldn't it cause greater shock wave effect than the more arodynamic mushroom??

I beleive it to be true about bullet and the H-shock effect. If I have to take a body shot, mine is the sweet spot just in under the spine and behind the front shoulder. And there is shock effect to the spine or spinal cord even if not hittng with in 3inchs or so of the spine.

.

Pretty much,
lets look at another example: a diver in water,exposed to the pressure of an exploding grenade close to him,according to the movies- dies.He dies without suffering an injury from a projectile.

Take the same scenario ,a bullet entering a bucket or meat,transfers some of its energy to its surrounding.
If the surroundings have "give" rather than being contained,the injury is less.The amount of energy transfered is also bullet shape/speed dependant.

sheephunter

Hydrostatic shock isn't even a proper term.

Few years back I lip gaffed a 5' barracuda down in the Fla. Keys and shot it behind the gill plates on the lateral line with a S&W .38 snubbie. Hornady 148 gr HBWC loaded upside down with 3.0 gr Bullseye. After the bang I still had his head on the gaff, the rest was headed for DJ's Locker. Weren't Hi-Vel and it wasn't much of anything else except a severe amount of tissue distruction. Sure as sunrise it wasn't "hydrostatic shock".

.

I hate to disagree with all the experience, but think for a minute about the differences in shooting a large animal vs. a small one. First, buffalo/elephant guns use a large, relatively slow moving, relatively solid, non expanding bullet designed for penetration. At the other extreme is the small, fast, expanding bullets used for small game. One just can't compare them directly.

Saying that, I will try! Basically the 2-3 inch wound channel my 300WSM leaves in a whitetail would still be a 2-3" wound in a coyote, chuck, or bird. You still wouldn't find anything but feathers or hair and bones, but this is due to the smaller game, not the change in magnitude of 'shock'.

On the other hand, if I shoot a 300+ lb wild pig, I still get an oversize diameter wound, but it has less effect on the larger, tougher animal. The tougher animal does not show the injury as much either, but that is a function of the toughness of the animal's body 'resisting' the wounding ability of the bullet.

If you want to test this, go to your favorite hunting spot with several guns of different calibers, velocities, and bullet toughness. Find a soft ground/mud bank, and shoot several rounds into it. Look at the different holes, and compare the diameter and depth. The laws of physics still apply to living animals, they just have that damn nervous system that throws you curves all the time.....

So, for shooting 300 lbs pigs, would you rather have a small fast opening bullet (130 grains?) or a 200-220 grain one at a moderate velocity, or a 300 or 400 grain 45-70 at less than 2000 fps?

It depends on if I am eyeball to eyeball to it!

I subscribe to the philosophy that the same bullet weight bullet moving at the same velocity will destroy the same amount of tissue. The difference is the soft point will make a wide, relatively shallow wound, where the solid bullet will make a deep narrow wound.

To expand to your question, the heavier, slower bullet, if of tough construction, would be preferrable if I am in danger of my blood getting outside my body! From a protected, elevated blind I have shot several large pigs with soft point bullets in the 140 grain 7MM and 165 Gr .308 class and had no problems. One of these days, though, I do believe the soft bullet will fail to penetrate on a tough pig, and not deliver a quickly fatal blow.

In short, the soft bullet will kill better most of the time, and fail occasionally, while the solid, heavy bullet will kill all the time, (usually more slowly, as the smaller wound channel on average damages less vascular tissue), and you have to decide when your limbs are in jeoprady which is better. For non dangerous game I always prefer the soft point designs as they are not as tough of body and I feel I have enough 'excess killing power' with my .280 and 300WSM.

All of this is assuming a properly placed shot, which for me is the neck at slow moving and less than about 100 yard targets, and the heart/lung area at longer range or faster moving targets.

.