Originally Posted by
oldsmellhound
If anything I would expect better performance on game, at least from the bullets you tested that I have used on game. Though it is an interesting test and provides a good baseline, I wouldn't jump to any major conclusions from it.
For example, I have shot a fair number of deer with the 200 XTP and the 200 SST. In your son's test, they both penetrated 9.5". When shooting live deer however, I found that the 200 SST/Shockwave always out-penetrated the 200 XTP, usually by a large margin.(this is with similar powder charges and ranges)
In general, I always recovered the 200 XTP in the deer, usually under the off-side hide. With the 200 SST/Shockwave, I only every recovered one bullet, the rest being pass-thrus. The only bullet recovered was on a deer facing me head on- bullet was found in one of the rear hams after penetrating almost the entire length of the deer. So real-world results may vary....
However, thank you (and your son) again for doing this, I found it very interesting.
Yeah, I agree. There are alot of variables when it comes to shooting an actual hunting round at live game. My thought was at least we could see how each bullet did, and how they stacked up against each other in an apples to apples test.
We got to see how much weight they retained, and how well they expanded....which to me (in this test) was more important than penetration. Since they varied so much in size & weight, I knew penetration was gonna vary alot. The fact that several bullets expanded to over twice their size, while retaining almost all their weight was extremely impressive.
In your shockwave / xtp example...even that can be analized as to which did better. Some believe that the best a bullet can do is to penetrate 99% of the way through (stopping just under the skin) thereby using up all of its energy on the animal, vs. blowing through and still having 'unused' energy that is wasted.
I personally choose to have a passthrough...two holes is a good thing, imo.
Bottom line, it all comes down to shot placement anyhow most of the time..so the vast majority of these bullets would kill just fine most likely.