falcon

Not sure what the proper name for it is; but something happens when a bullet, especially a large diameter bullet, strikes a game animal. i've hit deer and hogs too far back but the animal bang flopped anyway. Despite being hit in the guts; a few times the liver, diaphragm, heart and lungs were destroyed by some kind of shock or were shredded by bullet fragments.

Last week i shot a 190 pound sow with my Encore, 100 grains of 3F Pinnacle and the 250 grain Shockwave bullet. The bullet hit just behind the diaphragm. The liver and lungs were mush. Judging from the exit hole, the bullet exited in one piece.

Not M/L Related:
Lots of folks make fun of us guys who use the .223/5.56mm rifle on wild hogs. Well, so far this year i've killed over 30 hogs using my AR-15 and CZ 527 rifles. Not one hog has gotten away and only two needed a second shot. i use the US military M193 ball round. That bullet penetrates about 5-6", yaws 90 degrees and fragments,
leaving tremendous damage.

5.56mm wound ballistics from Col. Martin Fackler:

http://bajaarizona.org/fklr/fklr.html

Chasam60

doe shot this year through the heart.bullet passed through without hitting rib bone on either side.260 gr Nosler.she dropped in her tracks,stone dead in seconds.Shock kills.I have had heart shot deer run far with a shotgun slug.The saboted Barnes for 12 ga are a different story though.I believe the quick opening of the Nosler and Barnes is what causes the shock damage.Probably the GD/DC Speer works the same way,though I have never used them.

Charlie

Paul Niskanen

This fall my son shot a doe, quartering away. Hit it alittle far back, the bullet came out an inch and a half behind the far front leg. The bullet clipped the liver and one small corner of the lung. She went 20 yards and dropped, VERY little blood, on fresh snow. The liver and lung were like jello. All from a 257 Roberts with a 117g superormance and a 50 yard shot.

Wazz13

Great video. I shoot a hard cast lead bullet w/ a wide flat nose out of one of my Muzzleloaders. They do not expand, they sure do a lot of dammage as they go thru an animal. I believe the wound channel along with the "shock" is what puts these animals down.

SwampCollie

I go in a bit different direction. Not entirely, because I do believe in the temporary wound channel.. and your video here just shows it.

Where I go at odds with 'shock theroy' is as it relates to animal size.

Shoot a soda can full of water with a .17HMR and it will explode like a hand grenade.

Shoot a 55 gallon plastic fuel drum with a .17 HMR and it will just leak out the size.

The difference is the resistance, or pressure, caused by increased mass. The bigger your target and the heavier its weight, the less effect shock is going to have. IE... the smaller than temporary wound channel is going to be.

Its little more than a power to weight ratio.

A can of water at 12 fl oz will weigh in at about 12.5 mass oz... or .78 pounds.

A 55 gallon drum of water will weigh 440 pounds.

A 17gr VMAX bullet fired at 2500 fps has 245 ft/lbs of energy at the muzzle and 138ft/lbs at 100 yards (per the winchester website).

If our target is at 100 yards that gives the power to weight ratio for a can of water of 176.92 : 1 meaning that the bullet has over 176 more times the energy than the water does resistance.

To flip that over to the 55 gallon drum... now we are talking about a power weight ratio of 1 : 3.19. Not nearly so impressive a result either.

These figures are just to kinda explain what I am getting at here...

What all that jelly you see really is when you heart shoot a deer is blood clots. The shock created by the temp wound channel... just like a punch to the ribs, ruptures blood vessels... its a bruise. Of course if you were to rupture enough of them... it would be fatal. If you ruptured enough of them to cause a rapid drop in blood pressure.... the animal would effectively pass out and die of bleed out during its state of basically sleep.

If that temp wound channel occurs close to the spine... it can infact rupture the spinal cord or at least cause enough nerve trauma that it incapacitates.

bronko22000

Sorry Collie but your theory is shot full of holes (notice the pun). The 17HMR and 55 gal drum is not a valid argument. The drum of water has too much room for water compression and the kinetic energy delivered by that bullet is much too low to have much effect. Now you take that same drum of water and pressurize it and hit it with a 30-06 or 12 ga slug or 50 cal ML and your results will be more dramatic.
Also, if what you are seeing is blood clots as you state - what happened to the heart? It was virtually liquified same as the soda can! I've seen animal hearts (deer, elk, bear, etc.) which were actually blown to pieces or partially blown apart depending on the location of the hit. The liver, being a larger organ, is liquified along the wound channel. And this amount of damage is proportionate to the amount of energy delivered by the bullet.
But each of us has our own opinion. And I am just stating what I've witnessed and read.

builder459

I have shot quite a few deer in my time, and the damage to the organs was "not" blood clots. the organs in most cases were in fact soup, sometimes totally destroyed.this may not be the case with some other people and i feel it is due to there bullet of choice not expanding properly. i have always used nosler partitions in my center fire rifles. in my old renegade it was big heavy conicals and the damage was massive. Ray

TNHagies

I too look for a bullet that will cause a lot of internal damage and disruption during its path through an animal. But for years I shot Noslers out of my .280 and I've seen deer act many different ways. Hydrostatic shock is awesome and I believe it plays a part in a quick successful kill. But I also know that deer are strange animals.

For instance, back in the 90's we had a 'deer problem' where I lived. Due to bonus tag possibilities I was killing 15+ deer a year. Most fell victim to my .280 and the Noslers. Out of curiosity, one year I shot 13 deer behind the shoulder through the lungs just to compare results. The results were sometimes vastly different. One would drop in its tracks, another would run 75 yards. ALL of them had internal organs destroyed by the Nosler. I believe it's a fine bullet but I've seen enough examples to know that sometimes you can't predict what deer will do. That's why I hate to hear/read people say things like "shoot this bullet, the deer won't run" It's an impossible guarantee.

OzarkPA

Ooh ooh ooh - have you seen the barnes DVD? Awesome slow-mo of deer vs. barnes expander... slow motion jello jiggle - it's like that video of the gel, but in an actual deer.

@TNHagies - you said you compared behind the shoulder shots - but not what you compared it with - where were the other shots?

TNHagies

All 13 were shot behind the shoulder (that year). That was my point, they were all shot in the same place and they all reacted differently.