Pennsylvania Game News - April 2012 - 60

50-caliber Barnes Sabot: BM = 300 grains times 1,621 fps BM = 486,300 pounds-feet 50-caliber Maxi-Hunter: BM = 355 grains times 1,400 fps BM = 497,000 pounds-feet When using the Bullet Momentum formula, it becomes obvious that the greater power is exhibited by the heavier 50-caliber Maxi-Hunter. While this encourages the crowd of heavyTHE AUTHOR’S late season hunt was all about walking bullet aficionados, it still leaves and pushing woodlots and field edges in hopes of moving whitetails. Heavy bullets, including Powerbelts and questions as to whether slow velocity is desirable in a hunting Hornadys replaced patched roundballs. bullet, particularly at ranges a football field or more away. CalCulating Bullet MoMentuM Muzzleloading hunters who have had CalCulating RoundBall Mass experience with the devastating power of a Travel to any sporting goods store and big bore slug of lead know that an ounce of buy a box of roundballs. Their size and lead will drop anything in North America. weight are usually listed right on the box, Even at slow velocities, this mighty chunk so there is no great difficulty in finding of heavy metal will destroy bones, liquefy their kinetic energy, as long as you can internal organs, and penetrate stem to find or measure their velocity. But many stern. So can ballisticians quantify this times, cast roundballs, particularly those awesome power? not of standard sizes, do not have their As already noted, squaring the velocity weights listed. of a bullet exponentially gives more Kinetic Use a caliper to measure the diameter of Energy advantage to high velocity bullets. the roundball and the following equation But high velocity bullets as a matter of will take care of the rest: course, are smaller in diameter and weight. Volume of a Sphere = Diameter times They do not have the stopping power of big Diameter times Diameter (cubed), times lead projectiles. the constant 0.5236, times 2873.5 (the If you believe that the weight of bullets weight of one cubic inch of pure lead in is just as important as velocity, then you grains) need to base your “power” calculations on As an example, take a .550-inch diameBullet Momentum: BM = BW x MV ter roundball used in an old T/C 56-caliber BM is bullet momentum; BW is bullet Renegade Smoothbore. weight in grains; and MV is muzzle velocity VS = (.550 x .550 x .550) times 0.5236, in feet per second. times 2,873.5 grains Unfortunately, one cannot compare VS = (0.166375) x 0.5236 x 2873.5 grains bullet momentum to kinetic energy, but the VS = 0.0871139 x 2873.5 values generated are useful for comparing VS = 250.32179 grains bullets. Let’s look at the same 50-caliber Table 1 shows the exponential increase bullets: in grain weight per volume of lead round50-caliber roundball balls in relation to their diameter: BM = 177 grains times 1,875 fps Notice that doubling the size of the ball BM = 331,875 pounds-feet does not double the weight. A 36-caliber
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Pennsylvania Game News - April 2012

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