the Razorhead

that's the way I look at it.

You poke two holes in a deer (especially if one leads into the pump station), you're going to be using your skinning knife very soon

BrutalAttack

Not only do you not "need" to shoot through, it's often detrimental.

Anyone with any shred of common sense or high school physics will realize that the entire concept of bullet (or any other projectile) design is based on delivering lethal energy to a target.

In order for a bullet to transfer all of it's energy into a target, it must remain in the target.

Hence the striving for a bullet that expands and holds together yet doesn't over penetrate.

Larger surface area (expansion)+retention of mass= more efficient transfer of energy to target = bullet expends energy inside target faster and more completely = more lethal bullet with the added benefit of the largest wound profile possible.

A bullet that passes through is not doing it's job and is in fact wasting energy that would be much better served being expended within the animal rather thanbeing used to propel the bullet through the air.

It's the equivalent of punching a kniting needle through an egg, or smashing it on the counter.

We want lethal energy to "anchor" the animal whenever possible. This becomes exceedingly difficult to do when our bullets are passing through punching pencil sized holes and expending their energy into the ground on the other side.

A suprising number of people will argue against this. They'd also have you believe the Earth is flat.......

BrutalAttack

If you prefer chasing down your deer then go for overpenetration. If you like to walk up on them where they died in their tracks then go with the rest of us....

Of course there are more variables involved than this.

pass through is no guarentee of running and vise versa.

But in general, more energy on target > hoping it bleeds to death before it runs down into that nasty canyon.

Hence the modernhunting bulletdesign.

rem 700

A slightly delayed expansion and then explosion is how the Berger hunting bullets work; passthroughs aren't the objective.The objectiveis to cause as much damage to the organs in the animal as possible, which may mean something like 30% weight retention but massive trauma anyways. If you have a traditional hunting bullet, then sure the bullet can become a meatgrinder as its trajectory changes inside the cavity (when it doesn't exit). But also, if you maintain a wide hole all the way through the animal that is also effective. So basically as long as there is a big enough hole in the vital organs the animal will die

Pawildman

Brutal Attack...You seem afully opinionated with your statement. Just wondering how many deer or deer sized animals you have personally killed, versus what the Physics book says. If you can cause maximum trauma and provide an exit hole at the same time, you are darned well guaranteed that the bullet has certainly done it's job. And where do you even get the notion that pass-through shots leave "pencil sized" wound channels???? Certainly not in my neck of the woods with people who understand how to kill deer, and what to use to do it with.

Prairie Wolf

I think both sides are splitting hairs a little too fine. Sometimes the deer drops in its tracks. Sometimes they run a ways. I have read that if you hit a deer through the shoulder blades, the shock of bullet on bone usually knocks them down long enough for the damage to the vitals to kill them. I don't think you can rely on this. If you break both shoulders it is pretty tough for them to run away, but they can sometimes do surprising things.

A deer shot through both lungs is a dead deer, and if there is an exit hole, usually it will leave enough blood a blind man can follow it. It will be rare that deer hit this way will go more than a hundred yards.

Coyote hunters who are after fur prefer not to have an exit hole. Deer hunters might be concerned with meat damage, but that is more a factor of where you hit them. I don't see any other reason why you wouldn't want an exit hole. If you want to expend 500 foot pounds in a deer hit it with 1000. If you want to expend 500 in the deer and only hit it with 500, then you are cutting it too fine. There is no reason to try to be efficient with bullet energy.

On the other side, this doesn't mean you need an ultra mag. If the bullet isn't exiting, get one with firmer contruction. If it is only making a pencil hole all the way through, you need to push it faster so it opens up more, or get one that opens up better.

Solitary Man

BS. Most big game hunting cartridges impart way more energy to a bullet than what's actually needed to kill a critter. The fact that a bullet exits doesn't in any way meanthat plenty enough energy wasn't usedto do what is actually necessary to kill, which is tocreate holes in things that God didn't intend to have holes in. In every case of bang/flop I've ever had, going back 30+ years, the bullet exited.

Honestly, I don't care muchif a bullet exits or notas animals tend to die either way. But given a preference I'd probably lean towards having an exit wound because it usually results in better blood trails, which come in handy when trackingbecomes necessary.

harter66

Good natured sparing with intellegent thoughts .
A scarry sharp broad head or a field point or blunt at 500 grains imparts at best in a high speed compound bow about 300 lbs on a target . 90% of the time that is all left in the target .A few are lost some may go a half mile Bleeding badly and another 100 yrds bleed out . How many geese do we see every year with an arrow through and lodged . It takes 20 lbs to cleanly kill with shot (5 pellets @ 4 ftlbs ) . I think what we all mean to say is as long as the proper parts are wrecked and the critter is leaking some it doesn't matter to us old guys and the kids still want to over kill to be sure . Am I getting the jist of it?

Power

Idealy the bullet should penetrate all the way through the deer but expend 99.9% of it's energy in the vitals. Then it should just poke out the other side and fall to the ground. That would be the optimum performance.

That is seldom how things work out. There are too many variables to account for when hunting. So you pick the best bullet and load you can to compensate for the possibilities and you go from there. Most of the time you are better off with more penetration than with less. Much better to pass through the deer and take out the vitals than to have the bullet blow up inside the near side and not damage enough of the vitals. The bronze-tipped bullets of the 50's had a nasty reputation for doing that. The added assurance you get with a better bullet means even if you hit a bone or have a quartering toward or away shot, you can still get enough penetration to reach and damage the vitals.

harter66

So this one time ............ Ok nuff' a that .
I did see a 3x3 mulie hit on a shoulder with a 117 grn early partition in a 25-06. The for leg was dangling by hide the meat was gone bone chips in the neck the remains of the bullet (its safe to say that its design function failed) were mostly just inside the ribs and the neck and the fillets . "hydroshock"did the work .I am not justifing a bad shot or nonpenatration. The bullet did the job all of the energy was dumped in the target and the bang flop was instant . Ruined half the deer I mean a lot of burger . I shot a mulie 150grn '06 total pass through .3 in. inhalf dollar out .Heart and lungs gone and just stood there we got close enough to call it deer tipp'n be for she went down . The rib exit was 3 inches the hide looked like a 15 yd 12ga of bird shot went through . In both cases the deer was dead completely dead .
IMO I think we place the idea that we can use penitration and shoot-thru to make up for average skill . The poor shot is ok because the bullet hit between the head and tail and wetn out at a piont 180 degrees from there . The if I had only a butt shot at 100 yrds while the bigest mulie I'd seen ever I'd wait for 150 or 200 when he stoped and turned to see me or to go through the trees rather than count on that bullet to exit the chest or even get to the vitals .
Maybe I just expect to much from me . Maybe I live too much O'Conner and Wolff .