I sure agree! There is a balance of velocity, bullet weight, and Meplat Area that gives deep penetration and cavity. we are still learnig about that combo! As the Meplat Area increases, all other being the same, penetration is less, but cavity is larger. I do not think it can be calculated, only observed for actual tests on game.
Then we come back to how much penetration is needed on game, large and small? Standing there, calm and collected, shooting test targets is not the same as delivering a death shot on dangerous game....no matter how powerful (or over-powerful the gun may be)....recoil and follow up shots must be taken into consideration!
At the sake of being thrashed about the head and shoulders....I do think many of these handguns are too much!
Now, Bill M is not a little fellow (bigger than my 6' 3 1/2") and I saw him work on the Gorilla Gong befire we tried for that big noar hog!....and I am convinced his gun and load was more that adequate...and he could control it in the shoot-step left-and shoot again. That drill was for him to be clear if I had to light off a Terminator.
Linebaugh testing is great to compare one load against another....but the final choice of what to use on dangerous game requires some thought!
I still say that control is he final factor! That's why I carry my Rem 870/Hastings rifled barrel with Terminators!...and I have been shooting/hunting with handguns since 1956.
Regards, James

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Dixie Slugs of Old Town Hammock, Florida
"Home of the Dixie Terminator Slug"

Per James Gates previous post, that hunt in the thick brush for the big hog was one of the most exciting things I ever did! Thank you again James for an awesome experience. For the record, I was shooting my 5 1/2" ported 44 mag Redhawk with a 325gr BTB LCMN gc bullet running at 1330 fps out of the muzzle. The bullet nose was annealed for somewhat of a Nosler Partition effect. Accuracy and control was not a problem. A mean 400lb hog was though.

The more I read and study on what actually happens in game, it strikes me that (assuming LBT type hard cast bullets) we are looking for 1000 to 1200 fps striking velocity our of our handgun loads. More velocity demands tougher bullets and becomes a monumental issue to 100% control the load unless you've had a lot of practice at it. I think that velocity beyond 1200 fps mostly buys you trajectory but little in stopping power. That is beyond 1200 fps as a striking velocity. If you need more penetration, that is then controlled by increased bullet weight, adjusting meplat and alloy... but not by increasing velocity. I have had some interesting converstations with Marshall Stanton and he knows some very good handgun hunters that feel 1000 fps is the top striking velocity that's ideal. I really don't know but am trying to "connect the dots" and make sense of what we are observing. (ok... now I'm scared. I'm starting to talk like James Gates!).

Back to my previous post, I suspect too fast is just as bad as too slow for taking tough game with a handgun. I do not know where the magic velocity is because there are so many varations in game and cartridges. I am pretty sure though that seeking maximum velocity as an end unto itself does not mean tough game taking ability. Sometimes it's the opposite. If we factor in recoil and blast, it might be the worst possible combination for dangerous/tough game.

All this said... how much meplat is enough? How much is too much? How much of all these factors (and others not mentioned) give us "enough"? It would have to vary by the game. When it comes to 400 lb hogs with an attitude, maybe we only reach "enough" with something like the Dixie Terminator since just harvesting the animal is not the issue. I suspect the same is true with the great bears. Never willingly give them an even break! So in handguns, maybe we are mostly trying to make the most out of less than "enough". Not sure. I am just thinking out loud. What do you guys think?

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The purest ore is producted from the hottest furnace and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

After a great deal of testing, we begin to realize the importace of meplat area....no mater if it the complete area of an expanded bullet....or in the design of non-expanding bullets....it works the same.
We are now testing another big game slug/bullet called the Dixie Tusker. The is a .727"-600 gr truncated cone with a .450" meplat. With the new powder we have reached close to 1700'/" within the allowed presure of the 12 3" mag. Unlike the Dixie Terminator with a full caliber meplat....This new load will not created the massive cavity the Terminator does.....but should drive much deeper. Because the weight is 130 grs less the recoil is the same....and can be controlled. The frontal pressure should not build up as much as the Terminator.
Now...this new load does not fly in the face of our thoughts of 1200'/" or so! The new load is designed for one thing.....to flatten out trajetory, maintain cotrol (recoil) and drive deeper than Terminator. The angle of the truncated nose with direct fluild from tissue at 90 degrees to the path of the bullet. I feel this is very important in non-expanding bullets. I also feel this is important in handgun bullet design! The 44 Truncated Nose Wadcutter, that I was involved with, is the same design.....and has proven an outstanding design.
As I have said before....all this can not be calculated! But, we are approaching the ideal design that will penetrate deep, not tumble in tissue, and create a good cavity....and still be able to control.
All this is not that important in thin skin game, but is most important when dealing with large and/or dangerous game. I direct your attention to the actual report posted on Dixie that covers the use of a Terminator on a 2000 pound Angus bull. I do not have a clue as to how a handgun would have performed?
Again...there is a balance to seek, whatever you are shooting!
Remember that penetation is a product of retained weight and impact velocity....where tissue damage is a product of retained Meplat Area and impact velocity! Somewhere between is the ideal!.....but that ideal is based on whether you are hunting thin skin game....or large and/or dangerous game.
After all, just what are you trying to prove and for what?
Regards, James

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Dixie Slugs of Old Town Hammock, Florida
"Home of the Dixie Terminator Slug"

finally someone turned on the lights.I always wondered why the old timers were able to kill anything with their pipsquick loads.now I feel better,no I havent done much but I load my 30/06 with 13 gr red dot at 1680fts.and my ruger 45 colt to 980 fts.man I dont want any more bang than that.my 30/30 gets 311291 and 32 gr of 2520 and I am sure the deer will never know.all my military rifles get the red dot treatment and lead bullets.

It only took one deer season for me to switch to a WLN and WFN from jacketed bullets. The dismal penetration of expanding bullets was my reason even though they killed the deer. More velocity meant worse penetration.
That was long ago and with more revolver killed deer then I can remember, it was the right decision and I agree with all that has been posted here.
As far as velocity, I have another way, the right way to load for deer. I leave the chrongraph in the basement and ONLY work for the most accurate loads. I don't care how slow or fast they are as long as the boolit goes to the sights and gives me tight groups. I might then check the velocity, etc just for fun. I will not up a load because it is slower then what someone else shoots. I don't care how much more powder a case will hold.
Accuracy and the proper alloy and meplat size will do whatever is asked.
Some of my boolits and calibers require a little more velocity to reach the accurate point while others are slower. Makes no difference in the field.
It works so well I sold my deer rifle LOOOOONG ago and don't miss it.

when i was living in iowa and handgun hunting for deer i kinda( for whatever reason, i don't know) settled on the 1100 fps range with heavyweight cast bullets in my 44mag and 45 colt. i guess my thought was that 1) it's a deer 2) most of the places that i hunted it would have been hard to shoot much beyond 60-70 yards anyway 3) if you can't shoot it you cant shoot it.
i've always been a gun nut and love to read everything that i can get my hands on, anyhow, when one of the guys asked what i thought of him getting a raging bull in 454 for deer. i told him that it was overkill and offered to load some extra 45 colt loads for him to use. he bought the gun and passed on my offer, funny thing tho, year after year i put deer down with one mabey 2 shots and you'd hear john empty that crazy thing, more than once he blew the fingertips off his gloves and once it was warm enough that he wasn't wearing gloves and darn near burnt a finger off... not to mention having to wear ear muffs, meanwhile my loads are pushing a 265gr wfngc bullet along at a bit over 1100fps are wonderfully accurate, are no louder than a 12guage trap load and are so enjoyable that you could shoot them all day if you wanted too. and they will dump a deer!!
sorry for getting long winded but i guess that what i'm trying to say is that velocity is not everything, even an extra 300fps won't kill a deer any deader! sure it will shoot flatter but i rarely shot much over 50yds with an iron sighted revolver anyway.
in reading a couple of the recent posts on this thread i thinki'd rather give up a little velocity than have a bullet with a smaller meplat... the "splash" effect of that nose displacing tissue and sending shockwaves thru the tissue is what puts a critter down, that's why manufacturers of bullets such as beartooth are so important to the handgun hunter.

being an extremist in the curiosity department I connected the weight vs velocity dots toward the other extreme. I've now got a load that runs sub-sonic, penetrates like a 45/70, and is proven gong-accurate out to 116 yards. this report was the first effort:

http://levergunlovers.com/viewtopic.php?p=55839#55839

I upped the charge slightly and got velocities in the 950 fps vicinity with a load that recoils barely more than 44 special from my 5.5" redhawk. I consider this the best woods carry load in the world. I'm pretty much done experimenting by now. I'll fool around with different charges just out of curiosity, a smaller charge would reduce the recoil, but I'm sold on the sub-sonic load.

this report was the new improved version, my goal was to get the results at 50 yards that the original load got at point blank range. I achieved that and got the trajectory up enough to make it a practical hunting load as well as the best stopper job I've found.

http://empresspublications.com/xyz/report.htm

I'll be curious to see if anyone else pursues this direction. So far I can't think of a single downside, unless it's the fact that the round will only fit in redhawk length cylinders. I'm going to customize my B92 to feed this load, and then I'll have trapdoor performance from the handiest carbine on the planet. happy camper syndrome...

Regards,

Grizz

Is that with maximum loads point of impact changes dramatically at extremely short range because of muzzle "flip" or rise, and sometimes that can lead to unforeseen results.

I've carried a Freedom Arms with a 4-3/4" magna-ported barrel and fixed sights in .454 Casull for quite a few years now, and when I first purchased the revolver I did what I suspect most people do, which was to cram 300 gr. jacketed flatnoses down on top of maximum charges of H110 and Winchester 296, just to see how fast I could make those bullets go.

After one range session unexpectedly ended at about 125 rounds when I reached for the ejector rod, only to find out that it and the spring and shroud had parted company with the rest of the revolver (probably a good thing, because shortly after that I discovered that the top half was also beginning to loosen and separate from the grip frame) I decided that I was happy with my load and filed the front sight to zero the point of impact at 25 yards, figuring that would work just fine for my intended purpose, which was to make sure that tree game in general and bears in particular came down dead instead of with enough snap and snarl left to take a hound or two with them, and it worked admirably for that purpose on quite a few of our Arizona bears over the years, including a few that pushed the scales toward 500 lbs.

I only discovered the flaw in that load by accident, but the dogs caught a bear on the ground that had a crippled hind leg that prevented him from climbing, and he was bayed in a pile of downed timber that prevented me from actually jamming the muzzle into his ribs, and so I took a flash sight picture from about three feet away and above him (I was standing on one of the logs that he was in the middle of) and touched the trigger with the intention of shooting down through his chest and hopefully putting the bullet into the dirt after it exited instead of into a dog, and when the gun went off I was astonished to see the bear keep fighting instead of crumpling up like a tin can, which is what every other bear that I'd ever shot with that revolver had done.

Things were pretty busy in there with dogs jumping over logs and darting underneath them to bite at that bear, and the bear spinning and swatting and falling sideways and backwards when he tried to turn on that crippled leg, and before I could find another sight picture and try to sneak another bullet in the bear began to wobble, and five or ten seconds later he tipped over and expired, which was fine by me, because I was in active fear of losing a dog the whole time.

When we put a rope on him and dragged him clear with a horse so that we could begin to field-dress him it became apparent what had happened; at that point-blank range the muzzle hadn't had any opportunity to climb, and as a result the sight picture at roughly the vertical midline of the shoulder resulted in the bullet almost missing the bear altogether, but instead catching just enough of him that it tore the last couple of inches off of the bottom of his heart and bled him out fairly quickly, but in all fairness a fella would have to say that I almost missed him entirely, which seemed incredible at that range until it dawned on me what had occurred.

I'm almost sure that a more modest load would have had a less extreme result, and I'm thinking hard about backing down about five or six hundred fps in view of what I've read here as well as that experience, which could have turned out a lot worse than it did.

That hyper-velocity sure does cave them in, but it showed an unexpected drawback that day.

John-Henry

At a range of 3 feet I do not thing that this was a point of impact issue relative to the sights. At that range your front sight could have been a quarter inch higher and it wouldn't have made much more than an inch or so difference on the target (assuming you have around 6 inches, or more, on the sight radius).

You are correct that the point of impact can change pretty drastically with different bullet weights / velocities, but not at 3 feet.

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MikeG

I once missed a head shot on a spike blacktail deer that was very close, maybe ten feet away. I was an expert shot but the first round clean missed the deer's head. It stood up and waited around for the next one, which I center punched thru the head by HOLDING UNDER.

It's one of the caveats of point blank shooting, especially since my hunting hand gun was zeroed at about 70 yards. It pays to practice every possible way of missing the shot to have a good understanding of where the bullet is really going to be at any given distance.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWt8h...layer_embedded

Huh? At very short ranges the bullet is still under the line of sight.....

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MikeG

You guys got me to wondering about trajectory for handgun loads so I whipped up a chart....

Without knowing the exact loads you are/were using, I just put in something that may be typical in a hunting handload (and it was already in the Quickload database) - a 260gr. bullet in .45 cal, estimated muzzle velocity 1500fps.

Looking at my hunting revolvers, on most of them the rear sight is about 3/4" above the bore. The front sights are typically about 1/4" taller than that, which is close to the amount that the muzzle moves under recoil before the bullet exits. The muzzle should end up pointing very slightly "uphill" relative to the line of sight at the bullet exit; otherwise the bullet would do nothing but drop all the way to the target and it would not be possible to zero it....

I also picked a 70 yard zero just because it was referenced in one of the posts above. Anyway, with that information then we see that the bullet stays under the line of sight for about 12 or 13 yards, and then of course stays over the line of sight till the zero range. It surprised me how little mid-range rise there was to the 70 yard zero (I am going to have to play with this a little for some of my exact hunting loads - pretty neat).

So anyway I thought this graph might be informative; perhaps I'm not understanding what you guys are describing at all....

Attached Thumbnails

 

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MikeG

Yeah, that's what I was talking about, you can shoot under a target that's close if your zero isn't.

I was hunting with 320g pb cast bullets in a 10" superblackhawk. I wonder how much muzzle rise that one has, it sure didn't recoil very much, mostly straight back into my palm. I loved shooting that gun.

So, I've shot over deer and I've shot under deer. I always considered those shots ranging in nature, once I got the range I could fire for effect. And just so I don't generate any suspicion all my handgun kills were one shot, once the range was dialed in.

You all have a blessed 4th and remember to thank the ones who made it possible. No current politicians need apply.

Grizz out

There's less than 1/2" difference in drop at 100 yards between a .22 HV Long Rifle from a rifle and most magnum revolver bullets when they're both sighted in at 75 yards. This gives you one trajectory to remember instead of two.

Bye
Jack

Anyone who knows me well can tell you that from time to time I'm a child of unmitigated confusion, and when you're shooting into a bearball composed of a bear and a dozen dogs and a dust cloud and trying to time your trigger press so that you don't shoot a dog instead of the bear I would guess that it's entirely possible to simply miss that badly, particularly when you're standing somewhat precariously on a horizontal pine log that was maybe a foot in diameter, but I've been shooting and hunting for most of my 49 years, and even though I was fairly concerned about that bear pulling in one of my dogs and biting it's head off, and maybe a tad bit adrenalized as a result, I finally concluded that it was a velocity/sight picture issue, and I did that by reasoning thusly:

The Freedom not only has that Keith #3 plowhandle grip that encourages it to roll in your hand, but it's nothing short of a brutally recoiling handgun, at least to me; it's not so much the foot pounds coming back at you but the sheer violence of the action that follows a trigger press; it SNAPS back and up, and I always have a clear sense of holding a controlled explosion when I fire a round at a tin can or a steel plate or some other inert target, to the point that I don't care to fire very many rounds in any "recreational" sense; I use that pistol to kill things with teeth and claws that I'm afraid will damage my dogs, given the chance, and as a result I carry it a lot and shoot it a little, as the saying goes.

In addition to that I fired that round one-handed instead of using my customary two-handed grip, which is a modified isosceles as much as anything, so I'm guessing that the gun recoiled differently than it would have with my normal grip and stance, but what I'm trying to express is something to do with dwell time of the bullet in the barrel and corresponding muzzle rise resulting in a major change in point of impact at close range.

I once called a very nice fluffy male coyote for a friend of mine who dearly wanted to harvest one with a handgun, and the coyote obligingly stopped dead at 15 yards or so front and center when I barked at him, and because he was standing in some pale grass that was a foot or so tall I clearly saw the bullet path when the 7-1/2" barreled Freedom .454 that Greg was shooting exploded, and that bullet went neatly between that coyote's forelegs a few inches below his chest and ended up somewhere well behind him while the coyote bounded straight up into the air, landed, and went away at a high rate of speed, although I swear that he was a little cross-eyed when he left as the result of the muzzle blast.

When I asked Greg how he had managed to miss that shot he was as puzzled as I was; he's a pretty good handgunner, and he had a stable two-handed shooting position braced on both knees, and he said that as far as he could tell his sight picture had been perfect, although again that old adrenaline can play some strange tricks with a fella, particularly if he's not used to predator calling, because things can move awfully fast in that game, and unlike most other hunting the predator is coming right at you, which can be disconcerting until you've done it a few dozen times.

At any rate, he finally got around to opening the loading gate, punching out the spent case, and when he reached into his pocket for another round he began to mumble, and when I asked him what he was mumbling about he showed me the round, and it was a "pocket rocket" that we'd loaded up just to play with that used a 185 gr. or thereabouts bullet that more properly belonged in a .45 ACP and a max charge of 2400 or something instead of his customary 300 gr. jackrabbit plinkers with a little bit of Bullseye (if I remember correctly) and that bullet had come out of there a LOT faster than the load that the handgun was sighted for, and as a result (at least this is what WE concluded) the dwell time in the bore was so much shorter that the muzzle didn't have an opportunity to rise as it would have with the heavier bullet/less powder loads, and that caused the point of impact to drop far enough (six or eight inches?) that it missed the coyote entirely instead of center-punching him right at the base of the neck, which is where he had aimed.

Now that I've written this and read the replies I'm beginning to doubt my own conclusion, though; sometimes external ballistics (much less internal) give me a headache when I try to think about some aspects of bullet flight and velocity and trajectory and whatnot, and I suppose that the easiest way to see if I'm at least partially right or altogether wrong is to go down into the lower pasture and fire a few rounds at a sheet of plywood or corrugated metal or something from point-blank range; I know that handgun will chew one ragged hole from a solid rest at 25 yards, and that hole will be where the sights are looking, but I'm going to have to figure out what happened with that particular shot in any event before bear opens again in the Fall, even though I'd hoped to put it off as long as possible, or even better to inveigle one of my buddies into shooting it and sparing me the pain.

John-Henry