Good shooting and thanks for sharing.
I agree the squirrel should have been drt but sometimes they do not give up as easily. I used my 25 caliber P35 to take 17 squirrels this year with H&N FTTs - simple domed pellets. 10 were head/neck shots and 7 were body shots. None of the head/neck shots ran but 2 of the body shots did. They might have gone 15 feet, probably less. One was up high looking over an existing drey when I hit it in the front shoulder. Pellet ended up under the skin close to the other side back leg. Still ran down the tree before dropping dead. Another was only about 4 feet off the ground on top of a bird feeder. I hit it in the front of the chest and it again traveled the length of the body ending up under the hide at a back leg. Neither squirrel got a broken bone from the impact. The low squirrel dropped to the ground and ran at least 10 feet through my yard and just made it through the chain link fence were it expired. These were two of the three that the pellet did not exit. The other one went front shoulder to front shoulder breaking both. That one did not run. I think all 5 body shots where they did not run had broken bones and I know the other 4 had exit holes. I think those factors help. But some just seem to be hardier than others. The difference between a heart/lung shot with broken bones to one without is only fractions of an inch. I go for body shots when my rest is not as steady so placing the shot that precisely is not reasonable to expect. As long as I hit the vitals I figure I did my part and if they run a few feet, they run a few feet.
Not everybody agrees but I like exit holes. I don't think I've had one run with an exit hole. I know the 2 with the P35 didn't have one. I have not looked over my Prod data to be sure that was the case with it too. But it had a lot more that did not exit. Even though much lower in power, it did not have many runners, once I upped the power to 16-17 fpe. I didn't have any run off with the higher power.
That is excellent information Jim, thanks so much for sharing.
There has been a lot of discussion about how effective a shot is if it passes through and if it stays in game 'dumping all of the energy'. I'm not a ballistics scientist by any means, but I am an engineer, which means I just can't help but try to find some correlation.
I have found the exact same thing as you did with the broken bones theory when shooting groundhogs. I have dropped several with broadside shots right on the shoulder with my Benjamin Bulldog and Polymags, so I was trying to understand why that worked so well, when my 110gr NSA slugs zipped right through and the groundhog took off like a track star. I think when you put rounds into the shoulder, you cause an instant shock to the spinal column, as they are connected directly together in most all mammals. Additionally, since animals usually run forward, breaking both shoulders kinda knocks their wheels out from under them. Also, if you break a shoulder, you round's trajectory is right in the boiler room. With this, you take out the skeletal, nervous, respiratory and circulatory systems in one shot! The nice thing about that shot also, is if you miss half of those systems, you still will take out two of the systems, which still ensures a quick ethical kill.
When it comes to the point of energy dump and is it better to have a passthrough, it gets more complicated. Physics says you cannot destroy energy, only transfer it. If a round passes completely through game, then the energy from the round is not transferred to the game. I think having a round not passthrough the game is the best for energy transfer,
but this only matters if the round has a significant amount of energy to transfer in the first place! If the round is at a lower energy level,
I believe it is more beneficial for the round to completely pass through, as this gives more opportunities to destroy the
skeletal, respiratory, nervous and circulatory systems. So how much energy needs to be maintained in an animal to be effective? I don't know! So I will come up with a hypothesis, and we'll see if it holds water.
The Small Quarry Airgun Energy Retention for Acute Disability (
SQAERAD), pronounced scared
:
- An airgun shot needs to transfer energy in foot pounds, 7-21x the weight of the animal.
- Lighter quarry needs a higher energy multiplier than heavier game.
- A two pound squirrel may need around 40 pounds of energy retention, or 21x.
- A twenty pound raccoon may need only 160 pounds of energy retention, or 8x.
- Energy transfer at these levels require ammunition that greatly expands on impact to prevent full passthroughs.
- This energy transfer will cause damage to the four life supporting systems in game: Skeletal, Respiratory, Nervous and Circulatory, with a primary focus on the circulatory system.
- Shots are limited to bodyshots, as headshots completely destroy the brain, making energy transfer disability unnecessary.
- The quarry will be disabled in an immediate or near immediate time span (less than 5 seconds).
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