Round Ball Energy Ft. Lbs. for Hunting

[Stumpkiller]

Round ball kill because they expand quickly on impact, the ball does not tear, or split, but rather oozes out of shape, staying together as it travels through the vital organs.

I don't have a wealth of empherical evidence, but the one round ball I recovered from a deer shows almost no deformation. It is a 0.490" cast that expanded to 0.520" and penetrated from the frontal chest to being lodged in the skin on the rear of the offside hind leg (tunneled around the femur). Deer dropped without taking a step. I don't normally like frontal shots, but when a six point stops in front of your stump at 15 yards . . .

Every broadside in the lungs blows right through IMHE.

 

[Headhunter]

I was out squirrel hunting one day when a doe slipped by. I had the tag so I drew a bead on her at 65 yards. At the shot she ran 20 yards and piled up.

Load Used.

.490, Ticking, 50 Grains of FFFG Goex.

A clean pass thru Right behind the shoulder.

Headhunter

 

[Tim Clark]

Long before I knew any better or had read any books about why I couldn't do what I was doing, I practiced at long ranges and hunted at slightly shorter ranges than I shot for practice. I won't post those distances here as a matter of ethics. However, the one young spike in the last legal light of the last day of the late muzzleloading season way back then that never took another step or even heard the shot that killed him was testimony that 90 gr of ffg behind a .490 pure lead patched round ball is lethal even when those charts say that said the ball shouldn't have had enough "killing power" to knock a feather off a titmouse's butt. All those summertime practice sessions told me that if the ball was sufficiently powerful to blow through the unrotted stump that I held my targets, they'd do the job on deer. Or bear. Or mutant walking killer stumps. Anyways, that buck fell where it stood.

Last year (actually '05 hunting season) opening day of the early muzzleloading season, I shot another at almost the same range, with identical results -- not another step, not even a jump, just slumped in place like a puppet on a string that's just been cut. My brother was a bit p-o'd that I took a shot at that distance, but changed his tune when he saw that the shot was a pass-thru dead-on in the vitals. And the deer here are big-bodied critters.

I am not advocating that you or anyone else do the same. I'm just saying that I knew my honest limits, kept my shots under those limits, and no chart or any other person can determine those limits. Just real life, real practice. The man with the experience is never at the mercy of the man with a theory.

By the way, it's a good thing that bumblebees don't know that science has proven that bumblebees can't fly. "Aerodynamically impossible." ...right...

 

[PreglerD]

I agree totally with you. Here in GE ML-hunting is not very common. The hunting law rules minimum energies for special kinds of game. So for the very common roe deer the bullet have to bring a 100 meter energy of 1000 J or 734 flps.No PRB will manage that because of the very bad aerodynamics at longer distance. But the real life and the guys here show how it really is. The PRB is very able to be used as an effect hunting bullet, even when it is not such a kind of new constructed bullet. It is only a loaf of lead.But a very effective loaf. The only point which has to be looked after is that the hunter knows the effective range and where the deer has to be hit.

Greetings from GE