Terminal Ballistics

A look at the Last Stop on a Hunting Bullet’s Journey

We ask an awful lot of our bullets, especially those of us who rely on them for self defense or for hunting. We need the bullet to be accurate, we ask it to feed properly from a variety of magazine types, and finally, we want our bullet to perform perfectly once it makes contact with our intended target.
The terminal phase of the bullet – that which begins upon impact with the target and ends upon cessation of forward movement or once it exits the target – is what we’re interested in here. It doesn’t matter what the intended target might be – an African Cape buffalo; that fat, gluttonous woodchuck raiding the vegetable garden; or the 10-point buck of a lifetime – that bullet must do exactly what we need it to do. However, bullets cannot read minds, so we shooters need to help our own cause by choosing the best product for the scenario at hand. I’ll warn you, there are many choices, as well as many correct answers for the same question. However, if we put things into a proper perspective, you’ll be able to make a more informed decision and achieve the desired results.

FIRSTLY, LET’S AGREE on a point: Killing an animal quickly depends on massive destruction of vital organs and tissue. I’ve made an errant shot on an African antelope not much bigger than our deer while using a .416 Remington Magnum, and it ran over 400 yards before we caught up to it to dispatch it.
So a big, heavy bullet in the wrong place doesn’t do a hunter much good, while a smaller bullet in the heart/lungs/brain or other blood-rich vital organ will kill quickly. Some animals seem to be more susceptible to “shock,” while others have a much more subdued reaction to the shot, so there may not be a single bullet that will cover every situation. But we can do our best to choose the best tool for the job at hand.

Generally speaking, match bullets are designed for target work only, as they are constructed with no consideration for the terminal phase. I know hunters who use them for big game hunting with mixed results, so I do not recommend them, no matter the accuracy. I do, for example, frequently employ the Sierra Match King bullets for varmints and smaller furbearers, as they are no more frangible than most varmint bullets and their pinpoint accuracy is welcomed in that realm. But I’m shooting a .223 Remington or .22-250 Remington, and at game the size of a coyote or smaller. They’re hell on woodchucks, foxes and other small critters of that size, and that’s where the use of match bullets in the field ends for me.

For varmints like woodchucks, prairie dogs and the like, there are highly frangible bullets designed for these species. Hornady’s V-Max, Barnes’ Varmint Grenade, Sierra’s Varminter – all of these have very thin copper jackets and are designed to be nearly explosive, giving a very rapid energy transfer.
These animals don’t require a ton of penetration due to their size, and that fast expansion upon impact does all sorts of damage. These bullets are also frangible enough to give proper expansion, even at long ranges when the impact velocities are lower. Want to create the famous “red mist”? Serve a frangible varmint bullet squarely on target at a high velocity and it’ll all be over quickly.

Furbearers are a different story, as many hunters are interested in best preserving the pelt, and two schools of thought are generally followed. First is to use a full metal jacket bullet, as they do not expand and generally leave small entrance and exit wounds. Second is to use a light, highly frangible bullet, which tend not to exit.
I’ve used both and tend to lean on the FMJs, as the number of coyotes in our hunting area far exceeds the number of foxes. Your mileage may vary, but I’ll say that the FMJs do less damage to fur, but the varmint bullets kill faster, especially on larger Eastern coyotes, unless we’re discussing headshots.
Read the rest of this "terminal ballistic" article here.

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A large variety of bullet designs exist, used for different purposes.

This is one of the reasons you cannot know what kind of wound you will get, just from knowing the caliber which was used.

Ballistics

1. Internal: Inside the firearm; pressure, acceleration, muzzle velocity, chamber events

2. External: Bullet in flight; trajectory, air resistance, wind, stability

3. Terminal: Bullet hitting a target

Shooting feral hogs is a entertaining/informative way to experiment with various cartridges and bullet types.

During the years when I was more likely to encounter heavy hogs 300+ lbs, it was 30 calibers and 44 mag pistol.

The rifles were bolt 30-06 and 308 M14 (Norinco). Those two finally settled with Nosler Balistic Tips and Rem Bronze Points. Both had good penitration, expended all their energy quickly and did not deform in the mag due to recoil.

The pistol was more fun to experiment with. With diameter of .429 for most projectiles, the large surface area left the choice to either penitration or expend energy, not both.

After fun with HP's and SP’s, the damage they can do and their limitations I moved on to hard cast. Buddy and I found just one brand and stuck with it…KEAD in 215 grain and 240 grn. out of The Colony, Texas. This was in the mid 90’s. The choice of the weights went to 215 grn which choreographed out of my Red Hawks @1900 fps…no gas check nor leading of barrel. The second fastest 44mag load was my 180grn JHP @1600fps.

With the 215 Grain hard cast KEAD pills, I got complete penitration of hogs with a large hole. Some went down, some ran off through the brush like a dozer running a quarter mile track. Did not care if the ones that ran were not found right then…they were dead from the big wound channel in both sides of them.

Finished chorizos & eggs…

Current times the ranch to the N has been doing better management and runs their pen traps three times a year. Larger hogs get removed and sold to the packing plant. What is left is the little footballs that quickly grow to 75-150 lbs.

Switched over to the Ruger Ranch in 223. Quality commercial loads are 3200 fps and SP’s expend their energy quickly. Currently purchased a case of 1K V-Max, a good neck shot shocks the spinal cord and they go down. With multiple pigs in the kill zone @140 yards, shots are planned with largest first and have about 1 second to hit 1-2 others before they realize they are in danger.

If the larger hogs somehow recovers from the shock, multiple follows up can be placed to keep it down.

On a nice sized Muley in SE WA, with a Model 94 built in 1898:

Hit perpendicularly through both lungs, the .30-30 Remington Core-Lokt stopped at the skin on the far side:

Worked just enough.

Full story here:

https://www.ammoland.com/2025/06/american-gun-culture-be-rich-be-frank/

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