Questions about the irrelevance of energy (ft-lbs)

[General RE LEE]

I like to think a .30 cal 178 grain ELDX hitting a deer at 1800 fps is going to cause more damage than a .243 cal 108 ELDM at 1800 FPS. Although velocity is the same, the 178 has a larger diameter and more momentum to drive through an animal.

 

[Bluefish]

I like to think a .30 cal 178 grain ELDX hitting a deer at 1800 fps is going to cause more damage than a .243 cal 108 ELDM at 1800 FPS. Although velocity is the same, the 178 has a larger diameter and more momentum to drive through an animal.

It also has more drag due to a larger frontal area. From the gel tests the difference is not much. Often the 103 6mm penetrates further than the 30 cal.

 

[Shortschaf]

Pretty sure you could just jab an expanding broad head in there and kill an elk. Would be an epic stalk though. But that's not true of bullets. A bit misleading response on a gun forum. There probably is some food out there trying to take an elk with an 80 ft lb firearm- that's the sad part.

We kill all our beef with .22's

 

[K9kodi]

Really? Exactly how much energy is necessary to kill a deer?

I’m confused on how energy, or ke, does not play a role. Short of fighting about it, how does energy not play a vital role.

 

[Billogna]

I’m confused on how energy, or ke, does not play a role. Short of fighting about it, how does energy not play a vital role.

Energy plays a role!! Just like it plays a role in EVERYTHING on earth. Without it the bullet can't get there to do its job. However, it is not a reliable metric for determining wounding capability. It's like knowing how much the alternator on your 2012 Toyota Camry daily driver weighs... "because MPG's man!!" It's a useless metric. I do not care how much energy or "authority" a bullet has. I care about damaged vitals. Impact velocity at or above 1800 fps with tipped match bullets gets me what I want. Regardless of cartridge. I only need to know at what range I can maintain this velocity window. And then practice to hit targets within it.

 

[Harvey_NW]

This thread is the equivalent of a marginal shot with a high energy mono - for the last week and a half I've been waiting for it to die.

 

[D Lee]

Form and others who do understand all the math here, God bless you but I don't. I'm just an old curmudgeon who grew up reading O'Connor & Keith. Over the last 7 decades, I've used / hunted with too many rifles / cartridges to count. Meaning? I have that old school mindset you keep refering to.

A true rifle loonie - I'm also listening hard and willing to change my beliefs. Don't hold it against me that I don't yet understand all the why's and wherefores you are saying. I've spent the time reading 21 pages of posts so I am learning and glad that I am.

SOLD all my Magnum rifles. For Elk and up, not ready to give up my 30-06 strictly for what I call the "insurance factor." OK - you're right - maybe not needed but mentally comforting.

My "all-around" working rifle / cartridge is the 6.5 PRC - ELDX. Reading all these posts - now asking myself if I need to keep the '06?? Old beliefs die hard.

Very informative / educational thread. Thanks for sharing what you've learned.

Cheers.

 

[Harvey_NW]

Form and others who do understand all the math here, God bless you but I don't. I'm just an old curmudgeon who grew up reading O'Connor & Keith. Over the last 7 decades, I've used / hunted with too many rifles / cartridges to count. Meaning? I have that old school mindset you keep refering to.

A true rifle loonie - I'm also listening hard and willing to change my beliefs. Don't hold it against me that I don't yet understand all the why's and wherefores you are saying. I've spent the time reading 21 pages of posts so I am learning and glad that I am.

SOLD all my Magnum rifles. For Elk and up, not ready to give up my 30-06 strictly for what I call the "insurance factor." OK - you're right - maybe not needed but mentally comforting.

My "all-around" working rifle / cartridge is the 6.5 PRC - ELDX. Reading all these posts - now asking myself if I need to keep the '06??????????? Old beliefs die hard.

Very informative / educational thread. Thanks for sharing what you've learned.

Cheers.

The premise is that with modern advancements you can go down in caliber size and up in grade of bullet design and construction, get a similar terminal result to the traditional setups, with the largest advantage being less recoil. But it's also a use case scenario on whether it's truly necessary or not. If you don't need to utilize the advantages of less recoil, sleek high BC bullets, and optimized trajectory because you draw the line in the sand at 300 yards and have never had an issue effectively hitting targets with what you have, I see no reason to tell a man he's wrong for doing so.

I love my 6.5 PRC, but I'll never not own a couple .06's. They're timeless classics, and at some point there will be a use case for me to pack dads around with a box of 165gr Core-Lokt.

 

[K9kodi]

I thought energy played a role, if not, it was the rule, but I feel like people thing it doesn’t matter

 

[Macintosh]

I thought energy played a role, if not, it was the rule, but I feel like people thing it doesn’t matter

You need to read the thread, tedious as it is. Start at the beginning.

 

[Billogna]

I thought energy played a role, if not, it was the rule, but I feel like people thing it doesn’t matter

The energy number on the box of ammo seems to give people a MASSIVE freedom boner!! But that's all it is... just a dry hump, a tease. It's a trip to the strip club... no happy endings... It doesn't tell you squat about what the bullet actually does in tissue. But you'll fantasize about it!!

 

[Bluefish]

I thought energy played a role, if not, it was the rule, but I feel like people thing it doesn’t matter

With modern bullets, the energy required to harvest an animal is far less than most think. Imho it’s probably less than 500 ftlbs. In the end velocity and bullet construction are far more critical than energy. So the tldr 20+ pages is energy is not a predictor of wounding or time to incapacitation, hence irrelevant.

 

[Stinky Coyote]

We kill all our beef with .22's

same thing bell did with elephants and 6.5 Manlicker

you can get some math for it to find the minimums it takes to the brainpan off switch, ie; sd of a .22 40gr solid, impact velocity, now you know that's enough to get through the skull of a cow

bell didn't math it of course and used trial and error like the rest of us have always done but in putting some math to it you see he found you you need sd in the low .3's at above 2200-2300 fps impact (6.5 manlicker) to get through enough elephant skull to mirror the cow/.22 thing, and we can math also why the 700 nitro stops short despite 5x the energy of the manlicker as it's sd is too low and so is the impact velocity, these are cns examples though, we generally target the pumping systems as they are larger kills zones making easier to hit an actual 'kill' zone

an arrow is lethal also but big difference between a field point and broadhead in terms of speed of death, energy so low that without some damage from cutting or damage of some energy following a solid or mono, it's not likely to be kill shot where it dies in the same day it was shot, on the pumping systems without some level of damage, cns sure but that shows us not much at all if only looking at minimums for brainpan shots

so yeah, the minimal energy there is all used up in penetration only, very little damage along the path, and therefore can be argued irrelevant as the sd/construction to keep sd same/impact velocity are all that matters in that type of scenario

but energy is present with the impact velocity and that is what is applied to make it as deep as it does

 

[Stinky Coyote]

not much to argue in the above, doesn't take much

but we do argue it because we don't know how much we are even talking about

we have no metrics or numbers, no dyno curves of the energy available along its travel range, where it does most work along its range of travel, no speeds measured of the swimming travel, or bullet measure of the part way points of the swimming travel, no way to model it or curve it, or make it objective and usable and comparable to the other options

we mostly have just our subjective blah blah to share it with each other lol

 

[Stinky Coyote]

B

Thread 'TMK vs. Eld-M vs. Berger Elite Hunter terminal ballistics'

Dec 5, 2023

I want to preface this by saying I'm sure most of these questions/comparisons have been discussed in various threads including the small caliber success threads, but it would be nice for an outsider looking in to not have to read the entirety of those threads to find answers specifically regarding these bullet choices.

I seem to notice more "damage" and generally wider wound channels from Eld-M 140s (6.5) than Berger 133s (.25), but this observation could be flawed (small sample size).

For simplicity sake let's say these bullets are leaving the muzzle at 3000fps and shot on North...

• Brandon.miller.4
• Replies: 75
• Forum: Long Range Hunting

• 

Read this 4 pages real quick. What do you see?

Active thread in Long Range Hunting. A perfect example of what guys do all the time and wish they could do better. Split c-hairs between known killing bullets in a rapid expansion family and choose the option for their personal goals. Even though they are all winners and deliver a great shade of death. Don’t have to go far to find these examples, year in year out, same thing over and over.

You should see 'an imperfect understanding of the game' lol

What’s the problem they have? They lack dyno curves at various (and useful) impact velocities to choose the best option. Or even further mathed info from ‘ALL’ the dyno data across the range that could then be Bill James’d into a couple key numbers if not one key number. That can then be driven in calculators so we can see what the bullet workload is for any scenario we want. We have no clue where it could end up as we haven’t modelled a single dyno curve yet at any impact velocity. We just keep trying to measure wound data at singular impact velocities and imagine what that means at the rest of the impact velocities. Or use our subjective on animal results and compare those with each other.

How far they ran, or if they drt’d, or if they caught the bullet offside….just blah blah blah stuff we’ve always done beating the horses.

And we think that by continuing to measure a static snapshot of a wound channel at one impact velocity we are going to get something more ‘usable by fall’? Lmao…I’ll wait

They don’t even know it in that thread but they are asking for what I’m saying we can give if we really wanted. We just need to break open the gel budget and the analytical statistical nerd brains and get to work. We need to learn how to measure the work, over the range, and the range in impact velocity as well, then learn how to make it useful from there. Then we can learn how to give them what they are asking for instead of continuing to crawl around in our diapers.

 

[Stinky Coyote]

I’m confused on how energy, or ke, does not play a role. Short of fighting about it, how does energy not play a vital role.

because it takes so little to actually kill, in the right circumstances and kill spots on the animal and we usually carry enough or more than enough

why we talk about it is shades of death, how fast can we kill, drt to eat to the hole 100 yard runner differences, animal classes differences etc. and we do it all subjectively or with the odd number here and there that is essentially useless unless you know how to apply it subjectively and make pretty accurate predictions from there

we don't model the energy along range in gel corresponding to range of impact velocities, we don't have dyno curves of that work, so we can't really do much more than what we've always done, subjectively beat it out of the horse year in year out

 

[Stinky Coyote]

I like to think a .30 cal 178 grain ELDX hitting a deer at 1800 fps is going to cause more damage than a .243 cal 108 ELDM at 1800 FPS. Although velocity is the same, the 178 has a larger diameter and more momentum to drive through an animal.

and that's what we do

like to think

lol

yup, if we had dyno curves of work output along impact velocity range we could see those differences objectively but we don't have this sort of information, we might find relationships in front areas to ogive profiles to jacket thicknesses that allow us to see for goals we may have what options offer the work over what distances in the game that we are looking for, there may be plenty of small stuff that does more of this over the right distance than the big normals....well obviously there is, but since we don't know how to measure it yet to make it actually comparable we just 'like to think'

and I'm with you, I like to think that my 308 168 eldm at 2600 fps is going to be a better hammer on a problem bear in camp than my 6.5 grendel 123 gr eldm at 2400 fps as over same say 19" of gel (both have same sd) that I'll drop 39% MORE energy per inch with the 308 and that will give me 39% more winks at night...

but until we learn how to actually measure these things properly and look at the right questions to then go after the right data to then make it useful...we are crawling in diapers still

we haven't even come to agreement if energy is actually relevant lol

two more pages of proof, guys saying it is, other guys saying it isn't...lmfao, Groundhog Day, that is what this topic is

 

[D Lee]

The premise is that with modern advancements you can go down in caliber size and up in grade of bullet design and construction, get a similar terminal result to the traditional setups, with the largest advantage being less recoil. But it's also a use case scenario on whether it's truly necessary or not. If you don't need to utilize the advantages of less recoil, sleek high BC bullets, and optimized trajectory because you draw the line in the sand at 300 yards and have never had an issue effectively hitting targets with what you have, I see no reason to tell a man he's wrong for doing so.

I love my 6.5 PRC, but I'll never not own a couple .06's. They're timeless classics, and at some point there will be a use case for me to pack dads around with a box of 165gr Core-Lokt.

Nearing 80, less recoil was the number 1 reason for selling my magnums. At the same time though, I'm not happy compromising external & terminal performance. Hence, my keeping my 30-06.

This thread has been a real eye-opener. For me anyway, No one will ever convince me to hunt Grizzly with a 223 / 243 of any kind. That said - after reading all these posts - it seems my 6.5 PRC will effectively handle all the rest of my NA hunting. The cartridge being a nice balance of recoil, external and terminal ballistics.

Hunt safe ya'll.

 

[Stinky Coyote]

Pretty sure you could just jab an expanding broad head in there and kill an elk. Would be an epic stalk though. But that's not true of bullets. A bit misleading response on a gun forum. There probably is some food out there trying to take an elk with an 80 ft lb firearm- that's the sad part.

lmao,

that would be an epic stalk, I've been in situation with muley where I contemplated this

so hang on, I've always looked at arrows in a similar way, how many ft/lbs you get out of your bow? 60 to 70 which is pretty close to the pull weight, but a deer by hand with a one handed thrust you still probably have a good amount of ft/lbs assuming your grip on the arrow holds lol....you applied ENERGY!

you made the necessary depth to kill, the sharp broadhead allowed the damage to be done, where a bullet has to do that and a field tip will allow that kill shot to be more likely days before it dies, speed of death

also, when guys argued 125 gr broadheads vs 100 gr, I could see that yes you typically picked up a an extra ft/lb of ke from the bow running the heavier arrow (so more efficient) but you slowed down but yet went deeper with the heavier arrow...why? because of it's higher sd combined with faster it goes faster it slows

good luck measuring the sd of arrow though...but that is why the above actually works

this direction would be an epic derail though

we've established the minimum for cow skull is .22lr 40gr solid at 1200 fps, for elephant skull about .33 sd fmj impacting north of 2200-2300 fps...which is good to know for brain shooting cows and elephants

know some old timers rattled off plenty of elk off horseback with the old 40gr with headshots too if guys really wanna know the minimums, can do it with less work through with an arrow and even quieter too,

this isn't the discussion though

 

[Stinky Coyote]

is there work? yes/no

lets start there, someone fire up a poll so we can answer this question once and for all lol

if yes,
how much work?
what unit of measure for work?
how much work at each impact velocity?
how much work at each deceleration velocity?
how many inches of travel made at each deceleration velocity?

or maybe it needs to be is there damage? yes/no
what caused the damage? work/unicorn farts/other

if no,
then carry on with threads as normal, year in year out, subjective interpretations of partial equations and random 1d data points of a 3d question etc.

we keep answering that energy is irrelevant only because we have no idea how to measure it or apply it as it relates to swimming ballistics, definitely not objectively, the shade of death was delivered...so because it died, the shade of death is irrelevant, makes things handy for choosing bullets on terminal merits lol