- Joined
- Feb 16, 2016
- Messages
- 278
fun podcast I did with Dr. Ed Ashby. great guy. interesting guy, a guy most of you are familiar with. A lot of people focus on what he’s put out in the archery world, but he’s got deep knowledge of rifle hunting too, especially in Africa and on large game.
A lot of his testing across thousands of animals centered around the original Barnes X bullet, the predecessor to the TSX, TTSX, and LRX, so a lot of his experience comes from that side of things. The timing of this podcast lined up right after I got back from Africa, where I was using bullets across the spectrum. TTSX, TMK, ELD-M, TSX. We get into all of it, along with shot placement and how to think about it.
As you’d expect, Ashby leans heavily toward penetration. I feel like he does a good job of defending that choice. Using logic I could follow.
I’m continuing to dig into this all myself. At what point is a match style wound channel and penetration sufficient? obvious advantages - higher BCs, big wound channel, lower cost. the giant thread on rokslide. But that answer does change based on the type of hunting, species, terrain, and vegetation. The idea arises, Ed brings this up in many ways... having a bullet that covers a wide array of scenarios is useful.
I do believe that penetration-focused bullets give you "acceptable" performance across more situations. I also believe that comes with "sub-ideal" performance in many situations.
Africa presents way more potential variation than North America... one minute exposed to one set of variables, next minute totally different situation.
I compressed a ton of hunting in a short period of time this last month over there. some of it you would call more killing than hunting. regardless, a tremendous learning experience. vast majority of it was 6.5mm and smaller cartridges.
Broadside or qtring-to shooting near-side shoulder, up to elk sized animals, 180-500yds, I'd personally pick-up a TMK/ELDM before a copper every time. I like hitting where I am trying to hit and seeing chest hit animals dead in less than a minute. Copper chest hits kill slower.
When culling animals, you get to them quickly and really see this difference. Particularly with larger animals. Even late season cow hunting elk, how long does it take for you to get to the animal? 10-20mins usually. Up in the mountains, 20-30mins+. So all double lunged animals are dead. dead is dead. Start rolling up on animals within a couple minutes, swapping around bullets between animals, the difference is undeniable.
In the unfortunate situation you gut shoot something broadside, I'd rather be shooting a match bullet. More likely you get lucky.
Walking through brush, shooting warthogs half obscured by vegetation, while potentially bumping a buffalo... I would prefer to have something bigger than the 6.5 and copper bullets. Situations where I was bouncing between that and shooting wildebeest at a couple hundred yards. Again, I'd take copper to cover my bases. God forbid I ever have to try to breakdown wounded zebras hauling ass away again, copper or another high penetrating bullet is what I would hope to have. But man how much of that is applicable to elk/mule deer hunting? that's not me questioning Ed, that is me thinking via typing.
I'm going to get Ed on again sometime to just talk about all his freaking adventures. we can argue all day about bullet construction but there is zero debate that Ed has had some epic experience over there.
