Prior to the introduction of magnum cartridges, muzzle energy was not the hot topic of conversation that it is today. In fact, many riflemen of the era didn't even know what it was, while others, who knew what it was, dismissed it as unimportant.
Writing in 1948, the famed African hunter John "Pondoro" Taylor stated that energy was "surely the most misleading thing in the world -- where rifles are concerned. Gunsmiths invariably quote it because, particularly since the advent of the Magnum, it is decidedly flattering to their weapon."
Taylor quite likely killed more big game animals, including dangerous game, than any half-dozen men you're likely to meet today combined. And he was writing at a time when nearly all of the important standard velocity cartridges, and many of the larger magnums, were already in widespread use. Why then was he so dismissive of what many riflemen today accept as gospel: that muzzle energy is the single most important determining factor in ranking the killing power of the various calibers?
"Muzzle energy is far too dependent upon velocity and tends to ignore bullet weight," he wrote.
In researching the question, I cracked open a dog-eared copy of Jack O' Connor's "The Rifle Book" to see what he had to say about muzzle energy. Not too much, as it turned out. O'Connor, often regarded as the Godfather of the "lighter bullet, higher velocity" school of thought, saw the advantages of such a combination purely from the perspective of achieving a flatter trajectory and longer effective range.
This made sense, as O'Connor did much of his hunting in the Rocky Mountains and open plains of the west. While 200-yard shot was a very long one for Taylor, O'Connor regularly killed game at twice that distance. Two philosophically different hunters involved in two completely different kinds of hunting and, judging by their writings, neither man put much stock in ME as a way of comparing the performance of different rifle cartridges.
While each wrote extensively about muzzle velocity, bullet construction and other ballistic aspects of the sport, muzzle energy was apparently nowhere on their radar. In O'Connor's book, the phrase doesn't even appear in the index.
Which is rather the point. Today's shooters are led to believe that energy is the main determinant for some mythical "knock down" power that conveniently fails to take bullet weight, design, sectional density and, most importantly, proper placement into account. Of course nothing could be further from the truth.
ME is purely a theoretical construct, and a poorly designed one at that. When measured in foot-pounds, kinetic energy is supposed to represent the amount of force required to move something of a specific weight a distance of one foot. While the old .25-20 WCF cartridge is listed on ballistics tables as generating 407 foot-pounds of muzzle energy, my experiments in rock shooting over the years have shown the round to be incapable of moving a piece of granite weighing one-twentieth that amount a distance of one foot. Or one inch, for that matter.
Still, when Winchester introduced it in 1893, the .25-20 was advertised as a deer cartridge, and surviving records show the pipsqueak round downed many whitetails, black bear and even elk before hunters got wise.
While energy calculations may be of some value in comparing various loads in a single caliber, they can be worse than useless when comparing different calibers and different hunting situations. To illustrate the point, let's examine a couple of rounds, one being a wildly popular high velocity round in wide use today and the other being an outmoded and forgotten dinosaur.
The .243 Winchester fires a 95 gr. spitzer bullet at 3100 fps in one popular "big game" load, producing 2021 ft. lbs. of muzzle energy in the process. Although even O'Connor classified the .243 as a varmint round and pronounced it unsuitable for deer or antelope with any weight bullet, many thousands of hunters arm themselves with it and kill an inordinate number of such animals every year.
On paper, the .243 also stacks up great against an old behemoth like, say, the .303 Savage, which launches its flat-nosed 190 gr. slug at just 1980 fps and achieves a paltry 1650 ft. lbs. of energy at the muzzle. The uninformed observer might further note that the big old round is obsolete, meaning it isn't loaded by any of the major ammunition producers anymore, and that rifles chambered for it haven't been manufactured in many years.
Based on this alone, it would be easy to conclude that the .243 is the far better game getter in most, if not all hunting applications. And as with most easy conclusions, this particular one would be wrong.
A lot of factors may have played a role in the ascent of the .243 and the casting aside of the .303 Savage, but muzzle energy shouldn't have been one of them. Clearly, at ranges of less than 150 yards, where trajectory isn't much of a factor, a hit from a 190 gr. flat nose slug is going to have a far more devastating effect than any pointy 95 gr. pellet, regardless of how fast it's traveling.
At those ranges, and on game weighing more than 125 pounds, a well-placed shot from the old .303 beats a well-placed shot from the .243 every time.
Think about it. While neither caliber would be appropriate for dangerous game, if you found yourself suddenly and uncomfortably up close and personal with a grizzly bear, would you feel better with the .303 or the .243 standing between you?
Out past 200 yards, the .303's rainbow trajectory takes its toll, and the heavy and less than aerodynamic shape of its bullet compound the debilitating effect of gravity. It is only then that the flat-shooting characteristics of the .243 come into play and, again, it has nothing to do with energy.
Such comparisons could be made all day, and are not meant to denigrate the many fine sportsmen who have chosen the .243, or any other caliber, as suitable for their purposes. They are used merely to point out the fallacy of using muzzle energy -- or any other purely theoretical consideration -- as some kind of be all and end all when it comes to killing power.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 26 2008 |