ORIGINAL: elgallo114
Let me clarify something before I piss people off. I'm not shooting anything at distances of more than a couple hundred yards. '
My buddy and I are shooting at 800 yards. We know the remaining foot pounds of energy and velocity at the impact on paper. We just got curious as to whether, if it did hit an animal, it would have enough left on it to do any damage.
Let me clarify my clarification. What I meant to say was that we are shooting PAPER at 800 yards. NOT ANIMALS. We just got curious when going over the ballistics of our cartidges at 800 yards. That's all. Don't shoot me. I'm not advocating anyone shoot or not shoot at any distance, but I'm just asking a hypothetical question. I know the round can reach 800 and well beyond. I know they can penetrate an unprotected human chest cavity with the remaining foot pounds of energy and velocity. I'm just wondering if a deer, elk, hog, or whatever, would have a much better survival rate. I'm not an expert at anything, but I figured that these animals would have much tougher skins and fat layers than a human would. The only reason deer and hog would interest me more is just because that's what I hunt. In reality, I shoot animals at ranges in the 50 to 100 yard range.
Let me clarify my answer as best I can from reading what some of the "experts" think.
From what I've read, to make a reasonable kill on a thin skinned animal such as you have mentioned, would IMO require around 1k ft/lbs retained energy. This is assuming that this takes place in a vaccum but we know that in hunting situations it does not. Read on.
Of course much of that is dependent on bullet design. Would it have enough velocity to expand sufficiently to transfer said retained energy at that distance? That is a whole nother set of variables.
There are bullets designed for rapid expansion at long distances and lower velocities.