Mike in FL
50 Cal.
Hawken, not Hawkin.
Powder load for whitetail deer
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A clean kill is a ball in the right place. There isn’t enough power in more powder to effect anything but trajectory.
The ball pushing through the animal in the right place does the job. Let out warm blood, let in cold air.
Trev
36 Cl.
Per TC load recommendations, for my Hawken, with .530 round ball the difference from 60gn to 100gn is more than double the muzzle energy, from 815 ft lbs to 1758 ft lbs. I don't know much about these things but surely 943 ft lbs difference at the the muzzle must have more penetration at 100yds? Must do something more than just flatten the trajectory?
How many deer have you killed?
A hole punched through is a hole punched through. That energy exits with the ball out the other side…
A bigger hole is better. Terminal effect is not as much about energy as the action of the projectile. Round balls flatten, then they drive through. They don’t fragment or rapidly expand like modern bullets. That’s one of the reason there are modern bullets…and lead has its spot on the periodic table for a reason.
Trev
36 Cl.
So in ft lbs how little energy does it take to punch a hole through at 100 yards?
it is all about location, location, location, not much else. to hear people say different shows how much experience killing critters they really have,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Mike in FL
50 Cal.
I feel certain 60 grains under a 54 prb will go all the way thru a deer at whatever distance he can hit it. People place too emphasis on what will kill a deer.
steve bliss
32 Cal
You're right. I'm working on a good load for 100 yards.
justinoldguy
32 Cal
T/C's published ballistics is, errrrrr, very optimistic. So optimistic, that it borders on the incredulous. I have a T/C Hawken in .54. and I have never gotten anything close to the 1900 fps that would be required to obtain that kind of muzzle energy. I suppose it's possible, as I am old enough to never speak in absolutes. However, in over 40 years of shooting over chrono, I have never seen a reasonable load in my 28" barrel .54 that approaches that number. It can be done in longer barrels, including my Pedersoli RMH and Frontier Rifles. Nevertheless, as I stated in a previous post on this same thread, 60 grains of Swiss 3f is my "GoTo" load. That load will smite the largest buck that ever walked the earth with plenty of authority. Ballistic tables don't kill critters, but large hunks of lead tearing thru vital organs sure does. Just for reference, I have killed 9 bucks with 9 shots from a .50 cal CVA Deerhunter. That .490 ball is going maybe 1400 fps, for about 750 ft./lbs of energy at the muzzle. My longest kill with that rifle was at 125 yards. I let kids use it during Youth Deer Season, and a ball thru the ribcage kills deer like double-forked lightning.
Ah yes, you'd think that and so would I, until I found out a few facts about the round ball, which makes it very different than a pointed projectile.
The Ballistic Coefficient of the round ball, to not be too technical, sucks. The round sphere encounters a great deal of air friction. So with the ballistic information provided by TC, what TC doesn't tell you is that 100 grain load moving at 1855 fps and carrying 1712 ft.lbs. of energy at the muzzle is moving at 1113 fps at 100 yards carrying 616 ft.lbs. That's a reduction of muzzle vel of 742 fps BUT the bullet has shed 1096 ft.lbs. of carried energy.
Meanwhile, that 60 grain charge starts out at 1263 fps carrying 794 ft.lbs. of energy..., and at 100 yards that ball is going 909 fps carrying 411 ft.lbs. of energy. The 60 grain load only shed 383 ft. lbs. of carried energy.
WAIT the slower projectile lost less velocity and shed less ft. lbs. ? YES because it's going slower, it's also not creating the same amount of friction against the air. WEIRD RIGHT?
THEN upon impact the more velocity and "energy" the ball has the more it deforms. It increases friction as it flattens, so the faster it's going the faster the friction builds due to deformation and the faster it slows down while passing through the body of the animal.
Well that's very tough to say. How wide is your deer in your question? I've always chunked a .530 ball through the deer when I've shot a deer broadside, using 70 grains of 3Fg, and farthest shot was 110 yards. IF my deer are 24" wide, but not very robust because they are normally does and don't go much over 100 pounds, that's a bit different from your Midwest Kansas or Missouri deer, which my be 50% larger in bone and muscle if a doe, and even larger when a buck.
Popping both lungs and also having an exit hole works pretty well on doe, but is less effective than a shoulder hit on a buck that's quartered toward you. Either shot works but the shoulder hit seems to give faster results on all deer IF the deer presents you that shot.
That's why the folks here will tell you it's more about having a very accurate load, that allows you to actually choose the spot on the deer that you want to hit, rather than getting too involved in energy and muzzle velocity. The round ball is quite different than a modern projectile.
LD
Trev
36 Cl.
Thanks for that reply, @Loyalist Dave, my interest in ballistics is very new and I've not found any info on what happens downrange with round balls. Obviously some loss of speed and resultant loss of energy, but how much? I ordered a "Lyman Black powder Handbook" hoping that it will answer some of my questions. In the past, with modern (1930s) guns, I just shot my guns with the belief that the deer would fall down and they did. Reading recently about "humane" kills and the need for 1000ft lbs etc. has made me curious.
I know very little about ballistics, but I know that I can do more damage using a hammer with a harder blow than with a softer blow.
I guess that all you guys using "XX grains of 3F" are using volume measures sized to 2F? so effectively about 10% greater charge? or does everyone actually mean that they weigh the powder when they say that?
Are the volume measures sized to 2F as i have always thought or are some sized to 3F?
Not at all weird. But the fact is the ball that shed more energy still maintains more energy, using your numbers not quite twice as much but close, now I don't know if that makes any difference in number of bones broken or not, but it seems that it could. Doesn't the greater deformity and faster slowdown upon impact mean more of the energy potential is applied to the target rather passing through and being absorbed by the backstop?
I know very little about ballistics, but I know that I can do more damage using a hammer with a harder blow than with a softer blow.
I guess that all you guys using "XX grains of 3F" are using volume measures sized to 2F? so effectively about 10% greater charge? or does everyone actually mean that they weigh the powder when they say that?
Are the volume measures sized to 2F as i have always thought or are some sized to 3F?
The hammer analogy breaks down when you realize that excess energy exits the opposite side of the target.
I had a custom Mississippi Rifle built with a Benton sight as a clone of the early Confederate sniper rifles. Sold it here, still miss it. But, for deer hunting it shot to the sights with a .58 patched round ball with 40 grains of 3F. Killed many deer with that gun/load from 60-90 yards. Recovered one ball once from a big buck…the rest may still be flying for all I know.
Lead balls kill very well, and the results are not the result of energy calculations.
My .62 rifled guns all shoot well at 70 to 85 grains of 3F. 75 for my .54’s mostly, 60 for my .50’s and also 60 for my .40’s…but that’s more about flat than power.
I had a custom Mississippi Rifle built with a Benton sight as a clone of the early Confederate sniper rifles. Sold it here, still miss it. But, for deer hunting it shot to the sights with a .58 patched round ball with 40 grains of 3F. Killed many deer with that gun/load from 60-90 yards. Recovered one ball once from a big buck…the rest may still be flying for all I know.
Lead balls kill very well, and the results are not the result of energy calculations.
My .62 rifled guns all shoot well at 70 to 85 grains of 3F. 75 for my .54’s mostly, 60 for my .50’s and also 60 for my .40’s…but that’s more about flat than power.
Trev
36 Cl.
Does not flat also aid in accuracy?
The other way around. If accuracy is not compromised by going faster then it’s a good thing. The two don’t often go hand-in-hand.
You hate your shoulder way?
"Energy" doesn't "transfer" to the animal causing the kill. It's spent on overcoming friction, and the direct contact with the projectile is what causes damage to tissue killing the animal. There's this trend in modern ammo to sell cartridges based on "energy", and it's a factor for the modern bullet designers to get their projectile to expand to cause more actual damage, while at the same time to maintain a solid mass rather than break up, again to increase the resulting damage.
They try to get the modern stuff to expand to sizes which are already present in the round ball, or the round ball is only slightly smaller and so needs little expansion or deformation to reach the same size.
SO, IF you had identical deer, hit in identically the same spots, and one of the bullets went through the deer and stopped just inside the skin on the opposite side, and the other bullet in the second identical deer penetrated through the skin on the other side, you hear or read guys say "the first bullet dumped all of it's energy in the animal, while the other bullet did not". The idea being the second bullet somehow didn't work as well, when in fact BOTH bullets shed exactly the same amount of energy until they reached the skin on the opposing side. THEN one had a bit more residual momentum and broke through the skin.
LD
longcruise
70 Cal.
This seems to boil down to the typical minimum ft. Lbs. Of energy argument that is etched in stone in the suppository hunting corps. It makes for lively conversation and is simple to understand therefore it's a common currency of understanding and is widely accepted. So widely accepted that minimum energy requirements are set by the law in many states.
But these terminal ballistic ignore that fundamentally a deer or elk or moose, etc., is killed by the sudden loss of blood pressure that starves the brain into a coma and quickly thereafter death. I'm discounting hydrostatic shock because in the vast majority of cases an ml rifle is incapable of producing it. So what remains is a wound channel that will disrupt blood pressure. A RB creates a good wound channel at both ends of it's velocity spectrum regardless of it's velocity.
The only real world examples I can relate are on mule deer. The first was a 50 caliber rifle with a 24" barrel shooting 60 grains of 3f schuetzen. I don't know the exact velocity of that load but it did chronograph an average of 1425 fps with 80 grains of the same powder. Velocity was probably in the neighborhood of 1250 fps. At 80 yards it completely penetrated a mature doe without an exit. The deer ran about 35 yards and dropped. It was a double lung shot.
Second is a a comparison of two shots that I personally observed on consecutive days made by two different hunters. Both shooting 54 cal balls over 80 grains of goex 2f. They were near identical hits broadside and high lungs on mature mule deer does. One was approximately 20 yards and the other a lazered 180 yards both fell within 20 feet of where they stood. Both balls stopped under the skin on the far side.
All three of these deer were killed by wound channels through the lungs. Two of them at easily predictable low velocity.
A sharp broadhead does the same thing by producing a wound channel through vital organs at anywhere from 130 to 200 fps.
But these terminal ballistic ignore that fundamentally a deer or elk or moose, etc., is killed by the sudden loss of blood pressure that starves the brain into a coma and quickly thereafter death. I'm discounting hydrostatic shock because in the vast majority of cases an ml rifle is incapable of producing it. So what remains is a wound channel that will disrupt blood pressure. A RB creates a good wound channel at both ends of it's velocity spectrum regardless of it's velocity.
The only real world examples I can relate are on mule deer. The first was a 50 caliber rifle with a 24" barrel shooting 60 grains of 3f schuetzen. I don't know the exact velocity of that load but it did chronograph an average of 1425 fps with 80 grains of the same powder. Velocity was probably in the neighborhood of 1250 fps. At 80 yards it completely penetrated a mature doe without an exit. The deer ran about 35 yards and dropped. It was a double lung shot.
Second is a a comparison of two shots that I personally observed on consecutive days made by two different hunters. Both shooting 54 cal balls over 80 grains of goex 2f. They were near identical hits broadside and high lungs on mature mule deer does. One was approximately 20 yards and the other a lazered 180 yards both fell within 20 feet of where they stood. Both balls stopped under the skin on the far side.
All three of these deer were killed by wound channels through the lungs. Two of them at easily predictable low velocity.
A sharp broadhead does the same thing by producing a wound channel through vital organs at anywhere from 130 to 200 fps.
longcruise
70 Cal.
LD covered it nicely while I was typing. Had I known I would have saved myself the effort. 
