My only comparison bronko is that the deer dies from the same thing in the end regardless of weapon, from loss of blood flow to the brain. I will not argue that a bow and a gun differ in the way they achieve it.

Bryant, what I am saying is that what you think you are seeing is not what you are really seeing in most cases. Very few guns can transfer enough energy to pick a full grown deer up and spin it. When you hit the deer it will buck, jump or even do a flip sometimes. This however is not from the energy of the bullet, but more a muscle response from being hit.

And I will not argue that a 300 win mag won't have a better chance of dropping a deer on the spot than a 22-250 will. Obviously the 300 win mag has the potential to deliver and transfer more energy and thus can make a larger wound channel and create a larger shock wave in the body. However you still need to consider bullet placement and bullet design. If you took a medium bore magnum and shot hard solid bullets out of it it would pass through the animal and transfer a low percentage of energy into the animal, and over a longer duration of time. Now if you used a small bore high velocity round designed to expand better you would actually transfer more energy quicker and do more damage to soft tissue. The difference being you would greatly reduce penetration.

This becomes evident on small critters like woodchucks. Hit one with a standard 30-06 cartridge. Or something bigger like a shotgun slug or muzzle loader bullet and it will kill it, sometimes throwing it on the ground and the bullet will continue to travel after it leaves the animal. Now if you do the same thing with a 22-250 and a light varmint bullet it will literally blow it apart and expend all the energy into the target and the bullet will not continue.

So as you can see velocity and bullet design sort of work together making energy transfer sort of a tricky thing. You need to balance the amount of energy you want to transfer with how much penetration you need.

Paul