Terminal
Performance in Muzzleloading
Prior to writing this
article, I received a note from Martin Fackler, M.D., after I had
inquired about an easy source for the bulk of Dr. Fackler's research.
Dr. Fackler mentioned that of his over 250 articles in print concerning
wound ballistics, most were published in medical journals, and were
not available under one cover, or even "readily available"
at all to the public. However, Dr. Fackler did mention that that
he is working on a book that would contain the entire text of his
most pertinent papers included as an appendix-but completion of
this work was probably a year or more away. As far as I'm concerned,
it just can't be made available too soon. Dr. Fackler's work is
without peer, his credentials are impeccable, and his scientific
approach to wounding both startling, and startlingly good. Dr. Fackler's
article, Firearms in America: The Facts. of Monday, Dec.
25, 2000 is a must read for every firearms owner; a "muster
read" for all Americans.
A paper from the U.S.
Department of Justice of July 14, 1989 written by Special Agent
Urey W. Patrick, Firearms Training Unit, FBI ACADEMY, Quantico,
Virginia, entitled Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness made
no headlines in the muzzleloading community, but perhaps it should
have. The conclusions expressed in this US Government Document should
startle more than a few-and evoke a rethinking of what our perceptions
of muzzleloading hunting and harvesting are. In part, after citing
sources and the requisite due diligence, the conclusions in part
read:
"The will to survive and to fight despite
horrific damage to the body is commonplace on the battlefield, and
on the street. Barring a hit to the brain, the only way to force
incapacitation is to cause sufficient blood loss that the subject
can no longer function, and that takes time. Even if the heart is
instantly destroyed, there is sufficient oxygen in the brain to
support full and complete voluntary action for 10-15 seconds.
Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound.
The much discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable
and "knock down" power is a myth. The critical element
is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing
organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding.
Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words
of two of the participants in the 1987 Wound Ballistics Workshop,
"too little penetration will get you killed." Given desirable
and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness
is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size
of hole made by the bullet. Any bullet which will not penetrate
through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable.
Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger
bullet."
It is the human animal being referred to, not larger heavier game
animals, of course. The observations made are particularly relevant
because the discussion is inclusive of inline muzzleloading caliber
projectiles, and their performance at common muzzleloading terminal
velocities. Strike velocities exceeding 2000 fps from shoulder-fired
weapons are not the center of this treatise. Ad-copy and owner's
manuals have long reinforced that kinetic energy values are of paramount
importance in selecting a load for game. Reading empirical evidence
that kinetic energy alone is a very poor indicator of wounding should
prove troubling to many. The brags of "knock-down" have
been dispelled; it is a matter of physics that a bullets impact
cannot knock down an animal any more than it knocks down the shooter.
As cited in the article, the impact of a bullet strike is comparative
to being it by a baseball.
Consider the often lauded "dropped in his tracks." It
sounds impressive, but does not tell us anything about wounding
ballistics. We have been taught to think that "down is dead,"
when down means only down. We think cute buzzwords like "dead
right there" are meaningful, when they are absolutely not particularly
meaningful or predictable. We place great value on our own experiences,
yet our experiences (or wishful recollections of them) are
statistically meaningless. We have been taught to worship at the
altar of velocity, and think that shooting into newspapers or clay
is directly comparable to living tissue with circulation and a rib
cage. We are only fooling ourselves, and we have had a lot of help
from ad copy and anecdotal evidence to support our self-deception.
"Energy transfer" has been parroted and regurgitated as
something of value, and some still believe that a bullet that stays
inside an animal is more effective than one that exits. It has been
disproved beyond doubt. Living tissue is underestimated, and misunderstood.
All animals and all wounds are unique unto themselves, and no bullet
wound on game can be identical to the one prior, or the next one.
Dog and spear can harvest boar, yet where is our fabulous energy
transfer that has been so loudly touted. Arrows can, and have cleanly
harvested game-but how much energy IS there to transfer in the first
place? We have long heard, and likely have given credence to the
"800 fpe to ethically harvest game." Yet, that random
number can be achieved with a 25 grain bullet at 4000 fps, or with
a 350 grain bullet at 1100 fps. Obviously, there is a difference
in what tissue destruction can be obtained, and the size and type
of heavy bone that can be obliterated as well with such divergently
weighted projectiles. That effectively dismisses the 800 fpe figure,
alone, as the only meaningful value.
It is important for me to mention that forensic laboratory tests
that have clinically disproven the conventional acceptance (and
reliability) of "kinetic energy," "knockdown,"
frangible bullets, worship of velocity, and exposed the relative
unimportance of temporary cavity are not my revelations at all.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to Martin L. Fackler, M.D., and his
colleagues, for their work in defining what is really important
in wounding, and also what is actually a collection of urban legends
and myths. If this article sounds like a bit of a downer so far,
it really shouldn't-- muzzleloading projectiles can be on splendidly
solid ground; and often are.
The quickest way to harvest a deer or other game animal is a bullet
through the brain. That is unlikely to become an increasingly common
practice, as the small kill zone does not give much margin for error
in the hunting fields, and we all want pretty trophies. Posing with
a deer with half of a skull or a blown off rack is something few
of us seek, yet that is the fastest way to kill a deer however distasteful
one may view this.
Animals of course move, feed, and change direction when don't want
them to. The wind blows our relatively poor ballistic coefficient
bullets around as range increases, and the likelihood of precise
shot placement diminishes with increasing time of flight of our
hunting bullets. Fortunately, a deer offers a very generous vital
zone, as shown in Ian McMurchy's picture:
The goal is to destroy as much vital tissue as possible, and cutting,
crushing, stretching are the ways in which we do it. Cutting, as
demonstrated by knife, spear, and arrow is the most efficient way
to destroy tissue. Cutting and crushing is what muzzleloader projectiles
can do, with stretching (temporary cavity) of relatively
little value due to the elastomeric properties of living animal
tissue.
Large caliber bullets automatically crush a lot of tissue compared
to their small bore counterparts. Whether a .25 caliber bullet expands
to .45 caliber when it breaches the animal's hide, or we are using
a .45 caliber bullet makes no great difference to the permanent
wound cavity assuming the same penetration-a big permanent hole
is just that, regardless of how it is formed. As cited above, penetration
is the first consideration in muzzleloading bullet selection. A
lumbering pure lead sphere that forms itself into a hockey puck
on impact does us little good if penetration is inadequate to destroy
vital tissue. I've seen enough "pre-shot" animals to believe
this beyond doubt.
We ask a lot of our bullets, and we expect them to perform at unique
ranges, on unique animals, and with unique wound paths. A raking
or quartering away shot requires more penetration than a broadside
shot, and we need a far tougher bullet to penetrate if we are breaking
large bones rather than slipping a bullet through ribs, or just
nicking the sides of them. It just makes good sense to prepare for
the most demanding of scenarios we can fathom when harvesting our
game. We are fortunate in that we are starting with .45 to .50 caliber
missiles to start with. A one inch hole through our animals' vitals
is preferable to a .45 caliber hole, so a bullet that expands is
preferable to one that does not. We cannot tolerate expansion at
the loss of adequate penetration. If a bullet fragments, its wounding
capability is severely diminished as is its ability to penetrate.
Consider that IF we can recover a bullet that does not directly
hit bone on a broadside shot on an animal, that bullet is likely
marginal at best when we do have to hit bone, or if a quartering
away shot that requires more terminal penetration is taken. Recovering
bullets from animals is not a good thing at all-a bullet that reliably
exits the animal, aside from the resultant blood trail, is the better
penetrating bullet.
Thin skin is very rubbery, and energy absorbing. It has been shown
to be roughly equivalent to four inches of muscle tissue. If the
skin on the far side can stop our bullet from a broadside shot,
we may have a problem with angling shots. It takes very little effort
to find an angle of bullet entry that requires four more inches
of tissue to be destroyed from the picture perfect broadside shot--
that just isn't much. Far from the misguided theory that a bullet
that remains inside the body cavity of an animal is the better bullet,
the large diameter bullet that always blows right through the animal
is clearly the more terminally generous bullet-- and the more reliable
bullet for varied conditions and animals. If the bullet stays inside
the animal on a broadside shot, then it is clear that we can do
far better. Bullet recovery is generally a bad thing, not a goal
at all that we need or should seek. Dr. Facker's research makes
this clear.
Finite percentage of expansion is not a sure thing at all. Indeed,
FBI results show that only 60 - 70% of handgun bullets, at close
range and at similar velocities to the terminal velocities of many
muzzleloading hunting harvests, expand at all. In the case of a
spitzer nosed non-expanding projectile, the bullet invariably yaws
180 degrees inside tissue, exiting base forward from the body cavity.
Rather than name specific bullet types or brands, which I believe
most readers of this article are well aware of, a few generalizations
can be made for our muzzleloading hunting bullets. A bullet that
retains a large portion of its weight is far more preferable to
one with poor weight retention due to its necessarily restricted
penetration. The 300 grain class of bullets is generally better
than the 200 - 250 grain class of bullets, again for the reason
of better penetration with or without expansion.
Expansion is preferable to a bullet that does not consistently do
so, so long as that expansion does not result in inadequate penetration.
A bullet that exits the animal is preferable to a bullet that often
does not. Sharp-edged bullets that cut tissue are more efficient
at destroying tissue than those that can only crush tissue like
a ball-peen hammer. A bullet that completely exits more often than
not is more desirable than one that does not. Heavier bullets with
restricted (or controlled) expansion coupled with absolutely
generous penetration are the best choice for today's muzzleloading
hunter under the widest variety of circumstances.
For further documentation and forensic studies, see WHAT'S WRONG
WITH THE WOUND BALLISTICS LITERATURE, AND WHY by M.L. Fackler,
M.D., as published by the Letterman Army Institute of Research,
Division of Military Trauma Research, Institute Report Number 239,
dated July of 1987, and let's hope that Dr. Fackler's forthcoming
tome is made available to today's thinking muzzleloader.
Comment from Dr. Fackler, 8/06/2005:
I liked your
article: it makes many good points. The KE fallacy is so pervasive
that it needs to be corrected as often as possible. The arrow is
a good example: I think it helps to drive the point home if you
mention how much KE a hunting arrow has (a 500 grain arrow traveling
at 200 ft/sec has a KE of 44 ft lb). Thus the largest game in the
world (including elephant) is hunted and killed with a projectile
having only about 2/3 the KE of a 22 Short bullet. That should give
pause to even the most ardent KE advocates.
M. Fackler
©
July, 2005 by Randy Wakeman
