Jack V wrote:A small animal like a rabbit will just get blown apart by even a 223 using fast expanding bullets at close range . It don't take much to penetrate a rabbit but it is technically possible for a high velocity small calibre weakly constructed projectile to blow up on the outside of a rabbit but the shock would still kill it anyway .
As the game gets larger it can survive the initial shock and just suffer a surface or shallow wound.
Terminal ballistics is a huge subject and very complicated when you start considering all the myriad of different bullet styles , weights , calibres , potential velocities and potential targets in the mix .
You know I would love to actually see a picture of an animal has suffered only a surface wound from a high velocity cartridge, we did it with a heap of old work boots filled with silicone(err, there were a few tubes go missing in an unexplained way from the workshop store once) and all we had at the end was a heap of old silicone filled workboots with holes through them.
I know it is not conclusive but the high velocity stuff seems to drill right through at close range, at 100 it was far more damaging but they still went through. The varmint grenades were a different story but that was all. At 200 with the .243 with the plastic tips it was impressive but the steel jacked .308 still drilled a hole.
I wonder if some of these exploded rabbit heads are because the projectile actually disintergrated or was it the shock of the projectile going through and perhaps bone fragments that did the damage. I know with a head shot rabbit and a .22 it is often the brain trying to get out that does the damage not the pill fragmenting.
More work needs to be done I reckon.