If it's taken further imagine we had a 60gr bullet that ruptures at 600 fps. Would that still be an effective killer? It bullets get to that level we might be arguing over minimum bullet weights for enough material to even work. Or we start shooting lasers and arguing over batteries/capacitors/etc.
It would depend on what the wound channel looks like at a given velocity. IMO the ideal wound channel looks like a football. Enters, expands to disrupt the football pattern, and what is left of the bullet falls out of the other side of my intended target.
You can have a bullet that does just such thing around 1800-3000fps, but below 1800fps, it may not consistently expand, thus not giving the football shape. Above 3000 it may expand too much and not penetrate deep enough to exit the far side of the animal. There are bullets that you can push the velocity scale to one side or another and still get desired results. Also, this doesn’t mean the bullet won’t kill outside of those parameters, it just may not be ideal.
Using your hypothetical of 600fps, and if that velocity it gives my hypothetical perfect expansion, I would need to figure out what velocity would be too slow, and what velocity would be too fast to give me the wound channel I want to see. This would let me know what MV I would need to achieve the impact velocity I need at the given ranges I plan to be shooting at game. The MV needed will dictate the cartridge and barrel length I will need.
Physics and the bullet material/design options we have, won’t allow us to have something that works from 500fps-5000fps. If there were such an option and it was, reasonably priced, accurate in common rifles, and had a high enough bc (we will say g1 of at least .350), it would be silly to use anything else.
