Bullet selection for hunters -I

LUTZ MOELLER

To select an appropriate bullet for certain game is easy, once the hunter understands, how the bullet interacts with the given target, and further how its outcome, the wound, effects the prey.

Syncerus Caffer

Shot placement is the one most important key
to successfully hunt game!

Shot placement is the hunters overwhelming key cause for a clean kill, saving the game from undue hurt, yielding short flight lengths and high quality meat for food. So while we will talk now a lot about bullets, ballistics and alike, the concerned hunter shall  familiarize with live, death, shot placement and wound ballistic of its game. His most important task is to learn about games the inner build at all angles to develop an inner picture about where to hit. Then the hunter needs close to real life field condition circumstances, load his rifle and practice a lot over and over again.

How dies live game from a shot?

Live depends on all organs meaningful cooperation. The brain organizes such vital task. To disturb the brain so much to loose control over body functions causes death. To die, the brain must be stopped, to pursue his task.

Chamber shot

Most hunters are used aim at their living targets chamber, the room in which the lung breathes air to gather oxygen and exhausts carbon dioxide,  the hearts pumps the oxygen refreshed blood into the body. Animals use some fuel (adenosine triphosphat) plus oxygen to perform all vital functions from nerves over muscles and so forth. To stop its delivery stalls the system. When a hunters shoots two holes into the chamber (one small hole inwards and a larger outwards) the muscle actuated ribs and the diaphragm, that separates the chamber from the other organs in belly, fail to actuate the lungs: pneumothorax! The lungs fall in themselves together, cannot pump any more air, so the heart (when not hit) pumps only unrefreshed blood to the body and the brain. The brain may work from its oxygen reserves another 15 seconds or so, until the oxygen lack disturbs the brain function so far, that the game looses consciousness, that is control, falls and subsequently dies. Make no mistake here. The last 15 seconds are filled with anger and action. The game will still be able to act, that is flee or attack. A Roe deer (capreolus capreolus)  flees a good 100 m with such a shot, a wild boar (sus scrofa) runs double far, 200m.

So just a lung shot, even while perfectly targeted and hit is a far cry from a quick clean kill.

Heart shot

Red Stag, Cervus Elaphus, hit on 150 m with a 6 g FMJ 6,5 mm bullet out of a 6,5 x 68. The bullet entered the heart just half way!

As the heart lies within the chamber, every heart shot is also a chamber shot. So two wounds add their effects. In case you aimed at the heart (Where lies the heart in your specific game? Do you know from all angles?) and your shot bullet was able to penetrate so deep to fulfil its destructive task  there, a new wound effect appears: Blood loss, with subsequent blood pressure loss! When the heart or some major blood vessels is or many, many minor blood vessels are ruptured, bloods flows into the chamber, where it not belongs and not helps any use there. As the blood spills unused into the chamber, it is missed, where needed. The smallest, from the heart farthest away, tubes need the most blood pressure to yield ample flow. The brain is such an organ, far away and supported by big, small and smallest tubes. When the blood pressure drops fast far, (medical term: hydro vascular shock) less to no more oxygen reaches the brain. As above: consciousness is lost, control fares, the animal dies. There is an difference between just a chamber shot, less heart hit, and a well aimed, successful heart shot, for the hunter. Time! A good heart shot yields the final brain oxygen loss much faster, than just a perforated chamber with lung collapse, maybe in less than 10 seconds. The consciousness loss comes even quicker. In practical hunters terms runs a Roe deer, less heart, or less blood pressure only 30 m, against one with pumping heart for 100 m. Shot placement is key to success! Later on in bullet selection we shall discuss, how you may warp a meagre chamber shot (maybe on very long distance)  into a effective heart shot, less better aiming. There are some little secrets to be discovered.

Spine shot

To execute control the brain needs a path to flow information downwards to the body. That central information way is the spinal cord, or nerve. Nerves are delicate. The need to be sheltered from disturbance. That is why transportation lie for long stretches inside bones, or, in the case, inside a bone chain, the spine. To cut the information flow from brain to the body, mainly the willing muscular movement control, plus heart and lungs, off, shall cause instant, undelayed  chaos with subsequent, lung-heart-stop, final brain oxygen loss, that is death. Cut the games spinal nerve and it is grounded! But where to place the shot? Well, the shot must be placed between the brain and the heart, so somewhere in the neck. When You cut the spinal nerve at the animals rear, only the parts lower (viewed as distant down from the brain) dysfunction, maybe lamed, crippling the rear legs, but leave the front intact. It may not move, but still feels pain. Avoid it!

The spinal nerve is only about a centimetre thick. So is such small target only suitable for artist shooters? Not quite so. As first the spinebonechain shelter the spinal inside ,  and, second, is pressure sensitive, such combination create the spinal cord a larger target. Knock the spine with your bullet and you knock the spine. Even the surrounding flesh resists a shot heavily, transferring the induced movement to the spine, then to the spinal nerve, so that any neck hit, shall immediately stop meaningful information flow through the nerve and hence ground the game.

Liver knot shot

A musculous diaphragm separates the heart lung chamber from the other organs like liver, stomach, intestines and such. Besides the ribs, the diaphragm actuates the lungs. The liver hangs on the diaphragm rear side. Not rectangular aiming at the animals side, but in a sharper angle of say 30 to 45°, you may try to hit just the liver diaphragm joint, the so called “liver knot”. A thorough knowledge about the games inner build-up, the inner organs location, should help You imagine the bullet path through the body. A well placed liver knot shot is kind of a hat trick. Assuming one shoots 45° from the front. The bullet enters behind the forelegs through the ribs into the chamber, thereby punctuating it, causing lung collapse, only minorly damaging  the lung, usually not hitting the heart. The bullet hits the diaphragm though.

Do You remember passed time adolescent brawls, when some unfriendly one hit You on the “Sunspot” (solar plexus), on Your belly just below the ribs above the stomach, there Your diaphragm lies? Your breathing went out of order and You fell, didn't You. The diaphragm not only actuates the lung. It also feeds its action, the encountered pressure, back to the brain. The bullet hits so much stronger, than usual input, that the nerve sensation disorders the feedback.

Next the bullet opens the diaphragm, again adding another cause for lung collapse. Then it hits the liver. Unlike the air filled light and compressible lung, the liver is filled with blood heavy, so being heavy as flesh or water. The bullets impact partly destroys the liver. The liver is a larger organ in the blood circulation, fairly well pumped. So its injury yield quite some blood loss, yielding blood pressure loss, yielding brain deoxygenation, consciousness loss, thereafter brain death. The bullet may even travel further to leave the body via a larger hole, that drips blood in larger quantities, good hints for the searching hunter with dog, in the unlikely case the game is not immediately grounded.

Table: Full-strength values for usual bullet stuff