Thread: A question for the doubters

Originally Posted by Mararoa

Just had a brief look through the article that Gimp mentioned on page one. What I took out of that was, all things being equal, a bullet carrying more energy has the potential to create a larger wound wherever it hits a deer than a bullet carrying less energy. I believe that is indisputable.

Can you quote the bit that leads you to believe that ?


Here's one of many quotes from that paper, and many others, that has led me to form the conclusion that I have -

Fig. 9.2
Wound profiles according to Fackler [1, 2, 21] of two stable spheres depositing roughly the same amount of energy in gelatine blocks but producing strikingly different wound cavities. In the case of the fast, small and light-weight steel sphere (478J), most of the kinetic energy is used up in the stretch mechanism, producing a large temporary cavity and a small permanent tract. In contrast to this, most of the large and heavy but slow sphere’s energy (430J) is used up in crushing of tissue, thus producing a large permanent tract but a small temporary cavity. This sharp contrast already demonstrates that gunshot injuries cannot be adequately described by terms like energy or energy deposit. The energy transfer of the fast sphere is also higher than that of the slow one

I suppose "all things being equal" you mean diameter, mass and construction. The only variable affecting energy would be impact velocity. Depending on construction you may end up with a larger or small wound? If a projectile fully fragments early on and does not penetrate, due to increased velocity (energy) it may have a small wound volume in total ?

all depends on construction - more predictive than the quantity of energy