This question is principally for Saeed, but I'm interested in others thoughts as well.
I have seen Saeed express often, over the years, that he prefers a minimum velocity of 2400 fps with big bores. You have more buffalo kills than I have rifle kills on any game animal other than grey squirrrels. That level of experience is a great teacher. I'm curious how you reached this conclusion.
Thanks
Bfly

Saeed will not settle for a mere 2400 fps.
He demands 2500 fps at least!
The 2400 fps "old saw" is older than Saeed himself.
With modern bullets there is nothing special about it.
I would put a practical limit on modern bullets at 2800 fps for the big bores.
At that velocity, impact with water will bulge even a brass FN solid.
Saeed's MV with his so-called big bore (.375/404 Jeffery Improved) hovers around 2750 fps MV with 300-grain monometal, copper Walterhog,
for just over 5000 ft-lbs KE.
Smart.

I like 2400 fps a lot out of my 500 Jeffery with a 570g TSX, I like 2700 fps out of our 375 Weatherby with a 300g A-Frame. If the animal is within 200 yards, I'll pick the Jeffery every time.

quote:

Why 2400 FPS?

Good question. The answer is always Jeffrey's .404 ...

400gn (.423 dia) RN soft or solid @ 2000fps.

Felt recoil of a .375H&H.

All you need, nothing you don't.

Puts 'em down right now. Always did.

Ask that Pondoro guy.

It's to keep the 500gr RN 458WM out of the running.

Hmmmmm, in my 416 Rigby, my handloads get 2542fps with a 410gr Woodleigh RN, my 404 Jeffrey is lucky to get 2400fps the way I load it and my 458 Lott and 505 Gibbs fell short of that figure. The 505 with a 600gr Woodleigh at 2350fps was as much as I could handle. It rattled my teeth something shocking and 5 rounds were as much as I could take in one day.

Cheers.

I always thought 2150 fps was the magic number. It's the factory velocity of the .500 NE with 570 grain bullets, and I achieved the same velocity with the same bullets in my wildcat .505 SRE.

It accounted for one black rhino, three elephants and five Cape buffalo, with no drama. Two of the elephants and three of the buffalo were one shot kills. That's all I could ask for, especially in an 8 3/4 pound rifle.

I know for many years .450 NE performance was reported to be the standard for elephant hunting. I've never hunted elephant but, like many of us, I've digested decades of magazine articles and read a shelf full of books by people who have, some mentioning the "standard" over 100 years ago. Time and time again it was written that a 480 grain .45 caliber bullet going 2150 fps, the perennial .450 Nitro Express load, formed the baseline. When the British banned the .450 from civilian use the .470 NE and .465 NE were introduced as replacements. They were sold as alternatives delivering .450 NE performance. As confirmation, Winchester touted their newly introduced .458 Magnum as worthy to the task because it duplicated .450 Nitro Express performance in a standard sized bolt action rifle.

Exactly.

The few really experienced DG hunters that I have talked to, like those higher velocities in big bores of 2200+ fps. Each of them have killed a lot of buffalo to back their opinions up. I have to agree with them.
I have very limited experience with big bores and cape buffalo. However, I got 7 quick kills on cape buffalo with .577 NE and 50-110 Win. at 1940fps and slower. Go figure. I am not suggesting that slower is better. Just adding this in for info.

I recall reading in a book by one of the "old time" elephant hunters his opinion of the optimal bullet velocity for his ivory hunting. He thought (if I recall correctly) that 2150 fps to 2300 fps was the best for deep, straight penetration. Over 2400 fps was too fast for straight penetration. Now if I could just remember which book that was in.......

It's just a "NUMBER" that has been espoused since WAY back when some "expert" said it was so...it then became the "MAGIC NUMBER" and has been ever since.

VERY FEW EVEN THINK ABOUT THE REALITIES IN TODAY'S WORLD.

Back then there were NO chrono's to de-lie the velos and it was the bullet makers, the powder makers and the cartridge makers who told you what-the-hell and why...and there were as many barrel lengths as there are today. If you really read the stories, no matter the expertise of the teller, you will see many discrepancies...we ALL like a good story and embellishment is de rigueur...AND bullets back then and bullets today only bear a few resemblances.

"IMO" a bullet at WHATEVER velocity that goes thru and thru and expends it energy on a few more animals on the animals off side or flies off across the plains for another 5 miles isn't quite as good as the one the stops just under the hide on the animals off side and dumps all it energy INSIDE the animal.

WHAT "correct" velocity is that...for WHAT size animal...WHO KNOWS...all we can do is guess and build the ammo according to the knowledge we have acquired up to that point.

Besides WHO really knows for sure just exactly how the bullet reacted and why...EVEN with an autopsy...all we can do is put forth an "educated" guess because EVERY animal is killed under differing circumstances and conditions and no bullet I ever talked to ever read ANY of the "after event" propaganda.

I would surmise because I haven't killed any African game and only a few large cattle(mostly with a 22 or 38/357) that the optimum velo range is variable according to the specific animal. But because we usually load for a general range of animal sizes..."one size fits all" is the name of the game unless the hunt is for a specific game animal then I would load specifically. Lotsa wiggle room here.

Yeah...I would really like to know "the real story too"!!!!

Good Hunting

What NONAGONAGIN said...

2400 FPS constitutes a "Rule of Thumb."

Not everybody has the same size or shape of thumb.

Depending on where one's thumb has been, a few likely also stink.

In any large caliber shooting a bullet with a sectional density much over .3 faster than 2400 feet per second generates a lot of recoil and increases the risk of bullet pass through or failure.

The object is a lot of warm blood out and cold air in...two are better than one - B.o.B.'em

quote:

Originally posted by Mike_Dettorre:
The object is a lot of warm blood out and cold air in...two are better than one - B.o.B.'em

Yes.


Rip ...

quote:

Originally posted by Mike_Dettorre:
The object is a lot of warm blood out and cold air in...two are better than one - B.o.B.'em

I don't know a lot about the subject but I know what I like...two holes.

After a few hundred big bovines, two or one doesn’t matter. It all works about the same.

Lest anyone forget that little missile at that speed is loafing along at better than 1/2 mile per second. Rather than engage in all this mental masturbation folks ought to worry more about shot placement.

It’s all well and good until you wound the buffalo behind the one you’re shooting.

2,400 fps is what the .416 Rigby and .500 Jeffrey had in common and they both had great reputations as stoppers.

2,150 fps is what the "Nitros" changed the game with. As these were great killers, for their day and since, then it's a happy number also.

2,150 fps, I reckon, was "rocket science", in it's day compared to the old black powder numbers and then the .416 Rigby and .500 Jeffrey came along with 2.4090 fps and it was just more of a good thing.


As Alan Jackson would say "too much of a good thing...…...is a good thing".


That's my take on it.

no I did not mean 2.4090 fps...……..it was supposed to be 2,400 fps.

I’ve never been to Africa. I enjoy Linebaugh chamberings, and have attended the shooting seminar.

I think Taylor was on to something with the TKO equation. It favors Bullet diameter and Bullet weight.

If you’re shooting a big revolver with a hard cast unlikely to expand, and you get full critter penetration with exit, the only real variables are meplate diameter and total diameter. You don’t get the hydrostatic shock with those, but a 51 caliber hole all the way through a mammal isn’t compatible with life.

We run most of these between 1000 and 1200 fps. If you go up to 1400 fps, the penetration gets worse. It acts like a man trying to run through a crowd rather than walk. It seems to get stuck.

I’m confident the OP’s listed minimum of 2400 is proven. I’m curious where above 1400 fps the penetration improves.

My .378Wea did a clean 3000 ft/sec with a 300grain pill. It worked well on roebucks….even out to 50 yards..

Nothing wrong with 2400 FPS..Its fame and passion came about because it does not destroy bullets and it kills very well indeed....Whats to not like about that...How can people argue with success, it sure as hell works about 110 % at least..

I think those that have used it as opposed to those who have not. will agree there is nothing at all wrong with it..

quote:

Originally posted by 375-06JDJ:

I think Taylor was on to something with the TKO equation. It favors Bullet diameter and Bullet weight.

Remember Taylor's numbers were base on use of solids and for head shot elephants. He specifically referred to the shot where the brain was missed.

quote:

Originally posted by ALF:
Taylors TKO from a wound ballistics perspective has not validity whatsoever !

He stated that TKO = momentum x bullet diameter

TKO = m.v.k

So 2 bullets one light and fast one heavy and slow with same frontal diameter will have the same TKO ?

Further this from a physics perspective Momentum has no correlation to biologic effect thus has no validity regarding wounding effectiveness or capability to "knock down a animal"

None of the classic Momentum based formulae hold validity at all.

Alf,

In the context he put it forward I think it was reasonable. It is so long since I have read his book but I think he mentioned a couple of exceptions and might have also said that while calibre xyz was good on KO value the solids were poor.

I think a lot of people would argue with you on momentum although that will be based on smaller game since that is where the numbers are for statistical purposes.

On low chest shots on the Red kangaroo (a big one would be heavier than a good size pig but lighter built) and pigs, both of which I would have shot 1000s, two calibre comparisons I made were 300 Winchester (130 and 150 grain) and backed of loads with 400 grain Speer in the 458 so energy was similar, the 458 won the day.

As was pointed out above, Taylor's knock out formula had little to do with general effectiveness, but rather was his attempt to put reason to work in elephant hunting.

He wanted to predict how well a gun sight unseen would perform on head shots on elephant. It has since been used inappropriately as a general formula to compare various hunting rounds. It holds up somewhat, but is not an absolute.

Similarly, the 2400 FPS rule of thumb in big bores. It was propagated by several sources, but the one I recall best was Jeff Cooper. His arguments were about the .460 G&A special (458 at 2400) and his justification for why that was a superior Buffalo round.

My experience is no where near exhaustive, but with .28, .30, .338, .375, and .416 rounds, a muzzle velocity of @2400 FPS and a sectional density of around .3 gives feet of penetration, minimal deviation on impact, and not a lot of meat damage. Faster occasionally causes more deviation on impact, and seems to make simple cup and core bullets have an increased rate of failure (meaning the bullet loses integrity and does not penetrate as far as it should.

However, in lighter bullets (to me, either lighter weight/lower SD or lower caliber- at a certain point I don't enjoy getting kicked to hell and gone and accuracy suffers) faster speeds result in increased accuracy/hitability, and more dramatic effects on smaller animals, but also more tissue destruction.

To me, I think I see more speed of death with bigger bullets than with faster, as long as some threshold is met, so .470/500 at 2150 seems to kill every bit as well as .416/400 at 2400. I'd bet the .470 would penetrate further at 2400 given the right bullet parameters, but at some point enough penetration is enough- I don't need my elephant slug to penetrate 2 elephants, just one.... and the .470 is enough of a kicker at 2150.

It might be interesting to try hunting Buffalo with my .416 ammo running at 2150, and in effect make it a .404 or .450/400, or better yet get those calibers and hunt them, but the answer for me is "why?"

What I have has stood the test of time, and has worked consistently for me. I have faith in what I have, I don't see a need to hot rod my .416, as it works fine and when I do my part, things drop dead in short order.

I would note that the type of soft you use does play quite a role in how far it penetrates. My preferred Buffalo load with the Rigby is a 400 grain TSX. Most of the time, it gives complete penetration on broadside Buffalo. When I have used a frames or trophy bonded bear claws, they tend to be found just under the skin on the off side, yet the velocity and accuracy (and bullet weight) are about the same.

Long winded, but essentially saying that the rule of thumb works.

quote:

Originally posted by crbutler:

I'd bet the .470 would penetrate further at 2400 given the right bullet parameters, but at some point enough penetration is enough- I don't need my elephant slug to penetrate 2 elephants, just one.... and the .470 is enough of a kicker at 2150.

I have never shot big animals but I suppose those have in most case have not very many.

from a purely physics point of if you have a bullet and it penetrates an elephant and the bullet drops on the ground as it exits and the second faster load penetrates two elephants and the bullet drops on the ground after it exits:

Then the second bullet travelled through the first elephant at higher velocity.

I am 70 and have been shooting since I was a little kid and reloading since I was 15. No long after I was into the Weatherby thing and also the 375 H&H. 270 loaded with 100 grain Hornady and 375 with 300 grain Hornady Round nose, 1970 vintage. What puzzled me at first was the 375 would drop big Red kangaroos with low chest shots and pigs as well as the 100 grain 270. A lot of this in the spotlight so lots of 100 yards and under. I figured the 300 grain Hornady expansion would not be much but being very blunt only small mount of expansion would make it into at least a 375 or a 400 wadcutter.

With all my Wby thinking and the 375 loads at 2450 (68 grains 4064 Model 10 Ohler) at 3500 I could not figure it out. On a trip with my father where a lot of stuff was shot and the 375 was better, I think he provided the answer which was …..the 375 impacted at much lower velocity but its velocity through the animal was possibly higher than the 270.

So would a 470 that can penetrate 3 elephant kill better than a 470 that only just makes it through one elephant?

IMO you need to match the velocity to the bullet.

That means SD, weight, bullet construction, and caliber.

BH63

Lately I have been pleased with 1,900 to 2,000 fps, in 500 cal and 585 cal. on cape buffalo. North fork Solids, Cutting Edge solids and Raptors. Four in a row were DRT.

The Raptors were amazing at 1940 fps in 500 cal, close range shoulder shot. Terrific internal trauma. DRT. ( Raptors don't like going through bush.)

As to speed through an animal resulting in more killing power, I don’t think that holds up.

In the abscence of high speed (medically defined as over 4000 FPS at impact) you would expect to see a solid kill better than a soft that slows down, at least at the shot.

The soft would do more trauma, so it would bleed out faster but at impact a solid would not slow down and thus you would see more quick drops to the shot with solids (absent CNS impact) than sorts, which you don’t see.

I postulate that energy dump can have a role, but it requires orders of magnitude more energy being dumped in the animal as opposed to the animal’s weight. This would explain the effects of varmint guns on small animals, yet the inability of most game rounds to reliably drop bigger animals to the shot unless you get an absurd mismatch (like a .300 ultra mag on a point blank pronghorn)

I remember reading in one of Boddington's books about a guy using a .500 NE (or perhaps a .577?) that had two failures on brain shots on elephants.

The big bullets just didn't have the penetration. A chronograph showed the bullets were traveling much slower than the factory specs.

Just saying.

BH63

quote:

Originally posted by crbutler:

I postulate that energy dump can have a role, but it requires orders of magnitude more energy being dumped in the animal as opposed to the animal’s weight. This would explain the effects of varmint guns on small animals, yet the inability of most game rounds to reliably drop bigger animals to the shot unless you get an absurd mismatch (like a .300 ultra mag on a point blank pronghorn)

That is why on my comments of 300 grain round nose 375 Vs 100 grain 270 it was all on low chest shot kangaroos and pigs.

When you think of it, would a buffalo weigh 1500 pounds and say a pig is 150 pounds then a 460 Wby on the buffalo is like a 22 Hornet/218 Bee on a pig. Although smaller animals seem to be able to go much further with damage that is in the same proportion to body size. Just look at a rabbit as an example.

I suppose the ideal bullet would be one that got well into the animal and then blew apart, so using the least amount of its energy getting inside. The very old WW Silvertips were like that but such a bullet is not versatile. I remember probably very late 60s and low chest shots on smaller roos with 270 WW 130 grain Silvertip. They would almost always run (or should say hop ) but the exit hole was unreal but I guess little damage inside them.

Here's where I think there is a problem with the "Energy Dump"- If the animal is standing broadside and the bullet stays in the animal, what does the same bullet do if the shot is taken on a quartering animal? What happens if the shot requires heavy bone to be broken instead of going through ribs and lungs? Because not all animals stand around broadside, my opinion is the bullet's construction and velocity should be tailored to worst case, which means a lot of the time there will be two holes.

Lee

Alf,

100% agree is energy is work but power of course is rate of work.

To the observer observing result the same amount of energy/work "deposited" can give very different results.

For example, lets tale a 45 500 grain solid with flat nose. About 4450 ft/lbs so it could 1 pound 4450 feet or 4450 pound 1 foot or any other combination. Now lets take a 25 calibre (actually calibre won't matter for this) 100 grain bullet 4500 f/s and about 4500 ft/lbs of energy and also this bullet is as soft as can be to stand the trip up the barrel.

Now line up 1 gallon water cans. Our 45 500 grain solid flat nose or even round nose will go through several and "rupture" the cans. Each can is "destroyed. Now shoot with or 100 grain at 4500 f/s and thee first can is turned into mist and second can not harmed. To the observer several cans were destroyed by the 500 grain solid as against only one with 100 grain soft bullet at 4500 f/s

If we come to animals does it matter if the shoulder is blown into 5 pieces or turned into powder. Does it matter if the heart is blown into several pieces or 100 pieces.

I can have and axe and a sledge hammer of the same weight and swing both at the same velocity to hit a tree or piece of wood. Same KE and in both cases the KE absorbed and results to an observer are completely different.

What we lack with bullets is the equivalent of a gear box. For example an engine that develops 200 ft/lbs of torque at 20,000 RPM is developing the same horsepower (rate at which work I done) as an engine that develops 2000 ft/lbs of torque at 2000 RPM. If we enage both engine via a clutch then the engine developing 2000 ft/lbs of torque at 2000 RPM easily stops the engine developing 200 ft/lbs of torque at 20,000 RPM. However, we can gear the 20,000 RPM engine down to 2000 RPM and then would have a draw.

Taylors TKO is as accurate as the rest of that BS out there, they all say about the same thing, Keiths pounds something or other..They all come pretty close to the same thing...None of which I put much value on..Its more or less a early Balistic witch hunt. I suppose it has some value as to comparison, its fairly accurate on that part I suppose..

quote:

Originally posted by ALF:
Wound ballistics is all about energy and energy deposition in the target ! It always was and will always be. In fact it is the mechanical and physical defining factor in how the device we call a firearm works.

This was one of the very first premises made in the latter half of the 1800's and taught in pre WW1 war wound care literature....... then somewhere lay people and pseudoscience got hung up on erroneous assumptions.

The Late Col Martin Fackler who is widely seen as one of the fathers of modern wound ballistics science paid homage to Theodor Kochers works published in the 1870's and around 1890's acknowledging not only his contributions but the fact "that he was right all along "

The current revised Wound assessment tool of Red Cross operates from the premise that creation of a wound in a living target is energy dependent.

It moves away from classifications based on projectile design and a reliance on projectile parameters like velocity only. ( velocity reliance was a Vietnam era premise) Projectile design was very much a pre WW1 premise that persisted into the 80's


Pre strike energy = POTENTIAL ENERGY
Energy transferred to target = ENERGY CAPACITY
The result of the energy deposit is the wound
= ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Only energy deposited to the target has the capacity of doing damage.

Only that part of energy that is converted to MECHANICAL ENERGY ie energy that has capacity to move target material is capable of doing damage ( acoustic energy and heat energy in terms of a projectile fired from a gun has little effect on the wound)

The EFFICIENCY has to do with the mechanical properties of the target ie the reaction of the target to the receipt of the deposited energy.

This current thinking has also lead to the ICRC revising the rules regarding the classification of allowable munitions in warfare under international and humanitarian law.

They are no longer hung up on projectile design per se but has now shifted to a classification based on how much energy the projectile deposits to the target !

You know how silly this is. Deposited energy in the leg is a heck of a lot less problematic than less energy traversing the aortic arch.

Solids kill well, yet they drop little energy in the target. It just may take a while longer for a solid to kill depending on a number of factors - it might also not take longer.

I’ve done a few ER shifts in my time. Frankly, most trauma surgeons have no idea what kind of gun caused the injury, other than big hole or little hole, until they get inside and start cleaning the mess up.

quote:

Originally posted by crbutler:

As to speed through an animal resulting in more killing power, I don’t think that holds up.

I have no idea on bigger animals.

But I experimented many years ago with 300 grain round nose Hornady loaded backwards and als0 300 grain Hornady loaded backward but with the bullet cut right back, that is much lighter. Both loaded to about same velocity bu the with the lighter about 100 f/s faster. In spotlight on low chest roos and a few pigs (not in the sheer numbers as roos of a night) and both bullets penetrated but the full 300 grain bullet was the killer.

Impact velocities would have been similar.

quote:

Only that part of energy that is converted to MECHANICAL ENERGY ie energy that has capacity to move target material is capable of doing damage ( acoustic energy and heat energy in terms of a projectile fired from a gun has little effect on the wound)

The EFFICIENCY has to do with the mechanical properties of the target ie the reaction of the target to the receipt of the deposited energy

The Mechanical Properties of the target are where Leg and Liver come in. Mechanical Energy as described above is how the Killing "work" gets done.
A Good RN/FN solid through a shoulder often blows bits of bone and muscle through the lung my observations say which results in about the same mechanical energy deposit of a good expanding bullet right behind the shoulder.
When I want to have mechanical energy at my disposal on the Heart/Lungs and enter the body near the Anus, the 220 grain solid at 2400 fps has a much better chance of doing that for me than a 150 Grain Cup and core at 3000 fps. In between those shots lay many choices in bullets, speeds and shots taken. As always Alf, thanks for adding detail to the understanding.