Shotguns vs rifles

[TCinVA]

Never saw that bucket of slush with the 556. 130gr v max from a 270 at 20 yards yes. But then they still ran 50 yards.

Whether heart or lungs they were still easily recognizable and the hearts were still able to be saved when shot with a 556.

Same here. I've tracked, skinned, and dressed a lot of critters over the years and I've never opened one up to find a "bucket of slush" from a rifle round...and that goes from .223 up to .300 Win mag. I've seen plenty of huge blood clots with rifle shots due mainly to the fact that less blood tends to escape from the chest cavity of the animal with the relatively small entrance and exit wounds they cause compared to pass-through bow shots. I've seen clots the size of house cats come sloshing out of the chest cavity on rifle-shot deer when opened up.

Lungs can have holes or tears in it, but they're recognizable as lungs. You see some congealed redness around the holes and tears which is likely at least partially comprised of pulverized tissue, but that's about it.

Typically hearts are perfectly salvageable and relatively intact. It's a tough, thick muscle and I don't see one blown to shreds very often. The one exception was a direct heart shot with a .300 short mag pushing one of the lightest bullets available in that chambering which hit the top of a doe's heart and did effectively shred the top half of the heart to the point that it was just mostly ragged meat. She dropped right where she stood.

[JHC]

Never saw that bucket of slush with the 556. 130gr v max from a 270 at 20 yards yes. But then they still ran 50 yards.

Whether heart or lungs they were still easily recognizable and the hearts were still able to be saved when shot with a 556.

I thought "souped" was a pretty cool descriptor for the lungs after a close range hit with an OTM so I piggybacked on it but I didn't mean literally pure liquid. What I saw was like both lungs scraped out like so much pink scrambled eggs. Nothing was intact like my buckshot picture. I used to use the scrambled eggs analogy to describe it. But that's with the total fragmenting OTM at near muzzle velocity. The others tore big holes through.


When I got the scrambled lungs and shredded heart the doe bolted about 15 yards and ran INTO a tree and hit the ground there.


Speaking of OTM, I have heard mention that the Mk262 developed a very lethal rep in combat albeit not barrier blind.

[TCinVA]

This does make me wonder about how effective those polymer and steel Dupleks expanding slugs really are. I'm turned off by the idea of the petals breaking off, but if you had a slug that expanded just a little bit and deposited virtually all of its energy inside of the thing you were shooting...that'd probably be pretty effective.

Winchester makes a segmented slug that's designed to do exactly that. It breaks into three big chunks in tissue. The area around the tissue where the three segments start going their separate ways is going to get that stretch effect and then once the slug segments are far enough away from each other they're still causing damage by cutting individual wound tracks.



If you wanted to hunt deer with slugs, that'd be the slug I would pick...assuming your gun shoots it well. (Mine don't) As best I recall, it was designed primarily for police use to give slug-like accuracy and accountability without the overpenetration but those same virtues would make it an excellent option for harvesting typical game animals in North America.

I've shot a number of smaller animals with shotguns, primarily with buckshot. There is most definitely something to putting a full ounce on something and I've seen it over and over again.

I was at a class where Rob Haught was a guest. He was showing push/pull (it was actually the first time I'd seen that) and to our surprise a rabid raccoon walked out onto the range in the middle of the day. A bunch of us were standing there with carbines strapped across our chests and we looked at each other and started to get our carbines up.

We were not as quick on target as Rob was with his 870. He put a full load of buckshot on that raccoon.

Now I've shot raccoons with rifles plenty of times. Typically you hit them, they jump up in the air and maybe scramble about a little with their guts hanging out. That's fairly typical of shooting them with a typical .223 round from my Remington 700 varmint gun.

The buckshot literally smeared that critter across the ground. If you put a pea-sized dab of toothpaste on your sink and then press your thumb into it and slide your thumb across the surface, that's what it looked like. It was just a pile of mangled flesh and fur with the occasional bit of stray bloody intestine laying on the ground.

To quote SouthNarc, you don't shoot somebody with a 12 gauge...you smite them.

[mtnbkr]

To quote SouthNarc, you don't shoot somebody with a 12 gauge...you smite them.

Ok, that made me LOL for real.

Chris

[JHC]

Winchester makes a segmented slug that's designed to do exactly that. It breaks into three big chunks in tissue. The area around the tissue where the three segments start going their separate ways is going to get that stretch effect and then once the slug segments are far enough away from each other they're still causing damage by cutting individual wound tracks.



If you wanted to hunt deer with slugs, that'd be the slug I would pick...assuming your gun shoots it well. (Mine don't) As best I recall, it was designed primarily for police use to give slug-like accuracy and accountability without the overpenetration but those same virtues would make it an excellent option for harvesting typical game animals in North America.

I've shot a number of smaller animals with shotguns, primarily with buckshot. There is most definitely something to putting a full ounce on something and I've seen it over and over again.

I was at a class where Rob Haught was a guest. He was showing push/pull (it was actually the first time I'd seen that) and to our surprise a rabid raccoon walked out onto the range in the middle of the day. A bunch of us were standing there with carbines strapped across our chests and we looked at each other and started to get our carbines up.

We were not as quick on target as Rob was with his 870. He put a full load of buckshot on that raccoon.

Now I've shot raccoons with rifles plenty of times. Typically you hit them, they jump up in the air and maybe scramble about a little with their guts hanging out. That's fairly typical of shooting them with a typical .223 round from my Remington 700 varmint gun.

The buckshot literally smeared that critter across the ground. If you put a pea-sized dab of toothpaste on your sink and then press your thumb into it and slide your thumb across the surface, that's what it looked like. It was just a pile of mangled flesh and fur with the occasional bit of stray bloody intestine laying on the ground.

To quote SouthNarc, you don't shoot somebody with a 12 gauge...you smite them.

I thought you alluded to something a few posts ago . . . I think. There has got to be some not fully understood effect of force applied over surface area, i.e. similar energy applied to a pinpoint punching a hole vs a larger surface area. IDK maybe it is well understood by somebody other than me.

[Unobtanium]

Winchester makes a segmented slug that's designed to do exactly that. It breaks into three big chunks in tissue. The area around the tissue where the three segments start going their separate ways is going to get that stretch effect and then once the slug segments are far enough away from each other they're still causing damage by cutting individual wound tracks.



If you wanted to hunt deer with slugs, that'd be the slug I would pick...assuming your gun shoots it well. (Mine don't) As best I recall, it was designed primarily for police use to give slug-like accuracy and accountability without the overpenetration but those same virtues would make it an excellent option for harvesting typical game animals in North America.

I've shot a number of smaller animals with shotguns, primarily with buckshot. There is most definitely something to putting a full ounce on something and I've seen it over and over again.

I was at a class where Rob Haught was a guest. He was showing push/pull (it was actually the first time I'd seen that) and to our surprise a rabid raccoon walked out onto the range in the middle of the day. A bunch of us were standing there with carbines strapped across our chests and we looked at each other and started to get our carbines up.

We were not as quick on target as Rob was with his 870. He put a full load of buckshot on that raccoon.

Now I've shot raccoons with rifles plenty of times. Typically you hit them, they jump up in the air and maybe scramble about a little with their guts hanging out. That's fairly typical of shooting them with a typical .223 round from my Remington 700 varmint gun.

The buckshot literally smeared that critter across the ground. If you put a pea-sized dab of toothpaste on your sink and then press your thumb into it and slide your thumb across the surface, that's what it looked like. It was just a pile of mangled flesh and fur with the occasional bit of stray bloody intestine laying on the ground.

To quote SouthNarc, you don't shoot somebody with a 12 gauge...you smite them.

I think this phenomenon has been discussed other places. Basically, it is the result of a tsc more than encompassing an entire creature. You can see the same thing with crows and other smaller vermin. It results in the kind if mess of which you speak. Shooting a deer up close, for example, would not result in that, or a person, based on things I've seen of hunting and of OISs, etc. Since buckshot is illegal to use for deer in my area, I believe, I wont be trying that one out.

[Unobtanium]

Same here. I've tracked, skinned, and dressed a lot of critters over the years and I've never opened one up to find a "bucket of slush" from a rifle round...and that goes from .223 up to .300 Win mag. I've seen plenty of huge blood clots with rifle shots due mainly to the fact that less blood tends to escape from the chest cavity of the animal with the relatively small entrance and exit wounds they cause compared to pass-through bow shots. I've seen clots the size of house cats come sloshing out of the chest cavity on rifle-shot deer when opened up.

Lungs can have holes or tears in it, but they're recognizable as lungs. You see some congealed redness around the holes and tears which is likely at least partially comprised of pulverized tissue, but that's about it.

Typically hearts are perfectly salvageable and relatively intact. It's a tough, thick muscle and I don't see one blown to shreds very often. The one exception was a direct heart shot with a .300 short mag pushing one of the lightest bullets available in that chambering which hit the top of a doe's heart and did effectively shred the top half of the heart to the point that it was just mostly ragged meat. She dropped right where she stood.

With my 5.56, on deer...

The closest to shooter lung is typically mush, except for a few peripheral aspects of the lobes. The heart typically has a hole blown in it about .40 caliber, with the ventricle wall maybe...maybe not rupturing, as well. The offside lung has a huge hole through it (50 cent piece) and is blood shot significantly, but you can still ID it as a lung and several lobes are usually more or less okay.

Again, I'll take pictures. This deer season is not far off!

[texasaggie2005]

Last two deer I've shot, with Hornady's 75gr TAP T2. It is simply destructive. I wouldn't quite call it soup on the inside, but it is certainly massive internal damage. And the exits were gnarly.

Doe's heart & liver @ 85yds. No pics of the lungs or other internals, but there was definite widespread damage. The exit wound was the size of my fist, threw several ribs. She sprinted ~10-15yds and then piled up dead.




2017's buck exit wound. This one was a bit weird. Presented me a perfect standing broadside at 90-100yds. First shot glanced off a rib (I'm guessing, as he was perfectly perpendicular to me) and absolutely destroyed his left shoulder joint, no exit. I lost that whole shoulder to bone and bullet fragments. He started to slowly limp into the treeline, so I put a second shot into him before I lost him. Probably 3 seconds between shots. Second shot entered within an inch of the first shot, went straight thru heart & lungs, doing incredible internal damage. Both shot's damage combined was shocking. I couldn't differentiate between bullet paths. He died less than a body length away.

[RevolverRob]

I actually think folks are talking past each other right now without realizing it.

In my experience adult white tail deer come in two sizes, “moderate front end damage” and “totaled”. Somewhere around middle-Tennessee in terms of latitude average deer size increases. A “small” buck in Illinois or Wisconsin would be 150-pounds dressed. An average sized animal will be ~180 pounds. I’ve never seen a Texas white tail exceed 150-pounds dressed.

The point I’m making is - literally the performance difference folks are seeing could be related to the mass of the animal in addition to the shot placement.

I was at a nature preserve a few weeks ago. As we walked along the biggest damned 12-point buck I’ve ever seen wandered out 30-feet in front of us. I would guess he would have been 200-220 pounds dressed. And though the distance was close, I don’t think the .45 ACP HSTs I had on me, or a .30-30 loaded with FTX, a 12-gauge slug, or a 5.56 would have turned his internals into soup. But at that distance any of those would have worked with proper shot placement.

[Aray]

The idea that one round of 5.56 of any design is as capable (or more so?) as 1 oz of buckshot at stopping a 150-200 pound critter/threat at interior room distances is absolutely absurd.