Larger diameter bullets allow more room for error?

[gohring3006]

I might be way off topic, (I didn't read all the post.)
But I look at it as taking a 243 and shooting a deer in the shoulder, and taking a 50 cal and hitting it the same area. Which one opened up the margin for recovery.

 

[Ol' Red]

So I have heard this said multiple times on multiple threads. Do larger diameter bullets really allow more room for error?

I am genuinely curious what everybody's opinion is. Lets talk elk and deer calibers, no need to bring up the 50 BMG.

For example, do you guys believe bullets in 308 expands the kill zone in a game animal vs a 264 or 284?

Edit: I have always believed that energy at impact is king given equal bullet construction, not bullet diameter. Therefore if a 284 or 264 bullet arrives at the elk or deer with the same energy as a 308 caliber bullet I believe the difference in performance would be immaterial. Is bullet diameter really king?

I am not sure I buy into it...what are your thoughts?

*I edited this to take out specific cartridges and focus on bullet diameter. Trying to avoid cartridge bias:)

A bad shot is a bad shot, no matter the bullet size. That being said, I would not hunt elk with a .223. Because even a good shot with too small a caliber makes no sense.

 

[bigngreen]

I've shot elk with 223, 22-250, various 6.5's, 270's, 7mms, 300 Win, 300 WBY, 7 RUM, 338 RUM, and 45-70 loaded to bolt action specs.
If I had videos of all the elk I've hit and you didn't know the chambering or range you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. A soft point 60gr in the 22 cals is actually surprisingly effective inside 300 yards, through the slats and so far they exit every time, I use a 223 Varmintmaster with kids often for elk and they drive tacks with it.
As I go up in cal I can gain range and I can broaden bullet construction and shot placement to a point and get the same effects.
If you pick shooting them broadside or quartering away, dead is dead with anything that makes it to the of side, target shoulder shots or quartering to and you have to use just enough to get an open bullet to the of side and IMO that's going to take the heaviest 30 cal or larger to do consistently. If your shooting them in the brown eye a large 338 or the 45 with a 520 gr solid does it well too.
The one thing for normal ranges I've seen that I'd call a wrecking ball on elk is the 45-70 ran at red line with a 300 gr hollow point, I've never shot an elk and not just seen legs kicking when I recovered from recoil, what's funny is that if I ran 350+ gr none hollow points and shot a deer they would run FOREVER, I pumped a mag full into a doe at 50 yards while she walked up a creek and I ran back to the truck and returned with a 22lr and she was still walking up the creek and it popped her.
I've shot a good number of whitetail with a 22lr right behind the shoulder and it's excellent, same with shooting Mt lions, 22lr or 22 mag to the heart/lungs trump a 44 mag.
Just so many variable to make a definitive statement out side what you see for yourself over multiple kills, an animal being able to hit fight or flight mode changes things also, I don't shoot elk until they are down, if I saw the hit was quality I let them run a little, they always stop then decide they are dead, keep shooting and they have a freakish ability to deside they aren't dead.

 

[Tony Formicola]

So I have heard this said multiple times on multiple threads. Do larger diameter bullets really allow more room for error?

I am genuinely curious what everybody's opinion is. Lets talk elk and deer calibers, no need to bring up the 50 BMG.

For example, do you guys believe bullets in 308 expands the kill zone in a game animal vs a 264 or 284?

Edit: I have always believed that energy at impact is king given equal bullet construction, not bullet diameter. Therefore if a 284 or 264 bullet arrives at the elk or deer with the same energy as a 308 caliber bullet I believe the difference in performance would be immaterial. Is bullet diameter really king?

I am not sure I buy into it...what are your thoughts?

*I edited this to take out specific cartridges and focus on bullet diameter. Trying to avoid cartridge bias:)

Please forgive me if this is redundant as I wish to respond to the OP without reading all 22 pages. My Opinion, based on actual experience killing over 100 head of big game is that the bullet energy delivered, weight and construction are much more important than just the diameter. I believe in going out with enough gun. If I have gone through all of the planning, expense and work to get a shot at an animal I want to stack the deck in my favor. I want to be confident that a straight on or quartering to shot will drop my elk, deer, etc. So I base my choice of cartridge, caliber, bullet and load on this concept. A heavier bullet is going to have more mass which allows it to hold together better to create a longer/deeper wound channel. The closer shots are where you can get in the most trouble with bullets coming apart on a bone.
I recently killed a bull elk at 200 yards with a 168 grain Barnes TTSX sent at 2750 from a 30/06. Although the exit hole was half the size of a dime the elk only went 30 yards. I've also killed an elk at 377 yards with a 270 Weatherby and a 150 grain barnes. The bullet entered the right rear hind quarter and was found intact just under the hide on the left front shoulder. So I guess a 150 grain .277" bullet will kill and elk even with poor shot placement and some luck.

 

[shooterRon]

Everybody seems to be hitting the nail on the head, but maybe I can summarize it.

A 6.5 may expand to .338, but a .338 ain't getting smaller.

 

[shooterRon]

This is my first post although I have been keeping up with LRH for a while. I would like to add my 2 cents on the issues of bullet lethality on game. I believe that if an animal (deer or elk) is aware of your presence and gets amped up---getting a big surge of adrenalin-- it will take more to put it down than if it is totally unaware of any danger. I have seen elk hit and hit hard with a large .30 cal. round while amped and they were able to cover considerable ground before going down, while others who were totally unaware and at ease were hit well with smaller rounds were DRT. All I am trying to inject into the conversation is that on any hunt at any given time, there is more to what bullets drops an animal the quickest. By the way, I did not list specific calibers so as not to lead this conversation to a "what caliber is the best for elk or deer."

 

[dfanonymous]

I read this entire thread from page 1-22. Thanks guys, I think I have suicidal indeations now.

 

[MagnumManiac]

The simple fact of the matter as to WHY large calibres do not kill any better than smaller one's is due to bullets kill by disrupting tissue vital to life.
Bullets do not kill by energy transfer, if they did, a hit CLOSE to the vitals/CNS/arteries would result in instant death EVERY time. This simply doesn't happen unless the CNS is disrupted directly.
The simple fact is that a bullet that 'blows up' doesn't kill because it hasn't disrupted tissue vital for life, regardless of the fact that ALL of it's kinetic energy was transferred to the animal. Simply doesn't work with energy transfer. PERIOD.

Cheers.

 

[Tony Formicola]

The simple fact of the matter as to WHY large calibres do not kill any better than smaller one's is due to bullets kill by disrupting tissue vital to life.
Bullets do not kill by energy transfer, if they did, a hit CLOSE to the vitals/CNS/arteries would result in instant death EVERY time. This simply doesn't happen unless the CNS is disrupted directly.
The simple fact is that a bullet that 'blows up' doesn't kill because it hasn't disrupted tissue vital for life, regardless of the fact that ALL of it's kinetic energy was transferred to the animal. Simply doesn't work with energy transfer. PERIOD.

Cheers.

Agreed! A solid 6mm bullet that holds together and gets to vital organs beats a .338 bullet the splats on a shoulder bone! Bullet selection is number one! Velocity at the target dictates bullet selection.

 

[Bravo 4]

I shot a doe at about 126 yards with a .440 Round ball. She dropped like a ton of bricks.

I've shot deer with round balls from a muzzle loader that must have been pretty soft lead and expanded wildly! That was the opposite of what I experienced with the hard cast .45 cal. I prefer something in between.

 

[Raudy707]

I have to agree with a lot of the guides opinion's on this thread, bigger does kill better and allows for slight error's but not egregious ones. I also guided 9 years for big game, deer, elk, bears and hogs and ignoring all physics and energy the bigger the hole the harder it is to plug, the more tissue damage and the animal died. Having witnessed over 200 animals harvested I did a lot more tracking on animals that were hit marginally with a 243, 257 and 6.5 mm calibers than I did with 270, 7mm and 30 cal. Why? I don't know scientifically, but I never recommend a 243 for a youth hunter, I always recommend a 7mm-08. I've also slayed the myth that a bullet that goes in and stays in is better than one that exits. This again goes in the face of "energy kills animals" but just in my experience over 30 years and seeing a ton of animals harvested I don't buy into the ft-lbs magic numbers. Two holes are always better than one! The further a bullet travels in an animals body, the more tissue damage, the more lethal it is. Period. Entry holes don't bleed like exit wounds. Exit wounds are difficult to plug up with fat, or hide or feed, but entry holes seal up pretty consistently in large animals. I have a 243 but consider it an experts rifle not a youth hunters caliber. I use a 257 Roberts and 6.5 (260 Rem) on my little blacktail deer and I can't tell you that one is a better killer than the other, but I have lost gut shot deer from those calibers where I recovered the same type of wound from a slow 308 Marlin Express or 32 Special. I feel bullet selection is far more important than energy. I'll take bullet placement, bullet selection and then momentum of a large heavy projectile as the top 3 killers to game animals. Again, this is just a hillbilly's opinion that has seen 100's of animals die, so this is purely from empirical data and doesn't follow scientific numbers. I would consider my opinon objective as I do hunt and own several smaller calibers regularly each year. Do I recommend my 260 Rem for elk hunting? No. For my kids, who are now 18 and 20 and have killed collectively over 20 mule deer and elk, I have my daughter shoot a 7mm-08 with a 150 grain Partition's and my son a 7mm magnum with 160 grain Accubonds. We've never lost an animal, but we don't shoot over 500 yards at big game animals. So the placement is typically good, the bullet type works well from zero to 500 yards and the majority are pass through's which equals maximum tissue damage and beating a dead horse I believe 2 holes let's the air out of a balloon faster than one. So I will agree, on marginal hits, bigger bullets can kill better than a smaller bullets.

 

[Bravo 4]

The simple fact of the matter as to WHY large calibres do not kill any better than smaller one's is due to bullets kill by disrupting tissue vital to life.
Bullets do not kill by energy transfer, if they did, a hit CLOSE to the vitals/CNS/arteries would result in instant death EVERY time. This simply doesn't happen unless the CNS is disrupted directly.
The simple fact is that a bullet that 'blows up' doesn't kill because it hasn't disrupted tissue vital for life, regardless of the fact that ALL of it's kinetic energy was transferred to the animal. Simply doesn't work with energy transfer. PERIOD.

Cheers.

What about this...wouldn't a larger diameter bullet disrupt more tissue than a small one of the same genetic makeup if the impact velocity was the same? Or wouldn't that same larger bullet have more momentum to penetrate and make a larger (deeper) wound channel? I'm not talking about a 150 grain 6mm and 150 grain .308, I mean same form and such.
Just keeping the conversation going.

 

[Deleted member 103481]

P=mv so yes more mass at the same velocity would have more momentum.

 

[Bravo 4]

Agreed! A solid 6mm bullet that holds together and gets to vital organs beats a .338 bullet the splats on a shoulder bone! Bullet selection is number one! Velocity at the target dictates bullet selection.

I can understand where you're coming from, but is that a good comparison to what this thread is about? What about an "explosive" 6mm compared to an "explosive" .338? Which one would cause more damage? Which one would you rather have on an elk/deer? I also get it if you said neither!:D