Thread: Impact joules and ethics

At the risk of opening a can of worms, I'm wondering about ethical shots at range.

My situation is that I'm slowly getting more and more confident at taking longer shots in the field. I work on three quarters of whatever I can consistently hit first shot on the range being my actual real world ability.

This means that 3-400m shots are on the table now, and that means I feel I have to worry about the round actually hitting with enough oomph to do its job. I figure joules are a relatively good way to measure that, as that gives a good indication of if the round will expand properly, and helps sidestep the issue of ballistics between cartridges. I've seen the figure of around 2000 joules for red deer thrown around but I don't know where that figure comes from.

When shot placement isn't the main concern how do you folks judge an ethical shot based on distance? Am I overthinking things?

Also please don't turn this into a pissing contest about caliber.

What calibre and projectile are you using? A projectile like a Hornady eld-m will open at lower velocity than a similar Barnes ttsx.

Usually 6.5crd.

If I'm bush bashing then the 129grain hornady American whitetail, if I'm up top eldx.

My 10c and rule of thumb is that 1000 foot pound of energy is where the optimal projectile opening kinda sits/finishes...yes you can do it with less but you face pass through etc....if you are running a drop chart app it will calculate that for you...at your 3 to 400m depending on barrel length you should be all good...... remember range shooting is different to animal shooting....bunch of extra factors.

Best of luck

Hamish

I'm shooting a 223AI with an 88gr ELD-M. It drops below 1000ft/lbs at ~200m. But the bullet on paper should still expand and produce adequate wounding to kill an animal cleanly out to ~600m...

1000ft/lb is a nice round number but fairly arbitrary. What's more important is a) having sufficient impact velocity for your particular bullet so that it does some work when it hits and b) confidently being able to stick it in the right place.

Yes I do agree that velocity has an important role to play when making a comparison. weight alone won't cut it, and any measure of joules needs to be contextualised by velocity and weight.

Hornady recommend 1600 fps as the minimum for eld-x projectiles to reliably expand.

Originally Posted by Pommy

I'm shooting a 223AI with an 88gr ELD-M. It drops below 1000ft/lbs at ~200m. But the bullet on paper should still expand and produce adequate wounding to kill an animal cleanly out to ~600m...

1000ft/lb is a nice round number but fairly arbitrary. What's more important is a) having sufficient impact velocity for your particular bullet so that it does some work when it hits and b) confidently being able to stick it in the right place.

Just a couple of follow up questions in regards to the first part of your post.

1. What distance have you killed a game animal at with the 223AI
2. What was the animal
3. Where was the shot placement
4. Was it a kill shot or was it an "adequate wounding to kill" shot

Hamish

I work in speed rather than energy, speed dictates how the bullet works or does not work, in conjunction with projectile specifics. In others words, a harder bullet needs alot more speed than a softer bullet to expand

Originally Posted by HNTMAD

Just a couple of follow up questions in regards to the first part of your post.

1. What distance have you killed a game animal at with the 223AI
2. What was the animal
3. Where was the shot placement
4. Was it a kill shot or was it an "adequate wounding to kill" shot

Hamish

1. 580m.
2. Wallaby.
3. Upper chest.
4. I said "adequate wounding to kill an animal cleanly". Which it did.

Also multiple deer and pigs at between 250m and 500m with that and other 22 cals. All in my freezer.

The correct bullet in its impact window to work its best is the most important bit.
the lower impact speeds the softer the bullet needs to be to perform.
eldm is basically the easy answer

I rely on speed. Bullet manufacturers don’t tell what ft/lbs a bullet opens at to cause wounding. Bullet expansion and fragmentation causes the wounding.

The yanks reckon 1000ft lbs. But that's white tail I think.

1000 Foot Pound = 1355.8179 Joule

But I think for big stuff like sambar I reckon add 50%

Bullet energy is a reflection of the hydraulic effects of the wound - and I feel a hangover from the days of cast lead solids. Impact energy transfer is a better indicator of bullet performance - and this is usually a reflection of bullet expansion and the increase of frontal area after expansion which is the result of bullet design. That same bullet design works on the impact velocity between a certain range and to a lesser extent what the bullet strikes on the way through, which causes the expansion.

Drive the bullet too fast and hit solid stuff, and the jacket is likely to peel back off and lead to explosive expansion. This might be OK results wise, or you might get some animals that you don't anchor depending on what the small fragments do. These days, there is also more concern with lead contaminating the game. The other side is too slow, and the jacket doesn't open resulting in a thin pencil hole stuck right through. Not as effective...

This is why manufacturer's usually quote a velocity range for their projectiles along with the energy - both probably need to be used together to get the 'proper' answer to this question.

Thanks folks. A quick check of my ballistics I've measured gives me about 300m for the whitetail and well past 500m on the eldx before the velocity gets iffy.