Perspective on Bullet Performance

[denton]

As I'm reading, and thinking about the good stuff that has been posted, it seems to me that a few things must be true:

The bullet must expand enough to make a big enough hole. Big enough means enough to quickly disrupt any organ it passes through.

The longer the hole is, the higher the probability that the wound channel will intersect an organ that will quickly bring the animal down. This works up to the point that the path exits the animal. The ability to tear a four foot path through a ground hog is irrelevant.

Grand Slams and Partitions make longer holes than standard bullets. Monometals make longer holes than that, and hole length is practically independent of impact speed.

Monos will take a large bone hit, and keep on truckin'.

The original monometal bullet was a lead ball. (Just keeping you awake!)

I think that it follows that a premium bullet will help considerably in a case where the gun is light for the task, and won't help much at all if you are already using plenty of gun. Or, as Rocky says, they will hang together better if you are shooting at very high speeds, where conventional bullets show less penetration.

I don't know if I'm quite ready to cough up $109 for a box of 100 GSCustom HV's, but they are looking more and more attractive. I might splurge and get some Barnes X while thinking about it. I'm kinda leery of the TSX... don't like the thought of an undersized bullet.

Remember, my original train of thought was what to do with my 243... hunt pronghorn or not. If I were using an '06 for prongers, then any old garden variety, accurate bullet would be fine. My issue is making sure a relatively light gun has enough to get the job done.

Dutch: I have the first 8 burros rounded up. Can we keep them at your place?