[Riposte1]

I hope this does not come across as contentious and is perceived as what it is, discussion, not argument.

This is the problem with personal experience; it colors one's perceptions (I am as subject to it as anyone). The first 15 deer I shot, 8 of them with various handguns, dropped in their tracks and I thought that I must know something that others don’t. WRONG!

The 16th was a medium doe shot at 25yards with a .308 using a Nosler Ballistic Tip to the top of the heart right behind the leg - the race was on! I shot her as she contemplated a 4 foot barbed wire fence. She cleared that flat footed and charged off through the timber. She might still be running (OK, an exaggeration) except that she ran into a big tree and broke her neck.

All of the deer I have seen shot with the .243 ran, except for the one shot in the neck, enough to be lost (all were eventually recovered - which tells us they were shot in a good spot -but 3 were spoiled).

In the early 80, with the help of the deer check stations in my area, we interviewed over 500 deer hunters (successful as this was a check in station), examined the carcass for the hit, kicked out the bad hits and the spine shots, then tallied them as to whether the deer dropped instantly, ran a short distance, or ran a long distance (the last could have easily resulted in a lost critter).

Sorry not to be imprecise but the data was on an old computer and software that is no longer available. Jeff Cooper printed the initial results in his column back in 82 but that was the first year of the study so it was not complete.

Anyway, I do recall that the .243, with good hits stopped about 25% of the deer quickly, as did the .357 magnum pistol.

Wish I had not lost that data as it had a lot of info including whether the bullet exited or not, if so what size, whether the bullet hit the heart, lungs or both and whether leg/shoulder bones were broke.

What was striking was two things. Energy was irrelevant (at the time Duncan MacPhereson had not done is excellent treatise on why energy is irrelevant to Wound Trauma Incapacitation) and whether you broke bone was critical. There was a loose correlation between exit wound and the shortness of the distance traveled - but what was hit inside the thoracic cavity seemed to be the "trump card". Given good placement, big bore pistols were quicker to stop than small bore rifles - something that has borne out in our experience since the study - but even that is complex as a bullet that hits high & back in the lungs does not seem to work as well that hits low and up front. Heart shots, without breaking bone, were no guarantee of a quick stop.

Still and all, there are way to many factors to say anything is a sure thing, I witnessed a deer in MS run off shot behind the shoulder with a 165gr BTHP from a .300 Win Mag - it was recovered some time later and ran over 100 yards.

Personally, like Thomas Edison, I think we learn as much from our failures than our successes. This year I learned a lot from my failures :-(

Sorry to go so long, I am just very interested in this topic as I think it relates to what we are seeing in the lethal force side of things thought that relationship is not simple either.

Very best regards,
Riposte