ORIGINAL: cayugad
This is the kind of topic I am afraid,where many just have to agree to disagree. Each have their own theory of bullet performance based on reading, range testing, and in the field circumstances and experiences. I personally think shot placement is the first and formost step to effectivly taking an animal, no matter what your shooting.
Greetings Cayugad
I think both camps can co-exist and be happy, even in a single person. Craig Boddington hunts Cape Buffalo with an expanding SP for the first shot but then has a solid in case he needs it for a charge. If the solid was so much superior for killing power he would be using that for his first shot also, but he doesn't, and he has a lot of experience on African dangerous game. In the book that started this thread they talk about a balanced bullet, which is a bullet that expands just enough to create a large wound channel, but still penetrates deeply. A solid or cast bullet doesn't expand and creates a very small wound channel, like an SST for MLers, which tends to shoot thru a deer and not cause a large wound channel.The authors of the book,believe penetration is the key, and some believe hard cast like the LBT series is the way to go because of penetration and reduced cost (he made his own because he had 3 sons and a cousinthat shot 2000 bullets a year), but expeience says that expansion knocks out more vital organs causing disruption of blood flow in the wound channel.So after shot placement, it is penetrationwith expansion and largewound channel in my opinion that kills the animal on the spot and keeps us from from loosing deer because of poor blood trail.
So a balanced bullet. A fragmenting bullet should be avoided, since it doesn't penetrate to the vitals to cleanly kill the animal and a solid or cast bullet should be avoided, since the would channel is too small to effectively kill the animal either on the spot or <50 yards, which aids quick recovery. I am of course assuming good shot placement into the boiler room of the heart/lungs area. I also think it is better to have large wound channel AND shoot thru the animal, since I then has an exellent blood trail to follow. So balanced bullet, examples areNosler Partitionor Barnes TMZ or X bullet, Knight Ultimate Slam something like that. Patch round ball is to be avoided unless range with 50 cal isabout 50 yards since the KE of the ball becomes < 800 ft lbs at 55 yards. I think the .54 cal will extend the range to 75 yards. Does this seem logical as a summary of bullet performance/killing power/KE or is there something missing in my logic such as expeience? That is what I got from the book, but does that square with your experience?
Chap Gleason