I think "Wallop" is a thing

[FredH]

Are we using "Whollup" in place of mechanical kinetic energy transfer? If so ya its real and exists AKA physics... But it still does not tell you how a bullet will perform or correlate to wound channel. I cant remember off the top of my head but I believe it was Dr. Fackler that did research on this using metal or lead disks.. Also there is a paper in the link provided. The fact that "whollup" is "knockin em off their feet" just isn't true...

On the physics of momentum in ballistics: can the human body be displaced or knocked down by a small arms projectile? - PubMed

Shooting incidents are often portrayed as resulting in a sometimes violent backwards displacement of the victim. This opinion is also not infrequently held by expert witnesses. The physical force responsible for this would be momentum (mass x velocity). The physics of momentum in ballistic...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I don't consider whollup to be compared to knocking an animal down necessarily. Adequate whollup means a wide wound channel, easily breaking all bones it it's way and leaving a 1 1/2" to 3" exit hole that sucks innards and blood out the other side.

 

[Wprinkle]

I don't consider whollup to be compared to knocking an animal down necessarily. Adequate whollup means a wide wound channel, easily breaking all bones it it's way and leaving a 1 1/2" to 3" exit hole that sucks innards and blood out the other side.

Again this is bullet dependant. For EXTREME example only lets say we have a .224 and .50 cal BMG both constructed like a heavy for caliber thin jacketed cup and core bullet IE TMK. both impacting at the same velocity in identical tissue/matter/animal. Yes by nature the 50 cal has more jacket to fragment and more lead core do drive the projectile deeper. But why? The .224 will most likely be caught and fully fragmented or "done" by the time it hits the off side of say a mule deer.. The 50 will still be going for say 10 mule deer deep. (I really don't know how many deer a 50 will penetrate) But what is the advantage? So you put a football size permanent wound channel in 1 deer vs a buick sized wound channel in 1 deer plus how ever many more. Furthermore the .224 will have realized its full potential inside 1 deer but the .50 will have never realized its full potential and at said hypothetical velocity may not have even began to fragment in the first 3/4 of the deers body. So I agree the heavy for caliber fragmenting bullets are way way more destructive than their lighter counterparts. But it begs the questions how much is too much? What am I gaining? Do I want the permanent wound channel to be fully inside the animal or just blow the back half out? So we find the happy medium. I want the Nalgene sized wound channel fully contained inside the animal, delivered from the lightest recoiling rifle it can, and effective out to what I deem MY range is.. I also have seen a photo from a big 30 that was using a heavy for caliber fragmenting match bullet on a deer. It was almost literally blown in half. A little hide below the spine and some belly is all that was left. Thoughts?

EDIT. Now if we are comparing a solid copper mono to a solid copper mono that is just a matter of do you want a knitting needle sized hole or #2 pencil sized hole...

 

[EmperorMA]

Yes, this is what was lost in the "kill everything with a .223" (i got one by the way) convo. I like my bullets to exit. I just do. I think it makes for better blood trails, and I think that matters. that doesn't make the .223 less deadly, it just means it will often not meet a criteria that I HAVE. Medium construction bullets that expand and still fully penetrate do a lot of both. I prefer that. I like a good .243 interlock in 100 gr.
However, man do larger calibers destroy a lot of meat on a deer. It can be gruesome. This last year I swore I was done hitting whitetails with a 3006.

I really don't see any difference at all between my 6.5 Creedmoor and the .338 Win Mag I owned for two decades in terms of exits. Both seem to exit just fine.

However, it often felt as if the butt of that .338 Win Mag often exited my shoulder after pulling the trigger.

 

[Chris in TN]

I really don't see any difference at all between my 6.5 Creedmoor and the .338 Win Mag I owned for two decades in terms of exits. Both seem to exit just fine.

However, it often felt as if the butt of that .338 Win Mag often exited my shoulder after pulling the trigger.

The problem with exit wounds - and I say this as someone who has preferred them for decades - is that quite often the heavier bullets that hedge your bets towards getting an exit, also push you towards *small* exits.

In 2001 I lost a deer on a quartering away shot. I second guessed myself for two months, then we found the buck's head maybe 100 yards from where I'd shot him. He'd just went into a nasty pine thicket and without a blood trail (because I had no exit wound on the steep quartering away shot) there was no way to find him. We just chanced across his head on a rabbit hunt that winter. We'd repeatedly walked within a few feet of him the night I shot him - but in a thicket where 30' might as well have been half a mile.

(To be clear, that was a 30-06 on a 175 pound whitetail - plenty of 'wallop')

That pushed me to heavier bullets, for a number of years. But I began to notice that a lot of those still didn't exit on steep shots, and even when they exited, the wounds weren't always very big.

Probably the last straw in this regard, for me, was the elk I shot a couple years ago:

This is what a 0.284" 160 grain Nosler Accubond looks like when you make a pinwheel-perfect textbook shot on an elk at an impact speed of right at 2300'.

Entrance:



And the exit. It's the little red sideways 'v' spot on its hide:



That's about as perfect as shot placement gets. (451 yards, no wind). There was good internal damage to both lungs and the plumbing at the top of the heart was severely damaged. He ran maybe 75 yards. But what good was the exit wound? That sort of exit won't bleed enough to enable trailing an elk.

You could argue that the same bullet at 2500' or 2700' impact speed, might have left a larger exit. Or maybe a shoulder exit with some bone fragments might have left a better exit. But so what? Most critters with shoulder exits aren't going more than a few yards.

I also have seen a photo from a big 30 that was using a heavy for caliber fragmenting match bullet on a deer. It was almost literally blown in half. A little hide below the spine and some belly is all that was left. Thoughts?

I shoot a lot of deer with smokeless muzzleloaders. Could have shot more than one, yesterday. But I generally use light to moderate loads, by smokeless standards. My 'heavy' load is a .40/225 at 2550'ish. Which is practically a freight train in terms of what it does to deer.

But I have seen videos of guys killing deer with .45 caliber 300+ grain projectiles at 2700' to 3000' and it honestly sort of bothers me to even watch. Exit wounds the size of small watermelons, at time. There's just no point in that, IMO.