There is no animal that is tougher than any other.

hereinaz

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Tell me what animals are “easy to kill” and just fall over dead fast. Focus on the hypothesis and the points below. It doesn’t need to be a big/small caliber debate. Pick your caliber/bullet and tell me about easy/hard to kill.

Focus on the animals much as possible, just choose your preferred variables to make your point.

Of course, there are many variables, so when you make a claim, state the variables you think are important.

It’s common to say, X animal is “tough”. I have heard it said about everything from coyote, javelina, deer, elk, moose and bison.

Hypothesis: I don’t believe that there are tough/wimpy animals in North America that can’t be explained by blood volume.

Regardless of bullet size and velocity, say between 77-220 grains, tough animals soak them up equally.

The saying exists and is commonly used to justify the need for bigger bullets, but having listened to many “traditional hunting podcasts” I can’t discern any real difference between them. It’s only the conclusion about what bullet changes.

1) Seems to me that all animals have a will to live, some individual animal more than others.

2) Toughness by species depends on blood volume.

3) The skin, muscle, ribs and shoulder blades aren’t “five times” as hard to penetrate even if the animal is five times as big. A coyote skin/shoulder blades vs an elk aren’t materially harder to penetrate when it comes to a hunting bullet at high velocity. Meat isn’t “more” dense by animal.

4) My anecdotal evidence is that time to death relates directly to tissue damage (bullet size, type, velocity and shot placement) and blood volume.

5) A CNS shot has the same effect on all animals, so there is no tough animal to survive CNS destruction. Obviously hitting a small brain or penetrating the skull can vary with difficulty, that is outside the scope, because once hit, the brain/spine/nerves obviously kills immediately.
 

Beendare

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Seems to me a big boar wild hog with a 1 1/8" thick shield is tougher than any deer species. I've seen hogs that when you roll them over it was like they had a turtle shell with that shield.

The Water Buffalo in Australia are amazingly tough critters with 1 1/4" thick over lapping ribs....and there's about 8" of hide and muscle to penetrate before you even reach those ribs.

I think the softest critter I've seen and easy to kill are Caribou- those go right down and there is plenty of blood in them. A buddy swears the best spot to shoot them is in the stomach....as then their esophagus gets stuffed with green moss and they choke to death....though I have never tried it.
 

Tanner

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Man I would wager a guess that anybody that’s spent a significant anount of time hunting NA wild sheep wouldn’t agree that they are significantly “softer” than all other big game animals.

Anecdotally.. I’ve seen them shot with everything from a 6mm to 338s, from up the ass facing away to through the skull, and they just seem very eager to die, quickly.

They aren’t much smaller than mule deer or mountain goats but those 2 species always seem to stay on their feet longer or sometimes require a follow up shot too.


To me this would be kind of like saying every man in America can handle a right cross to the jaw exactly the same….
 

Brando

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Being a smart arse here…

Chupacabra are easy because they have no fur and Big-Foot dies hard because you can’t focus on the vitals through a scope or a camera.

For real all elk I’ve killed with a rifle have died within 70 yrdd and the blacktail bucks with a bow within 50. I’ve had one small bear take three 250 gr .338 wm rounds from <80 yards before she stopped moving.
 

KHntr

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As Tanner said, sheep seem to give up pretty easy if you can get a hole in them, pretty much anywhere in the body cavity.

Some individual animals though, some just won’t give up…...
 

ozyclint

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3) The skin, muscle, ribs and shoulder blades aren’t “five times” as hard to penetrate even if the animal is five times as big. A coyote skin/shoulder blades vs an elk aren’t materially harder to penetrate when it comes to a hunting bullet at high velocity. Meat isn’t “more” dense by animal.
Dude hasn't hunted Water buffalo.
 
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Deer die easy, camels and horses also, donkeys are are tough
Pigs are the toughest weight for weight, and it has nothing to do with the fabled “shield” this has no effect on bullets, they just have a lot more will to live
 

kaboku68

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Goats are built different. They have a relatively small bone structure but their guts and internals seem to be harder and tougher than other species.
 

rclouse79

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I have commonly heard that antelope are easy to kill. The last two elk I shot with an arrow traveled less than 100 yards combined. That doesn’t seem very “tough” to me either. I tend to agree with your post.
 

bullnose

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Over the years I’ve seen some possums take considerable damage from everything from a . 22 to a 12 gauge slug and keep going.
 
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I have commonly heard that antelope are easy to kill. The last two elk I shot with an arrow traveled less than 100 yards combined. That doesn’t seem very “tough” to me either. I tend to agree with your post.
You could shoot an antelope in the tip of the ear and it would die
 
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MT-nuffgun

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You could shoot an antelope in the tip of the ear and it would die
It’s funny you would say that, I’ve always thought that pronghorn die easy. But having said that, I’ve seen more “ metal of honor” winner pronghorn bucks than any other species. A couple of years ago I watched a buddy shoot a pronghorn buck at 20 yards with a 7mm rem mag with 140 partitions. Shot was in the crease and that buck made a 400
Yard death run. Blood covered that critter by the time he came to a stop. I think he did forget to scribe “wallop” on the side of that nosler though, that had to be the issue.
 

JGRaider

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Been fortunate to hunt alot, and kill around 400 big game animals ( includes a couple of elk, about 100 aoudad) and at least that many hogs. I've found when you put a good bullet in the right place (NOT talking about CNS), they've all died rather easily. That being said, IME/IMO a blue wildebeest is the toughest animal I've taken, followed closely by a big feral hog.
 
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Been fortunate to hunt alot, and kill around 400 big game animals ( includes a couple of elk, about 100 aoudad) and at least that many hogs. I've found when you put a good bullet in the right place (NOT talking about CNS), they've all died rather easily. That being said, IME/IMO a blue wildebeest is the toughest animal I've taken, followed closely by a big feral hog.

Having spent a lot of time living in states with liberal bag limits, agriculture that allows for depredation permits, exotics, and hogs, I can echo your comments. If you take out what makes them tick, they, surprisingly, stop ticking.
But, just like all animals, each one is different and even if you do the "exact" same thing you may not get the exact same result.

I will give one anecdote, because everyone loves those. ;)
While on a depredation hunt for WT and hogs on a peanut farm in GA. Just after sunset, a group of WT come out into the field. I was using a suppressed 6.8SPC AR using 110 grain Accubonds. We went for high shoulder shots to disrupt the CNS and make for easier recovery/clean up. Shot a decent doe and "bang-flop". Shot the yearling doe that was with her just a touch back, but still hit the spine. She drops, but the front end is still working. I put three more shots into her while she was "crawling" out of that field with just the front end going. Two were lungs (front and back) and one was paunch. Sometimes they just don't want to give up.
 
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