It’s fairly well known, by “those in the know”, that INTERNAL and EXTERNAL ballistics are pretty straight-forward; that it’s a matter of simple math once a chronograph is employed to give the muzzle velocity and the right numbers are introduced to a ballistics program. But when TERMINAL BALLISTICS are studied, even by the scientific mind, matters suddenly become much more blurred. And even “the scientists” must rely on empirical data gathered from testing and field experience. Then, and only then, do they set about to unravel the “mystery” of TERMINAL ballistics both in language and terms that ballistic engineers can relate to.
To make matters even more complicated, even the non-scientific mind can understand the basic operation of a “solid” when it impacts flesh and bone through lessons taught by multiple personal experiences, such as those of past “ivory hunters” and, currently, those with years of experience on Africa’s DG as PH’s. In other words, they know in general terms what works adequately, what works superbly, and what fails to do the job as expected or intended.
At that point, the problem becomes both a practical one as well as a theoretical one. The practical issue is looked at with an experienced eye, and draws some conclusions, such as: “The bullet deformed and didn’t penetrate as it should have causing us to shoot the beast 8-times more than should have been necessary. We’ll never use those bullets again!” Then, the theorists come out of the woodwork with all kinds of speculation and declare with authority something akin to:”Well, if it were I, I would have used bullet XYZ and they’d never would have had such a problem to begin with. I know a friend of a friend of a friend who used bullet XYZ and HE never had that kind of bullet failure!”
The point is: the practical, based on years of accumulated experience by professional hunters of ivory, and PH’s in the field, as well as “average” hunters, is analysed resulting in the improved products that we all enjoy using today with increased confidence.
That end result was NOT the product of the scientific mind or theorist! It was, and is the result of practical men and minds like John Nosler! Then, others came along to try and duplicate the performance of the Nosler Partition bullet by not making it a true “Nosler”, with a partial partition and a heavy jacket. Some of these experiments worked better than the usual cup-n-core but didn’t stay around too long as they were not a true improvement over the tried-n-true Nosler!
With time, some entrepreneurial types came up with “bonding” the lead core to jacket. And that’s been refined a few dozen times as well, so that today we have partitioned jackets with a bonded front lead core. Then the metals (both core and jacket) have been played with to get “optimum results” for different species from whitetail to buffalo. Then came along the monometals, both expanding and “solid”. Those also have been “refined” a zillion times so that each company can now “claim” theirs are the very “best”.
After all that, the “scientists” want to explain, “scientifically” mind you, how they all do their “work” in scientific jargon that befuddles the rest of us! But it all sounds impressive, so it must all be good. But even the pro ballistic annalists tell us that it’s not possible to understand it all or predict anything, despite the fact that most of it (95%) is predictable if “we” do our part!
So, where does that leave a poor fellow like myself trying to make sense of it all without a science background? Well, exactly where most of us are… trying to deal with it from an empirical-practical standpoint. That is, daring to suggest, no, say that it IS possible to predict results as long as we use the right bullet from the right cartridge, and place it where it needs to go!
And all that brings me full circle, back to the beginning of this section on TE in stating emphatically that the RIGHT BULLET must do 4 things!
1 – It MUST be appropriate for the game animal to be harvested…
2 – It MUST be suitable for the BALLISTICS required…
3 – It MUST be stable on impact with flesh and bone (today’s theme)… and
4 – It MUST penetrate adequately while retaining a minimum of 65% of its initial weight (also today’s theme).
So, with those understandings, let’s get on with items 3 and 4:
3 – IT MUST BE STABLE ON IMPACT WITH FLESH AND BONE.
A few years ago I was testing a 600gr Barnes Original in .458″. It was being loaded for my Ruger No.1 in .45-70 LT.
That Ruger #1 has a rifling of 1 in 20″ twist. I didn’t think that a 1 in 20 twist rate would adequately stabilize that long and heavy bullet that was made for the .458 Win Mag with a 1 in 14″ twist rate, but thought I’d give it a try anyway. Well, as it turned out I was partially wrong but mostly right. At nearly 1900 fps it was plenty accurate at 100 yards, but the .458″ holes in the target were ever-so-slightly elliptical. In other words, they were not completely stable at 100 and therefore would not be be stable on impact with an animal target! The obvious cause of the slight yaw was a 1 in 20″ twist rate. I never tried those bullets in a .458 Win Mag, but I had confidence that they would be stable and therefore feasible for employment on big-bad-beasties.
Don Heath suggested that a 600gr with a heavy jacket and lead core would be perfect for Cape buff at about 1900 fps from a .458 Win Mag.
The object of this illustration is to point out that with today’s long monolithic hp expanding bullets and solids, we need to be certain that they are stable from the rifles
we intend to use them in. If they should turn out to be too long for the rate of twist in a rifle you use, the end result may not be what you anticipated. It’s then too easy to blame “bullet failure” when the real cause was a failure to test that particular bullet from your rifle at varying distances, and velocities, to determine its stability.
It is possible that at a particular MV the bullet may appear to be stable at 100 yards, but as it slows down with distance it may become unstable. Therefore it needs to be tested at both shorter ranges, and longer. If unstable at 25 yards it will fail to penetrate as desired, and may tumble when it slows in flesh or when hitting a bone at a glancing blow. The same holds true for ANY range if the bullet is barely stable on muzzle exit or at any distance thereafter.
(The 600gr, .458″ third from left and loaded in a .458 WM and .45-70 Ruger #1 LT)
The results will be predictably unpredictable!
4) IT MUST PENETRATE ADEQUATELY WHILE RETAINING A MINIMUM OF 65% OF ITS ORIGINAL WEIGHT.
That statement as a fundamental principle was purposefully crafted for the context of hunting LG and DG with medium to big-bore rifles.
I’m NOT thinking about 150gr/.30-cal. cup and core bullets from a .308 Winchester in the hunt of whitetails that mostly go far less than 200 lbs! ANY bullet will work in those scenarios! A 180 lb buck is only about 1-foot through the chest with the hair removed! TSX’s, bonded cores and Partitions are NOT needed in those kinds of situations. And it doesn’t really matter if the bullet NEVER exits! (There’s a LOT of nonsense on the Net and in advertisements that the gullible buy into — that’s what sells, apparently!)
As mentioned several times in this current theme, the target in question is represented by a mature bull moose, bison, eland or even a Cape buffalo! We’re talking serious size and weight and potential trouble if things go haywire!
In our times, it should be fairly well known that the volume of the wound cavity, and its location, are the primary factors in the clean termination of any game species. Volume has reference to both depth and diameter. There is a primary wound channel that remains after the passage of the bullet, and there is a secondary wounding “area” that borders that, and recognized as a bloodshot area which collapses around the permanent wound channel. But it is mostly the permanent wound cavity that determines lethality. And, of course, it location. But assuming proper placement of bullet, and the right bullet, we can predict events related to TE.
If the target is a soft-skinned LG or DG, we have libraries of data that provide the researcher with empirical evidence for right expectations. That’s literal libraries, DVDs, manuals, the Internet, and more is emerging with every hunt that is reported with exactness, including photos of bullet wounds and recovered projectiles, whether expanding or solids.
My job — self inflicted mind you — is to interpret all this to the layman who may be starting out, or who wonders why “such and such” happened. Of course, I’m not the only guy who has such a strong inclination to try and understand in a practical sense what happened when “things go as predicted”, or why “things go wrong” when expectations were positive. I’ve experienced both, and I’m sure you have if you’ve done much hunting of game, large or small. The object of these essays is to help forestall “things going wrong” by choosing the right cartridge AND bullet for a particular species of LG, and, yes, DG, and learning to shoot it with exactness — through lots of practice.
In this series of articles, the emphasis is on the use of Medium Bores and Big Bores for large game and dangerous game, and with slight recognition of LDG (large dangerous game). Since I’ve never shot anything larger than a bull moose, I can only extrapolate and/or listen to those who have… or read their accounts… which I have. So not qualifying as a brain surgeon or rocket scientist yet, I can still add 2 + 2 so that it makes some sense.
What should be obvious to others who can add 2 + 2 is that a bigger animal requires “a bigger gun”. And empirical evidence confirms that a larger bullet, constructed appropriately for the species, driven at appropriate muzzle speeds AND placed where it needs to go to cause a large enough wound channel is enough. No more will still be enough. More, will only be “more than enough”.
So, how do we determine when “enough is enough”?
Well, when we think about it, we would not be “destroying” the whole animal in order to claim satisfaction, but a relatively small part. That might be the brain, the spinal cord, the heart or lungs… or some other vital organ. Granted, the heart of a moose is larger than the heart of a whitetail by perhaps 300%. But we would still only be “killing” a small part relative to the mass of a moose. The heart might weigh 7 – 8 lbs whereas the moose could go 1500 lbs! But the heart of any large animal at 200 yards is still a small target, so we reserve heart shots on LG and DG to close quarters when they are unaware of our presence, or at the very least immobile.
So, the usual practice is to aim for the center of the mass, i.e. – some part of the chest which contain lungs and heart plus some major arteries. Then, of course, if the animal is in a quartering to or away presentation, we aim to take out a front shoulder on the opposite side of bullet placement into the chest. That’s for the purpose of at least partial immobilization. But all of it comes down to bullet performance in penetration, whether expanding or solid, that destroys some life sustaining organ or organs. That requires some knowledge of wildlife anatomy, or taking advise from those who have that knowledge.
The bullet must be constructed to withstand immense pressure and impact force, while retaining enough mass after impact to complete the task. Nosler Partitions retain anywhere from 70% to 80% of their mass when constructed for large and or dangerous game. Some hunters don’t like that and prefer a bullet that retains 95 – 100%. But what happens to that loss of weight? Well, it goes somewhere else into life-sustaining tissue or organs of the beast. It does damage there. Some lose their “petals” (Barnes), some lose their front cores (Noslers) and others retain near 100%. But even then, an expanding bullet that retains most of it’s weight will retain that up front like the head of a big hammer… but, depending on its width, it may act as a big brake up front that slows the bullet to a stop before it reaches some vital organs, whereas those that lost their cores or petals may penetrate farther, acting like a solid at the end of their transit through vital organs!
Conclusion? In my view, it’s a standoff. The one is as good as the other! Both styles have proven themselves in similar and in different ways. A flat-nosed solid has been proven to penetrate straighter and more deeply (if called for) than a round-nose solid… but then, on the other hand, the RN solid has also been empirically proven to do a good job on most beasts, including elephant. The RN is good… did it all of a sudden become “useless” because the flat-tip has proven to be slightly better?
In using the RIGHT bullet from the RIGHT cartridge for the occasion, and aiming your rifle with confidence, you will never be disappointed if you place the bullet with precision into the animal’s vitals — that which sustains it’s life force!
More next time when I bring up the subject, once again: “WHY THE .458 WINCHESTER MAGNUM IS ENOUGH!”
Shalom
BOB MITCHELL