Thread: A question for the doubters

This thread is epic

Its been great reading and super entertaining i love my big guns but I shoot way more animals with my little ones.

yes agree great thread long may they continue

Originally Posted by Barry the hunter

I do get what a lot are saying about .223 new rounds and reloading the right barrel twist and its performance is improved but new hunters are limited to what is available in the shops

Remington 700, Tikka T3, Sako 90, Howa Mini, Bergara are all available in 1:8 twist barrels and a Hornady 73gr ELDM factory load is available in NZ. Unfortunately no factory load is available at the moment with the 77TMK and most of the other good bullets are handload-only due to length, and require a longer magazine.

That's the easy button if you don't handload. Handloading does unlock the full potential of the .223.

good stuff Gimp the value of the forum but I want a 22-250 after seeing me mate use one very impressed

Originally Posted by 7mmwsm

Are you running your ELDM at the same speed as the 87grain 6mm?

If you start an 87gr SP and a 80gr ELDM at 3000/2800 fps, the .223 bullet is going faster by 200 metres.

Gimp is, of course, correct. He is also very far from being a bad shot.

I have shot deer with pure lead bullets out of a 19th century .44-40 which has half the energy of a .223, and the deer all died as quickly as if I had used a .270. My father gave me advice many years ago, he said anything you put a hole through the lungs of, doesnt matter what you use, will die shortly after. He was a .243 man.

Who are these doubters anyway? Put your hands up.

Look, fancy heavy .22 bullets are all the rage in faster twist barrels, but standard 55 grain soft points in a 1:12 and others like the 60 grain Hornady or the Speer 70 grain all kill deer just as well as an ELDX, as they ever did. The last deer I shot with a .223 was a liver shot. It mostly depends on where you shoot them, and as long as the bullet is halfway decent, deer are not hard to kill.

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!

Smashing large bones (ie shoulders) is an effective way to anchor an animal "on the spot" while giving it time to die. This can be very handy in difficult country, such as tahr and chamois inhabit. A larger cartridge would be more capable inflicting enough damage to immobilizing and animal (while it dies from damage to it's vitals) if shot through both shoulders?

Originally Posted by Shearer

Smashing large bones (ie shoulders) is an effective way to anchor an animal "on the spot" while giving it time to die. This can be very handy in difficult country, such as tahr and chamois inhabit. A larger cartridge would be more capable inflicting enough damage to immobilizing and animal (while it dies from damage to it's vitals) if shot through both shoulders?

Do you find that you have regularly intended to take this shot and hit both humerus'?

When I want the animal to drop on the spot I take the high shoulder and break the spine. This is probably what is happening in most instances when people aim to "break the shoulders".

I haven't found the 223 bullets not to penetrate the shoulder bones/spine.

Not regularly, but it is one I consider when I have the opportunity. I feel it gives more leeway if the shot were to go higher than intended. Of course the animal has to be in the right position for it to effective. Aiming at the off shoulder of an animal quartering away seem to do this, as long as the projectile has the integrity to go all the way through and smash that shoulder joint, the animal will generally fall over and then die.

Originally Posted by Shearer

Not regularly, but it is one I consider when I have the opportunity. I feel it gives more leeway if the shot were to go higher than intended. Of course the animal has to be in the right position for it to effective. Aiming at the off shoulder of an animal quartering away seem to do this, as long as the projectile has the integrity to go all the way through and smash that shoulder joint, the animal will generally fall over and then die.

Have you found a .224 bullet to fail at this?

Not fail in killing the animal, but fail in the comparative amount of damage to the off shoulder compared to my 308.
My findings are exactly that. My few observations comparing a 73gn ELD-M @2900fps and a 168ELDM @2500. Varying distances and obviously different animals in different situation. No science behind it whatsoever.

Hmmm. In the last 10 years or so I guess I've been shooting 4-5 deer per year . . . So not very many by lots of peoples standards.

For some reason I tend to remember "fuck-ups" more than successes and I have had two in the 10 year period.

I took a shot from a very steep difficult shooting position at a Fallow stag at 240M (ranged). 223 with a 65gn Sierra SPBT in front. Shot went a smidge high in the shoulder, stag flipped over backwards and went down in tussock. But it was never found despite 3 of us looking for 2 hours. Why I don't know but it left a very sour taste, I always had the feeling that my 7x64 would have nailed it, and indeed I made a similar hit with the 7x64 on another hunt and was left with an animal alive but paralyzed, unable to run off.

Quite recently I shot a fallow spiker that was lying down at a ranged 266M. 6mm 103gn ELDX at 2750 fps. My cobber thought I missed, it sprang up and ran off into forestry, never to be seen again despite an extensive search. But a scene exam showed it had been hit in the lungs, the bullet pentrated fully and left a very clear splash of blood and lung. Again I was left with the feeling that a bit more "snot" might have changed the outcome.

I'm still keen on the latest 224 and 6mm bullets but for hunting I want them to have plenty of energy.

The last deer I remember losing other than my shin shot was a big stag shot with a 6.5 147gr ELDM (or maybe 140 amax) on the shoulder. Sacked on the spot, rolled into a gully. Never found it. That would have been 2016 or so.

Originally Posted by Tentman

Hmmm. In the last 10 years or so I guess I've been shooting 4-5 deer per year . . . So not very many by lots of peoples standards.

For some reason I tend to remember "fuck-ups" more than successes and I have had two in the 10 year period.

I took a shot from a very steep difficult shooting position at a Fallow stag at 240M (ranged). 223 with a 65gn Sierra SPBT in front. Shot went a smidge high in the shoulder, stag flipped over backwards and went down in tussock. But it was never found despite 3 of us looking for 2 hours. Why I don't know but it left a very sour taste, I always had the feeling that my 7x64 would have nailed it, and indeed I made a similar hit with the 7x64 on another hunt and was left with an animal alive but paralyzed, unable to run off.

Quite recently I shot a fallow spiker that was lying down at a ranged 266M. 6mm 103gn ELDX at 2750 fps. My cobber thought I missed, it sprang up and ran off into forestry, never to be seen again despite an extensive search. But a scene exam showed it had been hit in the lungs, the bullet pentrated fully and left a very clear splash of blood and lung. Again I was left with the feeling that a bit more "snot" might have changed the outcome.

I'm still keen on the latest 224 and 6mm bullets but for hunting I want them to have plenty of energy.

It sounds like the bullet had plenty of energy but didn't leave enough of it in the deer.