Warrigul wrote: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.
Exactly , the varmint grenades are the weakly constructed bullet we are talking about . A boot full of silicone is not exactly a hard target either .
What you are doing is trying to apply what is an extreme case to the average bullet and that will not work. It is even possible for a bullet to blow up in mid air without striking anything I have seen some Bergers do it . It can be traced back to jacket failure due to popped or cracked jackets and or barrel conditions and excessive velocity for the condition . There is about a dozen variables in this issue that can all affect terminal ballistics in some way .
As I said before the bullet companies take into account most of these potential variables so their bullet is suitable for a certain job .
One example is Berger has redesigned some of it's jackets to a thicker stronger jacket to resist blow up from cut rifled barrels .
The trick is we have to buy the right bullet for the job . Not always easy I know.