snake river rufus
New member
If, as some claim, kinetic energy transfers to an animal that animal should move. So How far have you seen an animal move from the bullets strike?
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I'm asking how far the impact of the bullet caused the animal to move, not how far the animal moved under it's own power. Are you saying that the animal you hit was lifted off it's feet and moved more than 6 ft?
According to Mythbusters (and going along with 1 pointer), an animal (deer/ elk etc) will do little more than "flinch" from a bullets impact. Even with a bullet proof vest with a 357 it would not "push" an average person back hardly at all. It would leave one hell of a bruise however. If you are dealing with a bird or gopher, the bullet will do a lot on impact. I had a deer do a big old flip backwards. At the time I thought it was the impact of the bullet...now I know it was dying reflex that caused it flop.
What happens when you shoot a watermelon or a jug full liquid. the energy you see from that is what is absorbed in tissue mass nd organs through out the body.
Flesh does behave similarly to water. Flesh and Bone does not. Most folks usually speak of hydrostatic shock when speaking of the effect of the bullet on lung and heart tissue. The lungs especially behave far different than other bodily tissue and fluids with hydrostatic or hydrodynamic shock as it can and does shred them due to air spaces mixed with fluids. Divers in and around explosions have to worry about similar effect with their lungs and other air filled cavities.Deer and or other big game that flip or apparently gets knocked backward when hit, do so due to muscle reaction and not as a primary effect of the bullet's impact. To gain a better appreciation of knockdown power one needs to read or witness a ballistic pendulum in action.
Kinetic Energy does transfer into an animal upon impact but does so in a splash fashion, radiating, into and even back out from the impact and along the wound channel hence that elongated bell shape we see in ballistic gel. Momentum is much more linear and accounts for the bullets path and deviations as obstructions are hit. Momentum is also transferred but it's value is a far cry from the ft lbs of energy for most loads so it doesn't tend to move a person or larger animal back much at all. Mixing momentum with bullet diameter you can get some fascinating numbers such as the Taylor Knock out factors. A number is the result and indicates the knock out capability of that round agasint a large animal such as Elephant. In other words the bullet misses that small opening in the elephants thick skull and hits major bone, stopping quickly. What's the chance of that impact knocking the elephant to it's knees? The TKO factor gives one man's idea of that.
Randy, there's a way or two that a bullet can knock an animal off it's feet but it's due more to the animals balance or lack thereof, where it's feet were placed at impact, the direction it was moving, how the animal flinches or reacts to the strike and where the bullet struck. In judo we use that principle a lot as if and when you catch someone with no support or weak support under one side or the other it takes very little pressure to dump them. Other than that research and science shows a bullet's energy or momentum can't cause it happen as the size difference prevents it. Well with hunting arms and big game it doesn't happen but as someone above observed take a big bullet and a little squirrel and voila--the squirrel gets knocked for a loop, or at least it's pieces do!