To shoot thru or not
 

So here goes I do alot of reading and alot of reflecting on that reading .
The question of "degrees of dead" . Do I or You "need "a bullet load that will shoot through at double dia.with 100% retintion ,or is the game just as dead by a 125% dia. 50% retintion lodged in the cavity bullet . IG. A .50cal patchball is going to stay inside deer elk whathave you at 75% of nominal range (80 yds in muley's) and be egg shaped .
A .30 cal can be 2x keep 96% and pass through (Have seen 350yds on muleys) .
Lets say 1000 ft lbs at entry impact and disregard dia cartrige and range.
Lets also rember millions of deer were killed with less than 200 ft lbs buffalo too.
Is muley "A" any deader than "B" ?
Do you need to shoot through?

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

In a perfect world where all shots are taken at game standing boardside in an open field and the hunter never makes a bad shot...probably not. In the real world, it's definately preferred.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

Weight retention is overrated. The nosler partitions have been and still are one of the best big game bullets for decades. They shed quite a bit of weight when they mushroom.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

The question is still are we better of to spend our whole 1000 ft lbs to in the game or leave some out on the ground beyond the target .
I shot a muley through baseball sized exit the deer just stood there naked eye at the shot you could see the entry wounda 150spbt was used.
Later same gun and load,another was taken same range like 50 yrds from the first kill . droped like a rock and most of the bullet stayed with the deer but was a shoulder hit ruined both shoulders . As an extreme the first may have carried 1500+ out with it. I found jacket parts in the exit wound not enough to weigh .

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

Lots of deer are killed every year with some form or another of .224. I don't believe a lot of pass-through shots are common at 100+ yds. with those guns. Hydrostatic shock does the job. Personally, I like a pass-through chest shot so I have a double-sided blood trail to follow for the 40-50 yds. needed to trail my deer if I don't get a bang/flop.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

To me it is not a question of "degree of dead". I want the deer or whatever to drop in it's tracks. Tracking and chasing deer, no matter how far is a bad thing. I have had deer go as little as fifty yards, yet that fifty yards was straight down hill(down a vertical slide one time), and add hours to the recovery time. The way to assure a drop in it's tracks shot is simple. Put the crosshairs on the front shoulder and break him down. yes there is some meat damage, but I can live with that. I want the animal down right there-period. I do not wish to start a conflict here, but there is no more humane way to dispatch an animal. Head shots are a bad idea.

I do not concern myself with pass throughs. Bullet retention or the likes. I also do not feel the need for the expensive bullets. A good quality bullet or a well cast lead bullet is all that is needed. Put that bullet in the front shoulder, then go pick him up.

The most important part of cartridge selection is the ability of the hunter to deliver his bullet where he wants the bullet to be(the front shoulder for me). The hunter should shoot the heaviest and most powerful cartridge that he can shoot comfortably, and effectively. To me there is no such thing as degrees of dead. I shoot alot, so a heavy 30 caliber or my 45-70's are no problem.

If you feel more comfortable shooting a .243 then by all means do so. But if you can effectively shoot a 30-06-then that is what you should be shooting. Tom.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

Good same page . Always believed that if the chest cavity is blown then you done your part in a clean kill . Deposited energy is more important than how big the holes are I think . My dad shoots partitions ,I prefer the hornadays .

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

I have 2 opinions on this. #1 I would prefer that the bullet utilize all its energy and stop inside the animal. Provided of course it has enough energy to humanely drop the animal. This is on a well placed shot through thevitals.
#2 I would prefer a shotto pass through if the shot was not ideally placed. Which in the real world isalways a possibility. This will give you two holes instead of one for tracking a wonded animal.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

I use a 7 mm mag with 150 gr. Sierra Gameking BT and through a chrono I'm just over 3000 fps. I always choose the chest shot going for the lungs and heart. I have never had a pass through with one of these loads and I have harvested more deer than I can remember with this load. I wish I had some pictures of the bruising on the inside of the hide opposite the entry hole. It is usually a good 6 in.in diameter (I'll have to post some after next hunting season). I believe that the energy is best served in the animal and not with a pass through. Have they always dropped on the spot.No, but they haven't gonetoo far although I've had some big bucks run 50 to 75 yards without a heart. I suppose the adrenaline that is pumping through them during the height of the rut has something to do with that. They are basicly dead on their feet. If I can't make the shot that I am sure of then I don't shoot. That is the best way of ensuring that you are notonly wounding the animal or that you have to track them for hours.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

Whether a bullet goes completely through the game or lodges somewhere inside is not nearly as significant as WHAT the bullet hits inside the animal before it exits, or stops penetrating. If it hits and damages or destroys vital organs, the animal will die very close to the place it was standing when hit. If the bullet misses vital organs, it will not die, at least not right away, and it will probably be lost. The size of the bullet and the kinetic energy carried by the bullet is not nearly as important as what it hits as it penetrates through the animal, whether it exits or not.

However, a bullet that exits is twice as likely to produce a significant blood trail, which is an advantage if tracking becomes necessary.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

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

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

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.......

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

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.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

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 :D

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

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.

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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.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

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.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

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?

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

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.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

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 .

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

RR....Amen. And thanks for the "ruined meat" part. I neglected to say that in my post. As a side note, I know that the shoulder shot people advocate what they do, but I have personally been on way too many chases for deer who were shoulder shot and never recovered. You punch a hole through the "boiler room" and it's yours. Period.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

The bottom line is, VERY few folks these days use such a small round for big game huntingthat they HAVE to worry about expending all the energy into the animial to kill it! Most folk these days use a sledge hammer to kill a fly!!!

Here's a couplepicts i took of a "meat buck" i harvested that makes it "perfectly clear" on whether a bullet should exit or not!

I walked up to him, took a pict, rolled him overand tookthe second pict...

DM

entrance,



exit,

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

I dont think I am smart enough to figure out all the Physics of the bullet.I just shoot them behind the front leg with my .300wm and they die.Somerun alittle some drop,just use a good bullet and hit them where it counts.I can tell you when the moment of truth is up onme the last thing I am thinking about is THE PASS THRU OR RETENTION.I really dont think that with modern firearms it is that big of a deal,a left over theory from the old days.We are tending to over analyze some of this.If our bullets deposited all of there energy like we are saying on a animal it would fly through the air and I havent seen that before.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

Here's some graphic pictures of my last deer, shot with a 7mm Rem Mag around 50 yards away using a Scirocco 150g bullet near 3000 fps.

http://www.powerandfury.com/j02deer2.html

Total pass through both lungs, the deer ran 30-40 yards and piled up so I took my eyes off him. When I got to the spot he wasn't there. Blood tracking by my wife turned him up another 20 yards further on the back of a log stone dead.

If you want them to drop at the shot, use a more explosive bullet like a Ballistic Tip. You'll probably ruin more meat with this bullet if you don't hit both lungs and you might have to worry about shooting through the shoulders or other "less-than-perfect" angles.

If you want to leave a little more room for error choose a stronger bullet. You might have to track them and they'll likely run a little ways but they'll die if you hit them right. I shoot Accubonds, haven't been lucky enough to have a shot at anything yet 'cept a coyote but I feel good that bullet is perfect for deer and elk and black bear so that's what I'll stay with, and they aren't too expensive either.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

Nice pics . My Hornady 3033's make the same holes maybe bigger out of my .30-06' at 2600 at 70-75. As a foot note a 185grn patch ball in .50 over 100 grns of pyrodex clicks in at 2250 (same as an 06' 180) at150 yrds it probably won't exit but inside the organs are jellied and ruptured/puntured . I guess I'll just keep wacking spiders with sneakers , as opposed to flys with a sledgehammer . Aside from the blood trail the question remains , is it reallynessary to shoot through ?

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

Apparently you don't put anywhere's near the importance on that blood trail and exit hole that i do....

As for your Hornandy bullet doing it also, will the Hornandyalso make a hole like that through a big bull moose on a quartering shot??? I've done it with the same load/bullet combo on numerous big game animials, in fact i've lost count on how many times it's worked for me...

DM

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

I've shot & killed a pile of deer with just about everything from a 223 to a 300Rum (including several pistol cartridges, 45 & 50 Smokepoles, archery, and pick-up trucks:D). Deer are not that tough & it does not matter if you shoot through or not. If you disturb the vitals they will die.

I have found high shoulder shots with a minimum of a 85gr .243 diameter to be the best stopper. With frangible bullets shrapnel (bullet or shattered bone)will find it's way to the spine to disable, not to mention other physics touched on by RidgeRunner. It doesn't matter if it goes completely "through" or not. Long as it goes at LEAST into the vitals (splashes won't work that great[:-]). I have had many bang/flops with & without passthroughs.

Shots behind the shoulder, generally result in tracking. Passthroughs do help in initial tracking but LOTS of blood later on is actually coming out of the nose/mouth (with lungshot).
Just think. We ALWAYS want the bow to shoot through the deer. If you shoot the boiler room, they always die. Why can't a bullet do the same thing. (I have found frangible bullets are quicker killers here)

I like to have the deer at the spot of impact. I shoot for the shoulder-blades & could care less what the bullet does after it goes 7/8 through the deer. If I want one just to eat, I'll wait for a good shot, whistle, & then shoot the head. You don't have to worry about a passthrough then either!

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

Oh, Man!!! We're not gonna start talking about head shots again, are we???

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

The perfect bullet will do this;
[ol][*]Accurately reach the deer[*]Penetrate[*]Expand,causing massive damage inside[*]Hold the bullet jacket and core together[*]Maintain bullet integrity/weight as much as possible[*]Exit the deer!!!!!!!!!![*]Yes, exit woundsARE a desireablebenefit![/ol]I like Nosler Partitions!

For the record...I'm totally against head shots; they ARE NOT a hit or miss proposition as many would have you believe.

Behind the Shoulder andHigh Shoulder shots are fine...but not head shots.

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As a side note I am curious as to what your idea of high velocity is. I use Nosler BT bullets out of a 270 Win and have shot several deer from 40 to 200 yards and have yet to have one "separate and go all through the meat". I understand there were more problems with BT in the early stages of their development, but I have yet to have one fail to exit.

That being said I like having two holes for a bloodtrail and I am sure most hunters here in the South will agree with me. No matter where you shoot a deer you cannot be 100% certain it is going to drop right in its tracks. In some of the thickets around here you can lose a deer within 40 yards if you don't have a bloodtrail. Maybe bloodtrails are not as important in wide open country, I don't know.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

I usedandkilled many deer over the years with Ballistic Tips. However, in manyinstances I haven't had an exit! In fact, I don't expect to get an exit many times using Ballistic Tips.

The Ballistic Tip is usually wonderfully accurate, but it has not shown me to be a bullet that holds together very well.

For that reason, I preferNosler Partitions.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

I shoot a Winchester 88 284 the load is IMR4350 The bullet is a cheap speer 145 gr spizter I aim where the heart is surpose to be , the bullet clips the heart the deer runs at the most 100 yards most of the time the bullet passes through or hangs up on the hide on the other side , most of the ruined meat is on the ribs havent lost a deer yet you can tell if its a heart shot by the way they hump up , if you shoot a deer with a 22 cal and it hits the heart the deer is dead period maybe not right there but if your pump has a hole in it it will pump till its dry .the trick is to study the animal and find where the heart is .thats my to pesos worth

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

I am confused by this: Your #5 hopes for full weight retention while your favorite bullet sheds over 40% of it's weight at high velocities?
Don't get me wrong, the partition is a GREAT bullet. But, it can't hold a candle to solid copper or true bonded bullets (trophy bond/bearclaw) in terms of weight retention. I'da guessed Barnes to be your favorite(?).
However, I think the partition (& bullets that behave is such manner) are the best of both worlds. If a bullet sheds "some"; your #3 has just increased. You have a larger wound channel (ever shot something with birdshot up close) and then you still get ENOUGH penetration (deer are not bulletproof, nor built like cape buffalo).
Don't get me wrong. Everyone needs a bullet to make it to the deer & into the vitals. My experience has observed that larger wound channels=dead deer faster. As stated, here in the Southeast is a BIG advantage. Still a 100% retention bullet will kill just as dead... Just not as quick for me... YMMV, just don't believe everything the bullet manf's tell you (It's called advertising)

And for the record: I am not either a fan of a headshot from some ya-hoo that didn't check his rifle since last year. But, I put hours at the bench & shooting each week. I wouldn't think of carrying a rifle to the woods I couldn't hit a golfball with (CONSISTANTLY) at 100yrds. A short whistle will put any 50yrddeer in the woods into statue mode. Were is the problem? 2+2=4.....

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

The Nosler Partition will lose some weight, however, it maintains enough weight due to the Partition's design to maintain enough bullet integrity to usually provide an exit.

The Barnes X Bullet has a poor reputation for expanding, however, the Triple Shocks seem to have a much better track record for expanding and reports are theyperform on par with the Nosler Partition. I haven't had the opportunity to try the Triple Shocks.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

I'll take an exit wound with maximum expansion, I dont care about weight retention.
Heres what a .243 did at 200 yds.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

Ya, you have to have some weight retention. A bullet that comes apart wont pass through, thats for sure.

RE: To shoot thru or not
 

I have related this before, so please bear with me...I have used the same .243 since 1980..For about 15 years and probably 75 deer or so all I used were 100gr CoreLokts...Didn't have any problems but wanted to try different factory loadings...I tried Remington Premier 100gr SPBT (discontinued), Federal Premium 100gr Sierra SPBT, Federal Premium 100gr Nosler Partition, Federal Premium 85gr Sierra HPBT and Federal Classic 100gr (I think they call it their HotCore), Winchester Supreme 100gr PowerPoint, Winchester White Box Powerpoint, Hornady Custom 100gr InterLokt and the Nitrex 100gr GrandSlam...

I would shoot 5-6 deer with each and sometimes take a high shoulder and sometimes a broadside center lung shot...I never lost a deer so they all "worked"...Sometimes I had an exit, sometimes not...The bullets that were less likely to exit dropped deer closer to where they were standing when hit with a center lung shot...Each deer hit with a high shoulder shot dropped on the spot....

They all worked but the internal damage was more with the "softer" bullets...As a general rule deer shot with a "softer" bullet, through the lungs would run less than 75 yards and many fell from 25-50 yards from the shot, no blood trail but blood at the sight of the hit....Frankly if a deer goes less than 75 yards I will find them and if I have to drop the deer right there I can put it through the shoulder blades....

Now this is what I want a bullet to do....Exit on a center lung shot, especially if the deer is farther than 50-75 yards away, face it when closer the bullet opens up rapidly and you will have that bullet stay in the deer more than one that is 150-200 yards away...Now on high shoulder shots, I could care less if I have an exit, because the deer will drop right there...

You can have too hard a bullet...I had 3 deer in these tests that ran 125 yards or so...All were hit with the Remington Premier 100gr SPBT...These are the hardest bullets I ever shot in a .243, on lung shot deer the exit was smaller than a quarter...I had a decent blood trail, but they taught me that a bullet can be too hard...They would always exit, even on high shoulder shots....

Deer are remarkable animals, easy to kill if hit properly and can go a long ways if not...Several years ago my brother and I were hunting together, on the ground beside a winter wheat field...Several does came out, we both picked one out, he counted to 3 and we both shot....Ended up shooting the same doe...Him with a .270, me with a .243..Both using Sierra GameKings, both had an exit, he hit 3-4 inches behind the shoulder, I hit on the opposite side when she spun around, just behind the shoulder....That dang doe ran about 60 yards or so and fell 15 yards in the woods....She couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds, yet she took two good hits....That deer made me realize that a bigger hole through the lungs does not always mean they will drop quicker....Both shots were killing shots, she just held her breath and left the field....