Originally Posted by
nchawkeye
You will see more differences between type bullets used within the SAME cartridge than between two different cartridges...
About 10 years ago I set out to try every .243 factory loading on 6-8 deer to see the difference in factory loadings...What I found is that with one brand a lung shot deer might run 80 yards on average and with another it might be 50 yards...Bullets that get into the body and expand rapidly while staying inside drop deer quicker than one that expands slower and leaves energy in the ground on the off side...
Another example...My younger brother who shoots a .270 made an observation a few years back that we seldom had to track deer very far hit with my .243 but we did have to track his hit with a .270...He knew he had a bigger gun so he felt his deer should hit the ground quicker...He just hasn't killed as many as I have and hasn't figured out the best place to hit them especially when they are at an angle...
nchawkeye - I think we are kind of the same page. I am not worried about how individual deer react because there will always be extremes. What I am getting at is the average distance they run like you said. The smaller the sample size you have to look at less likely it is to be accurate. But that information is still valuble, because for every bad set of data from one hunter should be offset by someone else. I wanted to look at many hunters and average the results.
In your example, you tried a bunch of bullets before you found the right one. But your average is still ok, because the same thing will be happening with many other people on other calibers. If you think about the big picture. everyone is doing the same thing and if you combine everyone’s results, the extremes will be eliminated leaving an average.
One thing that cannot be true is that everyone getting the exact same results when they try different cartridges. The chances of that would be almost impossible. But you cannot just dismiss those differences, because there is probably a trend if you look at the combined average for everyone.
So, I think some people are hesitant to put a number down, because it does not support their position, and they want to dismiss it to chance and variation. In your example the 270 distances being longer than the 243, that does not bother me at all, because if that data is good, it will be confirmed by other hunters. If it is a one off situation, it will be offset by someone that had a very good result with a 270. If everyone put down what they were seeing, that should eliminate the extremes and give an accurate number.
Even with all of that, all I was really asking for was the range of distances people were seeing. I had not even dug down to talk about any calibers. Even at that level, nobody wants to get into any discussion about the variation they are seeing.
Last edited by Sling; 10-04-2009 at 06:45 AM.