Prefer bullet to fully penetrate or not?

Hmmm...

Well, an animal never died from an exit wound.

What matters is using a bullet that performs as expected within it's designed velocity on game game it was designed to take.

Ballistic tips will make an impressive mess inside an animal at shorter ranges because they were originally designed to be a long range bullet. At shorter ranges, they tend to fragment and not exit, while doing horrific damage to the tissue in their path.

Traditional exposed lead tip bullets tend to expand less violently, cut a path through the tissue they encounter, and exit the animal.

Both bullets are doing the job they were designed to do, it's up to the individual hunter to understand the design of the bullet and match it to the proper game at the proper range.

Exit wounds are nice to expedite tracking wounded game, but they don't make the animal any more or less dead.
 
I prefer a pass through shot to provide an easier to follow blood trail. I gave up on Ballistic Tips in favor of Accubond to ensure adequate penetration. I have shot a number or deer with both (and an MI cow elk with the Accubond), all died, however, in the short range hunting I do (<100yds in MI), the ballistic tips tend to over expand and under penetrate. .300 WM 180G BT 2 deer failed to leave any blood trail, the Acu all provided pass through and good blood trails. My personal prefrence though.

Andy

PS. On less than perfect shot angles, deeper penetration is an advantage.
 
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I never hunted elk so I really can't say about them. For whitetail I use a .06 with a Nosler 165 Partition, and look for complete pass thru. Seems they go down faster, and or are easier to track. But that is just my two cents.
 
Northslope Nimrod said:
My bullet may hit a small twig. I use a scope so I can avoid twigs but it can happen. Are ballistic tips more prone to disintegration upon contact with a small twig than say a bonded bullet? OR are they both totally vulnerable (due to disintegration or deflection) to the small twig and a 45/70 would be needed to overcome?
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No bullet will remain on course after striking something. They are remarkably unstable in flight. There was an experiment done some years back by, I think, an Outdoor Life writer. They set up a target behind varying degrees of brush and with the target varying distances behind the brush. They were using a 12ga slug gun which is famous (erroneously) for being able to penetrate brush. The results were dismal. Forgive me if I don't remember exactly right, it was like 20 years ago, but, as I recall, in one test the target was 18 inches past the first contact with the brush and they missed the ENTIRE target.

James R. Burke said:
For whitetail I use a .06 with a Nosler 165 Partition, and look for complete pass thru. Seems they go down faster, and or are easier to track.
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A small sample size to be sure, but my uncle just shot in the lungs a 7-point with a 7mm-08 and got no exit wound. The deer went a matter of feet.


Personally, I think that there are so many variables from on animal to another, one bullet to another, variation in shot placement by inches or less, variations in shot angle, variations in distance, slight variation in charge between rounds, and so on and so forth, that the entire lifetime of any given hunter does not provide sufficient information to make a real scientific evaluation of which is better or more effective.
 
what good is 3000 ft/lbs of energy if 2500 of it is in a tree on the other side?
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Peet, In all reality... The full 3,000 ft/lbs was in the deer. It started upon impact and as it passes thru, it begins to lose energy. it isn't fair to believe that only 500 lbs. killed the deer or we would feel 500 total is plenty. What ever is left as it exits is what hits the tree or whatever. But it was 3.000 that put that 3/4 inch hole in him:D

As for me, I just hope to make a lethal enuff shot that the deer expires real quick so I can see him fall avoiding the tedium of blood trailing;)
Brent
 
hogdogs said:
It started upon impact and as it passes thru, it begins to lose energy. it isn't fair to believe that only 500 lbs. killed the deer or we would feel 500 total is plenty.
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Well, actually 500ft/lbs IS plenty for a deer. Ok, maybe not "plenty" but it's enough.

My example is a bit exaggerated on the retained energy side. I suspect that it's closer to 50%. In any case, whatever energy the bullet has when it exits the other side is wasted. It's only purpose was to pound your shoulder harder than necessary to kill a deer.
 
Original Poster

OK. Here is why I started this thread....and now it is more pressing.
I regularly hunt elk with a 30-06. Most shots under 80 yards in heavy timber. I have been wanting a .35 Whelen for more punch (killing power).

If the .35 Whelen won't make a difference, then I won't bother.

UPDATE: Well, a .35 Whelen in a new Remington 750 just popped up for sale at a very good price. So talk me into it or out of it. ...and please hurry. :)
 
a different view

here's another way to look at this... if i had to take a bullet, i'd rather it go completely through me. :rolleyes:
 
If you want the gun then buy it but don't buy it under the illusion that you "need it" for elk. You don't. People shoot elk regularly with the 243. A 30-06 is more than sufficient. Critters of any kind with holes in both lungs will be dead in short order.
 
For me and my spartan life style, I feel the .30-06 is the be all and end all for north america's "big game". But if you want the .35 go-on-git-you-some:D
Seems the ammo costs a bit more and is a little less variety than the venerable -06.
Brent
 
PHP: 
what good is 3000 ft/lbs of energy if 2500 of it is in a tree on the other side?

If the target is dead it don't matter much...

You will benefit if the animal has two holes to bleed out so it will be easier to find blood trail if you must track it a little.

I. too, prefer the bullet to expend nearly all of it's energy INSIDE the target... and FALL out the other side on the ground within a few feet POE... ;) :D
 
rather than have full energy transfer
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There is actually very little energy transfered by a bullet to a soft tissue target. A bullet that expands to two times it's original size and exits a deer will kill him just as fast as one that expands to two times it's original size and stops just under the hide on the far side.

You will see a slight increase in dropped right there kills with bullets that don't exit but people misunderstand why. It really has nothing to do with energy transfer. The reason is that the bullets which fail to exit are typically more lightly constructed and expand/fragment much more. More expansion and fragmentation will do more internal damage.

Energy is really a poor indicator of a projectiles lethal qualities anyway.
For example: A factory loaded 22-250 with a 50 grain bullet has more muzzle energy than a 45-70 factory load with a 405 grain bullet. We are being charged by an 1100 pound Kodiak brown bear. You can have the one that boosts more energy on the ballistics charts. I'll take the 45-70.

For a real good laugh consider this. A .17 remington firing a 20 grain bullet generates about 800 ft/lbs of energy. My compound bow only generates about 60. But an arrow from my compound will kill a cape buffalo. Anyone want to try that with a .17 remington? LOL!

Don't get hung up on this energy nonsense. A bullet doesn't impart any more energy (or knock down) into a target than the gun does into your shoulder. See Newtons law of physics about equal and opposite reactions.
 
There is a world of difference between deer and elk. A lung shot deer will probably pile up within 300 yds. A lung shot elk might go a mile. A mile in heavy timber, with lots of other elk tracks, is a lot more fun to tromp if you have a whoppin great blood trail to follow.:) jd
 
Todd1700 said:
Energy is really a poor indicator of a projectiles lethal qualities anyway.
For example: A factory loaded 22-250 with a 50 grain bullet has more muzzle energy than a 45-70 factory load with a 405 grain bullet. We are being charged by an 1100 pound Kodiak brown bear. You can have the one that boosts more energy on the ballistics charts. I'll take the 45-70.
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There are two kinds of energy that matter to bullets. Kinetic energy and momentum. The reason that a 45-70 is better for a bear is momentum.

Kinetic energy is what does damage beyond the actual path of the bullet, it is what expands the bullet and what causes fragmentation. Momentum produces penetration.


Todd1700 said:
Don't get hung up on this energy nonsense. A bullet doesn't impart any more energy (or knock down) into a target than the gun does into your shoulder. See Newtons law of physics about equal and opposite reactions.
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While that is true on a technical level, it does not adequately explain the behavior of the bullet. After all, there's not a hole in your shoulder after you pull the trigger so it's obvious that there's more going on than pure energy transfer. More than just the amount of energy transfered, we must also know the amount of area that the energy is transfered into (lbs/in^2), the amount of mass the energy is transfered into (the gun vs the bullet), as well as the amount of time it takes to transfer that energy, the "impulse", on both the target and your shoulder.
 
If I shoot a 100 lb deer with a particular bullet at a particular velocity from x cartridge, and the bullet exits, but the deer dies within 3 seconds, does it matter if the bullet exited?

If I shoot a 1000 lb buffalo with the same bullet at the same velocity from the same cartridge, but it doesn't exit, and the buffalo dies within 3 seconds, does it matter that the bullet didn't exit?

I've done both of the above repeatedly with my primary hunting rifle using the same bullet and load.

An exit wound is nothing more than an extra hole in a hide, made after the bullet has done all of it's damage to the internals. It'll bleed more if the animal requires trailing, but that's about the only difference.

As long as a bullet is constructed to penetrate sufficiently to reach the vitals on the intended animal, yet will expand sufficiently to cause massive trauma to the vitals on the animal, I couldn't care less if it exits or not.

An exit leaves a better blood trail for easier follow up if needed; no exit leaves me with an extra "trophy" when I find the bullet.

Daryl
 
I have used Ballistic tips for a lot of years and performance on deer has been excellent. Sometimes their was no exit wound. Usually no big deal. Recently I have been using a lot of TSX bullets and they always exit. Tell you what. Shoot a deer in fairly dense woods a half hour after sunset and have it live for three seconds (shot clear through the lungs), sometimes they can run far enough to make it a real pain to find. Dead, yes. Next to a log half under a pile of leaves in a direction you didn't think it went. Next day you find with your eyes what the coyotes found last night with their noses. Not a common occurrance, but a good blood trail is easy to follow with a flashlight.
 
Not a problem here, Gliesmann. Shooting hours in Arizona end at sunset; that leaves a half hour to find it...IF (and that's a dang big "IF") it actually steps out of it's tracks.

I use 145 gr Speer SPBT's and Grand Slam bullets quite a bit, and I've yet to see a deer step out of it's tracks after I hit it. An antelope I shot a few years back made it about 20 yards, but it wasn't hard to find. Deer, antelope, bear, elk, bison, and other animals all seem to hit the ground within that 3 seconds, and the vast majority never step out of their tracks.

Some exit, some don't, and I don't care either way.

Daryl
 
Nice it only went a few feet. My wife uses a .243 and "all" the time complete pass thru. Maybe he hit a big bone or something. A 06 loaded correct should due a complete pass thru about anywhere you hit it, unless maybe your trying a full length shot. What do you have against a pass thru shot? Cant make on or what?
 
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