better than bowhunting and centefire rifles

[roundball]

Unless you make a freak high shot which happens to catch the spine paralyzing the deer, a bow really has no 'knock-down' power as such...kills by cutting/hemoraging.
Within it's shorter range, a heart/lung shot with a razor sharp broadhead is every bit as lethal as a heart/lung shot with a ball/bullet from a rifle.

 

[Stumpkiller]

I once calculated my 65# bow has anout 45 ft lbs of force at 20 yards. Hardly an earthmover. The last deer I hit with my bow had both lungs perforated and dropped in 70 yards. The last deer I shot (also both lungs) with a lead conical did about the same distance.

 

[Huntinfool]

I've taken about 59 or 60 deer with a razor sharp stick (arrow). And something over 175 with firearms. Some deer have dropped almost instantly from both lungs being poppped. Most have fallen within sight and probably 20 or so I had to track a short distance never more than 200 yards.

I reminded of something John Jobson once said in a Sports Afield Magazine article. "There is only one degree of dead."
"Dead is dead"

I've tracked deer that friends have shot they told me they hit them right square in the boiler works. After about one half to three quarters of a mile I knew they were mistaken.

I believe if you place your shot properly with adequate equipment ie. razor sharp broadhead or soft lead which ever you'll be eatin' venison.

"The Chuckster" ::

 

Those who have done a lot of deer hunting with both bow and muzzleloader: how does the bow compare with the ML as far as knockdown powder?

Capt. William

Knock down power is really very misleading. NOTHING knocks down anything, ever.
When I was a policeman I did a LOT a research into what it takes to kill , er, ah, I mean incapacitate a bad guy. Yeah ya gotta be politically correct about such things.
The ONLY way to instantainiously incapacitate is to disrupt the nervous system, i.e. spine, brain shot.
To drop a critter quickly you disrupt the central nervous system OR cause a sudden drop in blood pressure, thus starving the brain for O2. Bullets and arrows work much the same way. Lung/heart shots cause a rapid drop in blood pressure. Period. I've shot deer with a solid lung hit with a broadhead and they ran no further than one shot in the same place with a bullet.
Yes I know a high powered rifle can tear up a lot of real estate, but the fact remains that bad shot placement results in a wounded critter with ANY weapon.
I've done 7 autopsies myself,( and witnessed many more) all gunshot wounds and a .25 auto shot to the head is just as fatal as a 12 gauge.
Yuk! I feel the PTSD comming back. :shocking: :haha:

 

[Stumpkiller]

I will relate one case where I had incredible knock down power. I was hunting with a friend and we were pushing up either side of a long, narrow thick brush section. He yelled "Coming at you" and soon two deer came bolting out of the brush - right at me, flat out 30 mph+/-, hitting the ground about every 15 feet. I shot the first one (what we call a 'grouse shot') with a quick snap as if I was leading a flushing bird. The slug travelled about 10 feet and hit the spine above the lungs, severing it completely. The deer spun wildly and continued about four feet on momentum and hit a tree. I think the impact with the tree would have killed it. One side of his rack snapped off above the eye-tine and was lying beside him.

I have had other deer collapse, one jumped 10 feet into the air and landed in a heap, but never actually knocked one down. Speaking of PTSD - I once shot a doe in the head at very close trange as it seemed like a good idea at the time. It was gone from the bottom of the eye sockets up, but . . . well, never mind. I will never do that to another deer (or myself) as long as I live.

 

They don't compare....a broadhead kills only by hemorrage. PRB's and any other projectile coming from a rifle, handgun or shotgun all impart some degree of hydrostatic shock and destroy much more of the organs and flesh than a broadhead. Granted, the massive loss of blood from either type of wound is the real killer. Given proper shot placement one kills just about as fast as the other and are equally effective. I couldn't give up my muzzleloaders or my longbows....an' 'speshily I ain't given up my Sharps!!

Vic

 

[tg]

I would have to disagree with the nothing knocks down any thing idea, a shot through the shoulders with a very heavy ball or bullet can drop a deer or Elk in its tracks or knock it down though it may get back up, where as a smaller projectile may be fatal but not do enough skeletal or muscular damage to cause the animal to go down at the time of impact....this is just from observations from hunting with a variety of gun sizes, and often when hunting dangerous game the term stopping power or kockdown power when choosing a weaspon/load is
is used for good reason.

 

I would have to disagree with the nothing knocks down any thing idea,

I don't mean to split hairs here, but no projectile from a hand held firearm has enough gee-whiz to pysically knock anything down. Now a cannon ball will have enough mass to knock an animal or person down, but the usual calibers encountered in defensive or hunting situation will not have the mass or frontal area to literally knock a large animal (person) over. It's simple Newtonian physics.
Place a bullet though the shoulders of a deer and it will FALL down due to the support structure being wreaked.
In fact I taught my men to shoot ( in certain situations) for the pelvis/hip area. A shot there from a reasonable caliber will break those large bones and the bad guy absolutley will fall down real fast. Then the fight can be stopped in many different ways. I won't go into details about this here as it's the wrong forum for that and I can still be sued. :curse:
Yes hydrostatic shock is a factor, but that kind of shock will not stop a charging beast ( 4 or 2 legged) if the shot does not go into the right place.
Shot placement is EVERYTHING, be it an arrow, roundball, or bullet.
Please feel free to disagree. Controversy is healthy. ::

 

I too would have to disagree that hand held firearms are incapable of knocking anything down. Twice I have "knocked down" whitetails with a 480 gr. NEI cast bullet over 80 grs. of GOEX Ctg. from my 45-90 and once with my 40-70 SS with a 410 gr. Lyman cast bullet over 62 grs. of the same powder. One of them was facing me and both I and my wife observed the deer actually lifted off it's front feet and rolled over almost completely backwards. The deer actually landed on it's back. Penetration was complete from brisket thru ham and no bone structure was struck. No one was any more surprised than I. I never had it happen with any of my muzzleloaders but I KNOW my Sharps rifles will do it. The 45-90 has done the same with hogs....

Vic

 

[Stumpkiller]

Muscle spasm. I've shot squirrels with a .177 pellet that did double summersaults and fell dead - the pellet sure didn't do that with energy alone. Either the animal is startled and jumps (I have seen deer do standing "hops" that went 8 ft up and 20 ft long from a motionless start), or it is an involuntary blast to the muscles from a zinger to the brain/spine. Stop the nervous system and they collapse in a pile like their bones went to jelly - that's not "nock-down" that's "fall -down". I've made seven second kills on deer that showed no sign at all that the bullet had struck them through both lungs and broke a rib on either side. Ain't no knock-down there.

Only in Hollywood does a bullet or shot blast lift anything off it's feet.

Now, I've seen some incredable reactions to 110 hollowpoints from a .270 WIN hitting a woodchuck when started off at about 3,300 fps. That's explosive energy, not the drilling path of a round lead ball.

 

[musketman]

I hit a groundhog in the head with a .58 caliber 505 grain minie-ball at 35 yards once, he did a back flip right out of his hole...

It literately knocked him for a loop...

 

[tg]

To a limited degree I see where you are comming from, however If a man is hit with a solid metal jacket .23 cal going 4000fps through the heart he will die and likely move some (possibly not staight down) if a man is hit at the same distance with both barels of a 12 gauge double gun with buckshot he will also go down but likely be moved back as well without the aid of spasms...I do agree with the hollywood stuff being mostly BS

 

[Stumpkiller]

There was a semi-famous video of a news reporter demonstrating the bulletproof vests as issued to his local sheriff's department for the nightly news. He stood, talking into the mic, as his assistant obligingly shot him with a .357 MAG. from about 6 feet away. It did not penetrate the vest, it did not knock him down. he did, in a few seconds, sit flat on his butt in a plop. It did break several of his ribs and cause him to shreik, scream, cry and eventually curse a blue streak. He (and the vest he was wearing) absorbed 100% of the energy - as the vest held the bullet. This is why they must put stupid warning labels on everything.

A 1/32 lb projectile hitting a 180 lb man just doesn't push hard enough to knock you over. Ft Lbs of energy dissipate in fractions of a second on a surface area less than half a square inch and inertia is forever. People are naturally wobbly because we're bipedial. Shoot someone crawling on all fours and they just slump (or so I'm told).

A friend of mine had some metallic silhouettes cut and he had to keep returining to the shop to get the bases cut narrower and narrower. They would "KLANG" and twist, but not fall down. He ended up needing to make a seperate base for them to stand on because the metal pads of the 'feet' were too narrow for them to stay up in even slightly uneven ground. And this was with a .308 WIN rifle bullet boinging off them.

 

[tg]

I suspect balence and center of gravity may factor in whether a projectile causes any side ways movement of the thing being hit, you can knock down an off balance man with a poke of the pinky....and I have yet to see a deer fall towards me when shot with a heavy bullet.( I have shot many up close at night with a .444 Marlin, most fell away and down) I guess the spasms are pretty direction sensitive...I think it is fair to say the force of a large projectile can have some pushing effect, but each situation must be weighed on its own merit.