I must need some explanations

by bj , Monday, May 15, 2017, 19:59 (2686 days ago) @ rob

Apparently there is a lot of success here, which I don't question, but now I need to understand how it works. Maybe the old wisdom was just wrong.

All of this flies in the face of previous wisdom on bullet performance. To start with it was always said that any small non-expanding bullet wouldn't work. Then cartridges such as .223 were invented for varmint hunting so the bullets in the 50 grain weight were intended to fragment easily and basically not penetrate. And I've always read that 69 grain and higher bullets were made specifically for paper-punching and not made to expand properly for hunting. People have written for a long time that even the .243 Winchester was too small for deer, and the 130 grain bullet in the .270 was the minimum acceptable. And I've also read that you need heavy hard cast bullets in a .45-70 for hog hunting. The bullets that most people shoot out of a .300BO are lightweight bullets made for varmint hunting or use in single shot pistols. I've read forever that the M1 carbine with 110 grain bullet at 2000 fps was very inadequate for deer, but the .300BO with the same 110 grain bullet at 2200 fps is supposed to work like magic.

So now explain how the .223 manages to work for deer. Are there bullets heavier than 50 grains that do expand but hold together well enough to penetrate sufficiently for hunting? Is there enough velocity that non-expanding bullets still deliver sufficient shock?

Then how does the .300 work for hogs? Do you have to only take hits in sensitive areas, avoiding the harder to penetrate stuff surrounding the heart?