I estimate this deer at 110# live weight. I shot it 1 hour before I left for work, so the autopsy of soft tissue regarding lungs etc. Will have to be verbal. I noted significant blood in the chest cavity upon splitting the sternum. The path through the lung tissue was roughly 1.25-1.5" across. No fragmentation was noted. The damage to the liver was roughly the size of a nickel. Due to the frontal nature of the shot (the deer was very nearly facing me dead on, albeit with his left shoulder and rear hip slightly toward me, the projectile's path through the vitals was not as "text book" as a broadside shot which somewhat limits our ability to ascertain its terminal disruption. However, the projectile seems to have a deep and more narrow wound path with sharp demarcation which indicates good velocity through the target as well as sharp edges, as opposed to a round like the RA556B or similar which adopt a more "blob" shape.) The projectile did not seem to directly impact the spine but did pass very near. He immediately locked up and went down and did not move again. Blood at the site was minimal and mainly from his nose/mouth.
Weapon: 11.5" sbr
Ammo: 70gr tsx
Range: 95m
Estimated impact velocity based on prior 100m chrono data for this weapon and ammo: 2350fps
The projectile retained a weight of 70.0gr, expanded to 0.4562" across at the widest point across petals, and had a length of 0.707". As you can see from the video, expansion performance was text-book, and penetration on game was extraordinary. The entrance shows rapid and violent expansion, and although the spine was not hit, this deer "locked up" and fell in his own shadow.
As a comparison, I fired a 70gr TSX projectile into water jugs (milk jugs) at 100m, and noted that the projectile expanded to 0.473" and had a length of 0.673" and retained 69.9gr weight. It looked identical to the one recovered from the deer, albeit ever so slightly less expanded, indicating that expansion in water may be roughly exaggerated vs game. I'd say by maybe 5-10%, when testing this round. I would simply add 100fps to your expansion testing results in water; for example, if you have tested the round's expansion at an impact velocity of 1800fps in water, you can expect similar performance in game at about 1900fps. This is just a rough estimate.
5 окт 2024
