Thread: A question for the doubters

Thinking about "when is a larger wound required?"

A "larger calibre" (or "more grunt" or whatever) is generally assumed to be a sensible proxy for a larger wound. that isn't necessarily the case; as it is primarily bullet construction and fragmentation specific.

Within ranges where the bullet impacts in a functional velocity window:

Firstly - one ideal shot placement is 'instant death' or 'instant incapacitation' CNS wounds - head, neck, or high shoulder shots.

It is difficult to imagine a situation where a heavy-for-calibre .223 bullet doesn't produce instant death/incapacitation with a properly placed head or neck shot. A larger wound may be required in the case where the bullet lacks sufficient penetration to reach the spine through the high shoulder a significant percentage of the time. Evidence shows that this is not a problem for these bullets in large red stags. I have placed several high shoulder shots with the "bucket of water" incapacitation effect on red stags with the 80gr ELDM at ranges from 0 to 380m. If others have had failures with this, please provide the evidence and we can update our beliefs. I would expect this to happen with some frequency with lighter .223 bullets.

The other ideal placement is heart/lungs.

Heart shots - A larger wound would be required if the bullet failed to penetrate or create a sufficiently large permanent cavity to damage the heart. Evidence shows this is not a problem from any realistic shot angle through the shoulder or ribs. A heart shot animal will run about the same distance no matter what size of wound through the heart. It's fucked either way, but it will run.

Lung shots - Holding bleeding tissue volume (the size of the permanent wound cavity) constant, the time to death from exsanguination for animals shot through the lungs has a linear increase correlating to bodyweight. There's a paper demonstrating this (Stokke et al 2018). Animals weighing 600kg shot through the lungs take longer to die than animals weighing 100kg, if the BTV is the same.

The bleeding tissue volume created by a good 224 bullet impacting at a speed that creates fragmentation appears to be sufficient that death from exsanguination is very quick, and indistinguishable from larger cartridges, in animals of the bodyweights available in New Zealand based on the evidence we have. This has not been demonstrated in wild cattle, wapiti (although it has in the US with satisfactory results) or sambar. It is possible that you may shoot one of these in the lungs and find that the bleeding tissue volume is insufficient for the animal to die as quickly as you would like. In that case you may decide you would like a larger wound, and you would need to select a cartridge and bullet combination that creates such a wound.

In this case there is no clear hard line where "a bigger wound is needed", as it will to some degree depend on personal preference on how long you are happy for an animal to take to die or how far you're happy for it to run. It may be less clear cut than expected to achieve a different result by increasing cartridge and bullet size.


The other reasons for selecting a larger cartridge may be that you need to shoot things further away, and therefore require a longer range with sufficient retained velocity for bullet performance. Or you may wish to increase hit probability. It does drop off past 400m with the .223 even with the higher BC bullets. A 6.5PRC has about 10% better hit probability, all else being equal, to a .223 with 80s at 400m. It's more like 20% better at 500m. Although not all else is equal - not many people shoot a 6.5PRC as much as they do a .223, to build proficiency. Better to shoot a "worse", cheaper cartridge more and read the wind effectively than try ignore the wind and out perform it. Better to have an average cartridge and well practised, good fundamental shooting skills than a grunty cartridge and poor skills.

edit: you can be like me and shoot an average cartridge with poor skills!