Killing Power?

[KimE]

Killing power is down to a combination of caliber, bullet weight, velocity, placement, the size of the target, the amount of damage you inflict and just where that damage is.
That’s a lot of variables.

The argument over whether a big slow bullet or a small fast one is better started with the shift from black powder to nitro and got ramped up in the 50’s when Jack O Connor and Elmer Keith made a damn fine living sniping at each other.

Elmer was a legendary marksman, but a poor hunter, if he got a shot into the south end of a north bound elk and hit it at 500yds, he believed that the bullet should do its job and penetrate all the way to the lungs. He was also a tough old coot who wasn’t affected by recoil. The bigger the cartridge the better he liked it.
But the bullets he was using just weren’t up to the task.
Elmer thought that anything less than a.300 mag wasn’t enough, he championed the.338, even for deer.
Jack O Connor was on the other side of the fence, he liked the .270 and the 30/06, but he picked his shots.
He was also a better writer than Elmer, but that wasn’t difficult.

With decent marksmanship skills and a surgeon’s knowledge of anatomy you can kill big stuff with very small cartridges.
Most of us aren’t consistently good enough to do that most of the time, so we use something that will destroy more tissue to allow a bit of a margin for less than perfect placement.
All of the mid bore cartridges work well for deer sized targets, but over most of the globe, deer sized is 70Kg + .
Only in Britain do you consider varmint size creatures to be the equivalent of what the rest of us think of as deer.

"Recoil relax and enjoy" Kieth
As for Sweden roedeer are smallgame 222rem and similar fallow are biggame 6,5 cal and up.

 

[south-nofolk-stalker]

I’ve seen some amazing shots over the years, I once saw a keeper friend of mine shoot a lowland red spiker RTA with a leg swinging at over 100m with 17HMR in the head, I’ve tracked heaps of muntjac shot with a 223 and shot red hinds to a gnats cock over 400m with my 270.

It’s all down to placement and choice of bullet

 

[Selous]

A bigger hole in the wrong spot though ? Bigger the bullet the greater the recoil and the harder it is to shoot really well in all field stances and the heavier the rifle needs to be to shoot comfortably and the more weight you have to carry .
Of course its a personal choice

I thought this thread was about killing power of cartridges not precision and accuracy? If comparing so called killing power then comparing a well placed shot with a smaller calibre with a poorly placed shot with a larger calibre is ridiculous. Besides it is quite straightforward to shoot larger calibres with acceptable field accuracy up to and beyond normal UK stalking calibres assuming basic techniques are followed.

 

[Bowland blades]

I thought this thread was about killing power of cartridges not precision and accuracy? If comparing so called killing power then comparing a well placed shot with a smaller calibre with a poorly placed shot with a larger calibre is ridiculous. Besides it is quite straightforward to shoot larger calibres with acceptable field accuracy up to and beyond normal UK stalking calibres assuming basic techniques are followed.

a gut shot instead of a perfect hart shot sure has a bigger influence over things , its easier to get a higher level of accuracy from all stances with a lower level of recoil - I think that fact alone needs far more attention ( no free rides ) . Lucky enough the UK deer act and most other nations do normally set minimum requirements to use and often species . Many would say as regards "weight" its out dated with the change in cartridges and the material they are made from. Was just looking at long range energy with the 22 creed the other day at at longer rages it carries more with it than its bigger kin due to the BC of its long slim form
Killing the daylights out of the backstop achieves very little of anything . Our biggest deer in the UK are very consistently shot dead with our smallest legal our smallest deer cartridge and it will most commonly exit out the other side making a decent hole as it exits ( carrying unused energy out the far side ).
Today as we move away from lead to copper the rules are changing the challenge now is in the impact speed ( and its range window of expanding correctly ) .

 

[south-nofolk-stalker]

a gut shot instead of a perfect hart shot sure has a bigger influence over things , its easier to get a higher level of accuracy from all stances with a lower level of recoil - I think that fact alone needs far more attention ( no free rides ) . Lucky enough the UK deer act and most other nations do normally set minimum requirements to use and often species . Many would say as regards "weight" its out dated with the change in cartridges and the material they are made from. Was just looking at long range energy with the 22 creed the other day at at longer rages it carries more with it than its bigger kin due to the BC of its long slim form
Killing the daylights out of the backstop achieves very little of anything . Our biggest deer in the UK are very consistently shot dead with our smallest legal our smallest deer cartridge and it will most commonly exit out the other side making a decent hole as it exits ( carrying unused energy out the far side ).
Today as we move away from lead to copper the rules are changing the challenge now is in the impact speed ( and its range window of expanding correctly ) .

Speed had nothing to do with it with copper, everyone shoots them at lightning speed, me I’m middle for diddle, all speed and copper does is make a mess!

 

[slider]

Destroy the boiler room and it's dead, no matter the bullet weight or calibre

 

[John Gryphon]

Heading.

Killing Power?​

its certainly not hard to see why the bigger the animal the bigger the bullet rule is required.
When I want to tow my two horses in a float I leave the WRX at home and select the V8 Landcruiser.
That WRX runs the legs off the LC...sometimes.

 

[John Gryphon]

Destroy the boiler room and it's dead, no matter the bullet weight or calibre

100% but the bullet needs to get into said boiler room. Lightweight bullets are renowned for blowing up on wallow mud covered boars.

 

[Bowland blades]

Speed had nothing to do with it with copper, everyone shoots them at lightning speed, me I’m middle for diddle, all speed and copper does is make a mess!

Yeah we are certainly going to disagree on bullet performance but i suspect if that is your experience you need to change the bullet selected . Copper TTSX certainly needs impact velocity i have a large collection of recovered bullets and the 400 plus shots clearly show minimum expansion . There are different brands / design that perform differently though . I use tTSX Barnes and Hornady CX . close muntjac to Reds a long way off . Much lower use of the CX perhaps just 3%

 

[Bowland blades]

Destroy the boiler room and it's dead, no matter the bullet weight or calibre

or the control unit ( brain) it will always apply no matter of calibre / construction

 

[south-nofolk-stalker]

15 years of Experience and an almighty heap of dead deer later tells me, you do not need speed to get the TTSX bullet to expand and you do not need to drop a weight either!

I was loading copper a very very long time before many of you guys even thought about it, when it was a myth.

All your explanation tells me is you have shot a lot of sand and not a lot of animals.

 

[Bowland blades]

Speed had nothing to do with it with copper, everyone shoots them at lightning speed, me I’m middle for diddle, all speed and copper does is make a mess!

Cant agree speed at impact is essential in copper ! I run the 100 grain at 3300 fps , the 120 i cant send as fast only 2850 fps ( these latter 120 being slower need to used with caution on longer shots - because of the prevelance of not opening up so easy !. I have shot a heck of a lot of deer ( all UK species) with copper ( mainly tTSX 100 and 120 tTSX) have been a keen stalker some twenty years and carcass damage / meat wasted compared to lead is a lot lower when using the copper tTSX
Bullets 100 % retention is the norm , indeed the only thing that sometimes occurs is loosing one of the petals to a bone say 1-20 , not really any significant issue with that odd petal ever ( it was worried me an odd time about is getting into a mincer say but i guess most just fall out when the chest is opened up ?
High impact speed with jacketed lead is far , far worse for meat wasting and extra clean up . Purely because they shed so much more in lead and copper .
see below , from ground behind the beast or just trapped in the far shoulder mainly

 

[south-nofolk-stalker]

Cant agree speed at impact is essential in copper ! I run the 100 grain at 3300 fps , the 120 i cant send as fast only 2850 fps ( these latter 120 being slower need to used with caution on longer shots - because of the prevelance of not opening up so easy !. I have shot a heck of a lot of deer ( all UK species) with copper ( mainly tTSX 100 and 120 tTSX) have been a keen stalker some twenty years and carcass damage / meat wasted compared to lead is a lot lower when using the copper tTSX
Bullets 100 % retention is the norm , indeed the only thing that sometimes occurs is loosing one of the petals to a bone say 1-20 , not really any significant issue with that odd petal ever ( it was worried me an odd time about is getting into a mincer say but i guess most just fall out when the chest is opened up ?
High impact speed with jacketed lead is far , far worse for meat wasting and extra clean up . Purely because they shed so much more in lead and copper .
see below , from ground behind the beast or just trapped in the far shoulder mainly View attachment 367840View attachment 367840

Your thinking too much

I load them, get them to group and kill deer, never needed to use sand, just got on with it

2750-2800 is plenty for the 130gn 270
2800-2850for the 140gn 6.5x55
2900 for the 120gn 6.5x55
As for all the new fangled uk bred jobs, they don’t interest me in the slightest.

Now about to start on the 7mm with 140gn ttsx looking for about 2700fps ish that will do the job lovely.

Got better things to do than waste bullets on sand pits and water drums.

 

[Bowland blades]

Your thinking too much

I load them, get them to group and kill deer, never needed to use sand, just got on with it

2750-2800 is plenty for the 130gn 270
2800-2850for the 140gn 6.5x55
2900 for the 120gn 6.5x55
As for all the new fangled uk bred jobs, they don’t interest me in the slightest.

Now about to start on the 7mm with 140gn ttsx looking for about 2700fps ish that will do the job lovely.

Got better things to do than waste bullets on sand pits and water drums.

On the other hand ,perhaps your not thinking enough eh ?

 

[south-nofolk-stalker]

On the other hand ,perhaps your not thinking enough eh ?

Did my thinking a long long time ago so I don’t have to now

 

[Bowland blades]

Did my thinking a long long time ago so I don’t have to now

On what ? Lead by the sounds of it ? when it comes to copper and other none tox the rule book needs a re-write for all the variants .

 

[south-nofolk-stalker]

On what ? Lead by the sounds of it ? when it comes to copper and other none tox the rule book needs a re-write for all the variants .

Earliest picture I have, the 6.5 loading was 3 years earlier, back in the days of cliffs gunsmithing in Utah, that’s how long

Open for apologies!?

At this rate I’m going to have to get me waders out the shed so I don’t get wet feed wading through all the you keep spouting

 

[Tim.243]

Cant agree speed at impact is essential in copper ! I run the 100 grain at 3300 fps , the 120 i cant send as fast only 2850 fps ( these latter 120 being slower need to used with caution on longer shots - because of the prevelance of not opening up so easy !. I have shot a heck of a lot of deer ( all UK species) with copper ( mainly tTSX 100 and 120 tTSX) have been a keen stalker some twenty years and carcass damage / meat wasted compared to lead is a lot lower when using the copper tTSX
Bullets 100 % retention is the norm , indeed the only thing that sometimes occurs is loosing one of the petals to a bone say 1-20 , not really any significant issue with that odd petal ever ( it was worried me an odd time about is getting into a mincer say but i guess most just fall out when the chest is opened up ?
High impact speed with jacketed lead is far , far worse for meat wasting and extra clean up . Purely because they shed so much more in lead and copper .
see below , from ground behind the beast or just trapped in the far shoulder mainly View attachment 367840View attachment 367840

Surprising what you find out metal detecting Lee.........
@south-nofolk-stalker

 

[south-nofolk-stalker]

Earliest picture I have, the 6.5 loading was 3 years earlier, back in the days of cliffs gunsmithing in Utah, that’s how long

Open for apologies!?

At this rate I’m going to have to get me waders out the shed so I don’t get wet feed wading through all the you keep spouting

@Bowland blades do you not want to play anymore?

Told you so, I’ve been shooting copper over 8 years longer than you have been a member of the SD.

So you can appreciate I no longer need to think too hard

Apologies to the OP had to put BB back in his box.

 

[big ears]

maybe he should change his handle to BS Blades