rfordphotos wrote:
I dont know if it is still true, but a few years back I was told by a Cal Fish and Game officer that they estimated that more California deer were killed illegally with  .22 rimfire cartridges than were taken with legal weapons. .22 Long Rifle rimfires are a poachers favorite... California allows .223 for deer hunting, but ONLY softpoint ammo is allowed. (True for all calibers)  Of course now in California ONLY lead free ammo is allowed for ANY hunting.

In the 70s, each evening a pick-up truck would drive past my uncle's farm house.  The truck carried a father and son, armed with a .22 rimfire.  They were known as "the patrol."  They were out trying to shoot deer with that .22 every night.  Back then, seeing deer was a treat.  I hunted many seasons without seeing even one buck during deer season. There was no such thing as a doe season back then.  My uncle hunted deer every year and he didn't get his first buck until the fall before he died in 81.  By 85, we were slaughtering them.  My brother and friend had a horse farm near a prison.  There were so many deer, the prison had to have an annual hunt to save its crops.  We picked them off as they came into hay field from the prison, trying to escape the hunt that was going on over yonder there.  All legal.  No poaching.

Now, and for a few decades, the same friend lives not far from where my uncle's farm was. (The farm is now houses, like a lot of parcels of land).  My friend invites everyone he can to hunt deer on his property.  There are so many deer, he was calling deer "rats with hooves," back in the 80s, and when my friend's eldest daughter was a toddler in the early 90s, if you asked her what "a good deer" was, she'd 'a said, "A dead deer."  With so many fields and forests being turned into housing developments, the herd can't be effectively thinned anymore.  Not even by the poachers. 

But, back in the 70s, poaching deer had an impact on the herd.

One night as I was leaving the farm, I heard a dog whimpering.  I saw his eyes in my headlights as I pulled out.  I got out of the car and went over to the dog.  It was a coon hound that belonged to a guy on the other side of the hollow, a pretty short walk the way a coon hound would go.  The dog spent a lot time at my uncle's farm.   The dog was named Charlie, for my uncle.

I talked to the dog and ran my hands along his body to see what the problem was.  My hands came up bloody. The "patrol" shot him that night as they went by.  Right in front of my uncle's barn, on the other side of the narrow, just barely not a dirt country road.  They left him lay in the ditch, at about where the "patrol's" brother's land started.  I picked up Charlie and carried him over to my uncles' kitchen door.  My uncle was about in tears when he saw the dog.  My uncle was wounded in and survived the Battle of the Bulge.  The war reference is meant as a perspective as to what this dog meant to him.  He had a lot of dogs.  Beagles and coon hounds.  The only other of his dog's name that I can remember was a beagle named Molly.  Damn that dog was good.  I love that sound that a beagle on a trail makes to this day.

Killing that dog about started a war up there.  Nothing was done.  Nothing could be done.  It was never forgotten.  I still remember my uncle saying, "That dog never did nothing to nobody."  He'd say it whenever it came up, even years later.  He said it over and over.  Brings tears to my eyes even now.

Eventually, the son of the old man that drove the truck was arrested and convicted for a break in and burglary of a significant amount of valuables from a local business.  The son went to the state pen for a good long time.  No idea what happened to the father or how he died, but he passed away being a sorry excuse for a man, just as he was when he was alive.  I met and became friends with a girl in college, one that I am still in touch with, she lives out there, along the coast.  She is a not too distant relative of the shooter and his father.   More knew of them then knew them.  Funny how things work out.

Hunter  GWPB wrote:
Please tell me, if a bullet hits a bone and is deflected. where is the bullet going to go?  Are you saying it will bounce backward?  The term "deflect" implies continued movement, so being stopped dead doesn't count.

If a bullet hits a bone and is deflected by 1 degree, 15 degrees, 45 degrees, does that mean it is not still traveling through the animal?  If it is deflected by a bone on the exit side of the animal, then hasn't the damage to the animal's tissue already been done before the deflection?

You indicate that it is weight which determines if a bullet will deflect off of a bone.  It is more complicated than that.  Bullet type and shape is important.  Velocity is important.  Bone size and density is important.  You should also consider that some bullets will tumble after hitting a denser object.  In the case of a deer or human body, it would make little difference if a bullet failed to penetrate one of the larger bones in the body, but instead tumbled its way through the soft flesh and organs after being deflected. 

The law in Pennsylvania requires .24 caliber or larger.  It does not require a certain bullet weight. 

My current boxes of shells has 150 grain and 180 grain soft cores for the .308 and 30-06 respectively.  Since I don't have an AR-15, I looked on the website of Bass Pro Shops for 5.56x45 ammo to purchase.  The shells are loaded with 55 grain full metal jackets.  Full metal jackets have better penetration and will hold their shape better.  So, even though the bullet is lighter, it will penetrate further.  It will pass through a deer.  One of the draw backs to full metal jackets regarding hunting is that they don't change their shape.  They don't mushroom or expand.  They do minimal damage.  Which is great if you are killing people, but not so much if you are hunting deer.  The idea is to get the deer to the people to eat it.  You don't care where the person dies, as long as they die, or are incapacitated.

The easy fix is to put a heavier bullet and a more appropriate type/shaped bullet in the cartridge.  However, the 55 grain is the commercially available load that I found first. Despite your claim, I personally would not make an effort to stand in front of someone shooting a .243 55 grain fmj in my direction.  Since a 5.56 x 45 is a Remington .223, it is not legal to hunt deer with it in Pennsylvania.  If Pennsylvania would allow a .223 for deer hunting, then there would suddenly be commercially available ammo with hunting projectiles on the cartridges.  A .223 is legal for varmint hunting though. 

"Some basic physics explains why the choice of weapon, or more precisely, the choice of bullet, enabled the suspect, James Hodgkinson, who was killed by law enforcement officers, to wreak so much havoc."

"Projectile weapons work by transferring kinetic energy to a target, which ripples out as a shockwave through tissue as the bullet plows through the body, leaving a cavity in its wake. The amount of energy a bullet radiates into a target is determined by a simple formula taught in high school: It’s the product of one half the projectile’s mass times the square of the velocity. The energy delivered to the target increases geometrically along with increases in mass, and exponentially with increases in velocity. The larger a projectile’s surface area, the greater its ability to transfer its energy to the target, instead of simply penetrating straight through."(1)  Therefore, you should do some calculations and show us the differences.  Though it still isn't going to prove your claim.  I gave you velocities in the footnotes and calculator for determining the energy.  Make a comparison and get back to me.

Congratulations on finding someone that rendered the opinion that a .223 is too small to shoot a deer.  It still doesn't prove your point though, because we don't know if the criteria they used included the fact that a .24 caliber bullet is required by law.   Unless you can back the statement up with science, my personal experience overrides your conjecture.  I also know that human nature is not limited by the one shot, one kill ethos.  A typical guy shooting at a deer or bird will keeping shooting until it drops or is out of sight.  (I hate being in the woods when those guys start shooting.)  They don't care if the thing is hamburger on the hoof.  The goal is to "get it" and you don't know that you got it until it goes down. 

If I was hungry and I wanted to shoot a deer, I would shoot it in the eye from close range with my .22 LR and eat it.  The .22 LR doesn't have the mass or velocity of a .223 and the bullet shape is not ideal.  But it would work, given the right circumstances.

(1) https://www.thetrace.org/2017/06/physic … 0velocity.
(2) https://www.google.com/search?q=velocit … p;ie=UTF-8
(3) https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/rifl … rontier#!/
(4) https://shooterscalculator.com/bullet-k … energy.php

If we wanted to get into terminal ballistics we could be here forever but a few simple points are worth bearing in mind;

The momentum of a projectile is a product of it's mass and it's velocity, it's inertia or resistance to deflection is determined by it's mass. A heavy bullet is less likely to be deflected than a lighter one.

Applied to deer hunting, this means that a heavy bullet is likely to be deflected by a bone and miss the heart that a light one.

The kinetic energy of a bullet is defined by the equation e=1/2m X v X v where m is the mass and v is the velocity. A lighter bullet will tend to give a higher velocity and energy in a given cartridge, but this is not necessarily a good indicator of lethality. The energy is of little value if the bullet is easily deflected or if it disintegrates on impact, so the 220 Swift is not recommended for deer hunting for this reason despite it's high muzzle energy.

A heavier bullet tends to penetrate deeper and do more tissue damage, other things being equal, this is why the .45 ACP is usually considered to be more lethal than the 9mm PB even though they have about the same muzzle energy.

Bullet weight and calibre are obviously closely related, for any given cartridge there are a usually a range of different bullet weights available commercially.

JSouthworth wrote:
If we wanted to get into terminal ballistics we could be here forever but a few simple points are worth bearing in mind;

The momentum of a projectile is a product of it's mass and it's velocity, it's inertia or resistance to deflection is determined by it's mass. A heavy bullet is less likely to be deflected than a lighter one.

Applied to deer hunting, this means that a heavy bullet is likely to be deflected by a bone and miss the heart that a light one.

The kinetic energy of a bullet is defined by the equation e=1/2m X v X v where m is the mass and v is the velocity. A lighter bullet will tend to give a higher velocity and energy in a given cartridge, but this is not necessarily a good indicator of lethality. The energy is of little value if the bullet is easily deflected or if it disintegrates on impact, so the 220 Swift is not recommended for deer hunting for this reason despite it's high muzzle energy.

A heavier bullet tends to penetrate deeper and do more tissue damage, other things being equal, this is why the .45 ACP is usually considered to be more lethal than the 9mm PB even though they have about the same muzzle energy.

Bullet weight and calibre are obviously closely related, for any given cartridge there are a usually a range of different bullet weights available commercially.

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Except you are wrong, so just stop it.

Jesus Christ, man.

Bullet weight and caliber are not closely related.  As you pointed out, 5.56s are loaded from 35 to 70.  A greater. diameter means that a bullet of the same length is going to be heavier, but the weight of the bullet is a choice that can be made. 

Bullets have been designed based on their use.  Since most hunting calibers are adaptations of previously available military weaponry, the caliber and bullet weight had already been determined.  When the 5.56 round under discussion was designed, a requirement was that it could pierce through one side of a U.S. helmet at 500 yards.  "... to develop a .223 caliber (5.56 mm) select-fire rifle weighing 6 lb (2.7 kg) when loaded with a 20-round magazine.[11] The 5.56mm round had to penetrate a standard U.S. M1 helmet at 500 yards" (1)

"Ackley backed up his claim with actual tests on armor plating and live animals complete with pictures. He fired at a U.S. half-track that had 1/2 inch thick armor plating with three calibers, A military round of 30-06 Armor piercing that penetrated only .07 of an inch, a .270 Winchester with high velocity 100 grain bullets that flatened out and a .220 swift factory load with 48 grain bullet at 4,100 fps. The Swift puched right through the 1/2 inch thick armor plate. This astounded even Ackley who therorized that the bullets high rotational spin had a lot to do with penetration. The rotational spin was a fantastic 212,916 revolutions per minute. Sound familier? Fast forward to the U.S. military that went to the 62 grain .223 bullet out of a fast 1 in 7 twist for more drill like penetration of helmets many years later." (2). 

I am not buying the theory that the rotational speed acted like a drill, and given the nonchalant attitude of that particular writer regarding his spelling, I doubt he put in any effort into confirming his supposition, or has the capability to determine if a drilling action was feasible.  (3)
related math:
1” = 0.083333 feet
0.08333/4100’  ft/s = 0.00002033 second to travel 1”
Divided by 2 = 0.000010165 seconds to travel 1/2”
212,916 rotations per minute = 3548.6 per second
0.000010165/3548.6 = 0.000000002818 rotations in 1/2 inch
It didn't drill through the 1/2" armor, it smashed through.


Do you seriously think that a bullet intended to pierce a steel helmet can't pierce a bone in a deer?  The only reason I can't say to you that I have seen deer bones pierced by a .223 is because it ins't legal to hunt with them.  But I'll tell you what, I was in the woods one day last week and I saw a deer skeleton laying there.  I will be back at the same location one day this week.  Tentatively Tuesday.  You tell me which bone to pull and I will take it some place where it is safe to shoot ASAP.  Then I will shoot the bone with a .22 LR and post a photo of it before and after. 

I don't believe a deer rib can withstand a glancing blow by a .223.  I can't prove to you at this point that a deer rib, or femur, can't make a bullet deflect, but let's consider the logic of the relative importance of such a deflection.  Assuming the rib can deflect a bullet, a mature whitetail doe stands less than 3 feet high at the shoulder.  The height from the ground to belly is about 20 inches.  That leaves a chest height considerably less than 16 inches.  The torso is more narrow than it is tall.  The ribs toward the rear are smaller and thinner, so they are less likely to deflect a bullet.  That means the ribs that might deflect a bullet are within inches of the heart.  Do you really think that there is going to be some catastrophic course change that would deflect a bullet up to half the diameter of the heart (or more) in a few inches?  Not to mention, that barely missing the heart does not mean you have missed the lungs or the liver.

In addition to that, as I have explained to you before, that not all hunters, including myself, are aiming for the heart.  I will take a neck shot every single time because that is what years of hunting experience taught me.  As opposed to you, who has never fired a gun; never hunted deer; and has yet to indicate that you have ever killed any type of mammal or bird as a result of an intentional act where you would be a witness to the results.  Maybe you have successfully set a mouse trap. 

You also made some comment about a lighter bullet which "disintegrates on impact."  You think that, because you don't know anything about the differences in bullets. Or bullets in general. I wonder why I can go to the range and see bullets lodged in the wood frames which hold the target.  If they disintegrate on impact against the human body, wouldn't they be more likely to do so against harder objects?  If it is a thinner board that is hit, then why is there an exit hole with splintered wood on the other side?  I also have to wonder why, if bullets disintegrate on impact, I always manage to find the bullet that hasn't passed through an individual deer, and on the rest of the deer, I find an exit wound that is only slightly bigger than the entrance wound.  BTW, the deer I shot with my .357- big caliber, big bullet- did not exit.  I found the bullet just under the skin on the opposite side of entry.   Maybe if you had real world experience? 

Of course, I use ammo that is intended to mushroom as it passes through a body.  The AR rounds under discussion are full metal jackets and that type of bullet retains its shape.  If it is intended to pass through a body without mushrooming, what would make you think it would disintegrate?  Maybe it is because you get your information from piss poor sources?

Try reading this: https://concealednation.org/2017/06/wha … on-impact/

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArmaLite_AR-15
(2) https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?t … uess.4418/
(3) https://bergerbullets.com/the-state-of- … stability/
Note:  Sizes of whitetail deer vary by subspecies food supplies.  My size estimates are based on photos I took at my bird feeder, where I set a gauge to approximate sizes so i could draw deer proportional to other animals and people without having to see them together to judge scale.  Therefore, my size estimates are relative to the deer that are here.