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Old 03-03-2004, 09:51 AM
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eldeguello
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Texas - BUT NOW in Madison County, NY
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Default RE: Jeff Cooper

You are absoutely right that big, slow bullets kill more by blood loss than anything else. In this respect, they're more like a broadhead arrow. Fast bullets do a lot of damage due to hydrostatic shock and secondary missiles as well as just the bullet path alone. But in order for a fast bullet to be effective, it must get into the vitals. In other words, penetration is important, no matter the speed at which the bullet is travelling. This means that the faster the bullet is travelling, the more important bullet construction becomes.

I am not sure at what velocity level the speed of the bullet takes over as regards killing power versus the size and weight of the bullet. But it must be somewhere over the velocity of Foster and Brenneke type shotgun slugs. I have never used the new slugs that have a MV of 1800+ FPS like the Wionchester Partiton Gold slugs, so I don't know if these are going fast enough to produce the kind of effect you are talking about.

I have had better performance on deer-size game shooting a solid bullet, whether round ball or conical, from a muzzleloading rifle than I have had from Foster style shotgun slugs. But neither kind of projectile can hold a candle to a good .270 or .30/'06 bullet!!

I have never lost a deer hit with a modern rifle bullet, nor one that was hit well with a muzzleloader using full diameter bullets. But I have had to track animals shot with a muzzleloader farther than ones shot with a modern HV rifle. They ALWAYS leave great blood trails if hit behind the shoulder, and my ML bullets have always gone completely through any animal so hit! I have lost a couple of deer I thought were hit well with a Foster slug, though!!

Like you said, things may be different in combat! Animals are killed by physiological effects only, psychology does not enter into the situation, because an animal, as opposed to a person, doesn't know how badly wounded it is! This factor was certainly obvious in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, when "civilized" soldiers fought "savages"! An example of this is the abject failure of the .38 Colt revolvers the Army had adopted to stop charging Moro warriors in the Phillippine Insurrection. These guys didn't realize they had been killed by the .38's, and just kept on coming! When shot with the .45 Colt, however, they laid down right away!! The British had similar experiences fighting the Zulus and other tribes in Africa.
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