Thread: A question for the doubters

Originally Posted by whanahuia

Right, I spent a bit of time doing further autopsy on the boar, for interest and relevance too this topic. Disregard it as you please.

I slightly stuffed up the autopsy as the cut I made with reciprocating saw turned out not to be the projectile entry but a tusk wound from another boar. This put my cut at an angle through the projectile path and made things a little unclear in photos.

First up is the recovered projectile. It is a 130gr speer Hotcore, Muzzle velocity was around 3150. Generic online energy calculator says muzzle energy of 2865 Ft/lbs. From accounts so far, its of similar construction technique too the 223 ones being discussed.
recovery weight is 48gr and it was recovered 75mm inside the far shoulder in muscle after passing through off side chest cavity ribs. Total penetration minimum approx. 405mm
Remember this is an angled shot so though skin ect might be 50mm, path through such was longer.



Exit through ribs, below spine.



The projectile hit and destroyed the shoulder knuckle before entering chest. Most of the permanent cavity was in this area. Between skin contact and rib cage was 210mm of skin, muscle and bone with ( i forgot to measure) approx 10mm of bone and meat etc on ribs before entry to chest cavity.



Finally the shield near point of projectile penetration.

Obviously warm on the coast at the moment !

The bullet had clearly lost enough speed that it was no longer expanding or fragmenting significantly exiting from the chest cavity.

Did you damage any of the major blood vessels or the nerve cluster around the heart? It looks like it would have been very close to the aortic cluster.

Clearly it worked.

Are you speculating that 'energy transfer' and the temporary cavity caused faster incapacitation or death than should be expected from the permanent damage - broken front shoulder/leg bones, substantial wound through lungs, and possible damage to major blood vessels/nervous system?


Incidentally I'd observe, anecdotally, that pigs seem to drop quite readily with that particular shot placement - I haven't had one run from it. I have seen small pigs run with shots behind the shoulder that don't hit the shoulder bones, even with large bullets 7mm, .30.

Originally Posted by gimp

Obviously warm on the coast at the moment !

The bullet had clearly lost enough speed that it was no longer expanding or fragmenting significantly exiting from the chest cavity.

Did you damage any of the major blood vessels or the nerve cluster around the heart? It looks like it would have been very close to the aortic cluster.

Clearly it worked.

Are you speculating that 'energy transfer' and the temporary cavity caused faster incapacitation or death than should be expected from the permanent damage - broken front shoulder/leg bones, substantial wound through lungs, and possible damage to major blood vessels/nervous system?


Incidentally I'd observe, anecdotally, that pigs seem to drop quite readily with that particular shot placement - I haven't had one run from it. I have seen small pigs run with shots behind the shoulder that don't hit the shoulder bones, even with large bullets 7mm, .30.

Yeah it surprised me too. I havnt seen any flys about yet . But it has been warm this week.

Earlier in the thread I mentioned I think most people shoot too far back. Its my experience that anything just forward of the leg bone and especially if it connects with the leg bone in that knuckle area drops pretty much anything very quick and immobilises them if they dont go down.
On a pig specific it doesn't take a shot too much further forward than this to connect with the dip in spine where it becomes neck.

Some of this is speculation for sure. Ill give you what I think. The overwhelming damage was in the shoulder. the actual wound in the lungs is not gigantic. But if you look closely you will see a ring of bruising in the lungs further out. Speculatively part of an energy wave? the contortion of lung material from the temporary cavity. I think yes, the energy transfer and damage too that very big bone caused faster, longer lasting incapacitation. I dont think it changes the speed of death. The Aorta and heart were intact as far as i could tell, but I have definitely hit near where all that enters the lungs. No matter what calibre, id be happy with that shot placement.
I think that if I shoot a smaller, lighter built animal with the same projectile, that I will see more damage in the chest cavity and far side of animal.
I am too tied to farm to get out and hunt much right now, but I do intend to shoot something from chamois too red hind size for this thread when i can, and I will autopsy and post results here regardless of what it shows.

Originally Posted by whanahuia

Yeah it surprised me too. I havnt seen any flys about yet . But it has been warm this week.

Earlier in the thread I mentioned I think most people shoot too far back. Its my experience that anything just forward of the leg bone and especially if it connects with the leg bone in that knuckle area drops pretty much anything very quick and immobilises them if they dont go down.
On a pig specific it doesn't take a shot too much further forward than this to connect with the dip in spine where it becomes neck.

Some of this is speculation for sure. Ill give you what I think. The overwhelming damage was in the shoulder. the actual wound in the lungs is not gigantic. But if you look closely you will see a ring of bruising in the lungs further out. Speculatively part of an energy wave? the contortion of lung material from the temporary cavity. I think yes, the energy transfer and damage too that very big bone caused faster, longer lasting incapacitation. I dont think it changes the speed of death.
I think that if I shoot a smaller, lighter built animal with the same projectile, that I will see more damage in the chest cavity and far side of animal.
I am too tied to farm to get out and hunt much right now, but I do intend to shoot something from chamois too red hind size for this thread and I will autopsy and post results here regardless of what it shows.

I'm counter-intuitively freezing to death in Northland for 6 weeks. snapper fishing rather than hunting for now. the weather up here is terrible.

The halo of visible bruising/damage in the lungs is the "zone of extravasation" caused by the temporary elastic deformation of lung tissue in the temporary cavity, yes. That's identified in the medical wound ballistics literature. It appears that it doesn't contribute to incapacitation or death, the clinical studies seem to indicate that it may actually recover from the injury (if not fatal) depending on distance from permanent cavity and other unknown factors. It does dissipate a lot of transferred energy just through jiggling tissue around. Looks like the bullet caused a pretty significant temporary cavity still, but you can see that it didn't really result in a terribly large permanent cavity - the lung tissue is elastic and rebounds without significant trauma.

I would agree that you'd expect to see a larger permanent wound in the lungs of a smaller animal with the same shot placement - the bullet would be travelling faster when it reached the lungs when not encountering as thick/hard of an intermediate medium, and therefore would perform better - fragment more. Of course, you see the opposite with the "behind the shoulder placement", where there isn't sufficient intermediate medium to initiate good expansion/fragmentation before encountering lungs, and bullets of any size or speed often don't result in particularly rapid death, unless you use a Vmax (the 60gr from .223 works well here)

I expect we'll be seeing a lot more autopsy photos and analysis of bullet performance/cause of death in future, from many readers!