There are too many variables to base a calculation on. All bullets have different internal structure. All impact mediums have different densities and yield strengths. One bullet will not give the SAME wound when impacting an antelope, an elk, and a black bear at the velocity irregardless of distance because each animal has different body structure, muscle density, and hide thickness/stretch.
The reason ballistics can be considered a consistent calulatable science is that the medium of air is consistent along with the pull of gravity. Temperature and humidity have consistent affects on air density and can be measured from a distance and isn't dependent upon an an animals age or how much the animal has had to eat or drink.
BTW, SD has no relevance on how a bullet will perform in medium. A FMJ and a varmint bullet can have the same SD but performance in tissue is 100% different.
Jay
I agree, too many variables, the animals.
That's why the 'rate of change' needs to be seen in a standard medium as 'expected typical performance range in most situations' but based on 'percentage' differences which everyone CAN understand...and then translated into really common languages that most people can even more easily understand like inches and ft/lbs over those inches. To make easy as possible for the gun counter crowd to visualize the general size of grenade or narrow channel for the size of animals they are familiar with.
When you can see to expect 20% deeper with 15% less energy per inch or any combination against any other combination it takes things to another level.
So the question is to all reading this thread....how would you do this? I gave some thoughts on it I've been bouncing off the interwebs thick skin since early 2020. I'm sure we are all open to other ideas and thoughts on how to do this?
So examples again, if you have an 18" 50 ft/lb set up that's been smashing deer size game drt steady and you want to go antelope and have similar then maybe you're looking for a 12" 50 ft/lb option? As you can see that a bunch of the work isn't going to get into the antelope using the 18" set up. Just talking your example out loud.
We don't have an objective way to quickly and easily communicate this or see it for ourselves...and the gun counter crowd needs all the help they can get...right? So we've got work to do here. We have the ability to objectify these rate of change differences to make useful, if you look at what we've done with inflight ballistics over thousands of yards....how hard can it be to get somewhere close over 2" (gophers) to 48" cape buff? There's math there we aren't looking at yet that could change the game.
A lot goes on in a very short distance but we just blabber subjectively. Short distance math, best seen in percentages of rate of change and energy transfer then applied to 'expected inches and energy transfer through most critters on most common angles', math/numbers - common languages the masses can understand and hard to argue about.
Variable sd bullets we shoot but we don't measure the variable...we measure the wind/atmosphere variables in inflight ballistics, why not the bullet upset variables once swimming starts? We still keep talking about wounds in the animals or bullet expand 2.5x, went this deep, and retained x weight, and that's where we stop and go subjective from there on what it means...we're looking at the wrong thing, look at the bullets. Compare them to each other in standard and meaningful way (numbers) so we can move beyond the subjective mess that is terminal ballistics.
Every animal is completely different variable each and every shot so studying them shot to shot is a waste of time. You can't get usable comparable objective info this way. Study the bullets in a standard swimming media instead.
As it stands energy is largely an irrelevant measure, the best way and has been for awhile is 'for game intended' match construction, sd, and impact velocity. Simple. Energy doesn't really factor yet we know the bullet does 'work' but no objective way to put on paper. So we can/have successfully gotten by and chosen way better over the past ~15 years by using that formula. I think there's a way that energy/work does play a factor we can use to explain the trauma we see in the animals but right now it's all subjective viewpoints with many saying it's 'irrelevant' and I don't disagree with that. I just think we aren't able to see a better way to show it yet.
