if you use the right size rifle for what your shooting at your shot placement is what you need to be concerned about not the ft/lbs.

eldguello - opposite and equal is exactly what I was getting at. the bullet does not contain 100% of the energy, and the very nature of a firearm, deflects the energy in MANY directions not just straight back and straight forward, give me the vector resolutions on ALL the different vectors that the energy takes and add them up ,then you have opposite and equal. the biggest change is in the recoil pad , this absorbes alot of energy that is sent in your direction when shooting.

Briman - you have me on a technicality there you are correct, the size of the stock does NOT change the force you get hit w/. Let ME refrase my stance : the stock the size of the dowl WILL strike the point of impact MUCH harder than a normal stock, changing a harmless nudge into a $#%^&@* whack in the nose.

You are right, of course! The factors you mention are all involved. That's why the "foot-pounds" business is so meaningless in determining killing power! It's HOW THE ENERGY IS USED that determines what happens when a living thing is shot, rather than HOW MUCH ENERGY THERE IS, as calculated by some arcane formula.!!

True! But MOST of the energy is moving fore and aft in the form of the weapon (to the rear) and the bullet plus propellant gases to the front. Your statement shows PRIMARILY that the bullet will strike with LESS force than an amount equal to that pushing to the rear!

After it absorbs energy, where does it go? Remember, energy cannot be created or destroyed.

Answer: It stores energy and then releases it over a longer period of time.

Recoil pads are for sissies anywhow

Think in one day, maybe not in our lifetime, they will have a real formula that has been thought about with men of knowledge, that takes into account diameter, rate of expansion, size of expansion dependent on speed and media, velocity, wieght to give an accurate number. It might happen. I work in fiber optics these days, and we have an extremely complicated nonlinarity formula that takes a super computer/Sun machine to run to predict the outcome of light traveling 1000's of miles.

The reason we might not come up with a fomula in our lifetime, is one, no money in it, two, do we really need it other than chewin the fat here. I mean, we have something better, real life data and 100's of years of it.

No, we don't, other than for discussion purposes!

Good point , but its still interesting to yak about I did however run into an article that originated in Africa. Seems some veterinarians were hired to cull herds. They documented how each animal went down, ran, exact yardage ect. The same 2 rifles(different cal) were used for the entire time. The coolest part was that they medically disected EACH animal. What they found was that the animals that dropped in their tracks all had massive brain hemmorrages. animals w/ near identicle wounds died in dramatically different fashions, the quick one always had brain hemmorrage. The conclusion they came to was that the heart was consrticted(high point of your blood preasure) at the exact time of impact of the bullet, which created a hydrostatic preasure spike in addition to already being at the natural highest preasure in the circulatory system and thats what caused the brain damage, which caused them to drop in their tracks.

I was reading on an african hunter website about using the 303 British to go after lions. Supposedly better than shotgun slugs at close range. I'd also like to have seen the Swedes popping polar bears with their 6.5 x 55. I would look for heavier pills but the legends live on.