I did a test the other day in my back yard after posting that. I took a piece of of cherry trim about the size of pop can and placed it in front of a pop can filled with water. If you haven't seen what a 17 will do to a pop can full of water try it, it is pretty impressive. Blows the thing to peices. Well the peice of trim was 3/4 of an inch thick. I did this to simulate the bullet going thru bone first then entering the body. I wasn't even sure if it would go thru the wood to be honest, let alone how much energy it would have left after wards.

I shot this combo at around 50 yards with one of the Hornady 17 grn Vmax bullets. It whizzed right thru the wood and blew the can apart like normal. It threw the can one way and the wood the other. They were about 3 feet away from each other. I don't know if the can hit the stump I had for a back stop or not. It happens to fast to really see, especially with the scope I have. The stump was covered with water though, it was about a foot or so behind the can. The can was sort of flattened out by the board, so it must have absorbed some energy when the bullet hit it.

I also noticed that the can didn't have any of fragmenting I normally see. Usually when you shoot just the can full of water it blows it apart, and leaves a bunch of little tiny holes in the back from the bullet fragments. This can did not have that?

I was sort of impressed by this, I didn't think these little bullets had that much punch after going thru something like that. This tells me that it has what it takes to punch thru the skull of a dog sized animal and sitll scramble the brains inside. Most likely not leaving an exit wound. And since the entrance wound is the size of a pencil lead it would be cool if you wanted to mount it.

I would still suggest the XTP type bullets though since that's what they were designed for.

And the plastic tip bullets are more explosive than the hollow point ones by CCI. There is a page that shows different ones being shot into different mediums. Cool page for varmint type stuff and the 17 hmr. Here is a link.

http://www.varmintal.net/17hmr.htm

Good luck,
Paul