I was just wondering what tests and use any of you have done with various ammo to know what its effects are, especially what they would be on living tissue. I know there are all kinds of charts and such that show foot pounds of energy and so on and even some tests (generally done by the manufacturer or seller of the ammo) that demonstrate what they are supposed to do but I'm interested in what animals or materials you have shot with various rounds and what the effects were. As a couple of examples there is a hand load my dad dose for target shooting with super soft lead hollow based button nosed wad cutters. They are great in that they will NOT ricochet (have shot them flat on water and watched them skip 10 feet then fall back into the water) and expand drastically on impact delivering full energy to the initial thing it hits. I dug a couple out of an oak where it penetrated about 2.5-3 inches and they had expanded to at least 1/2 inch (these were .38 specials) so I had always thought how great these would be as a defensive load since they would deliver full energy without over penetration or ricochet dangers....until I used some to try and put down a couple of pigs. The first time I shot the pig in the head at point blank 3 times before it killed it (did knock it down and stun it the first time) and the third shot had to go under the skull from the back and when I skinned the head found the first 2 slugs flattened to the size of a quarter on the outside of the skull, they had not punched through. So figured out that they were crap for animal killing and would be as useless for a defensive round but a lot of semi wad cutters are excellent. I had always thought that hollow point beat round nose ball ammo hands down no question in any round if you were looking for something to put an animal down. Working at the butcher shop we used a .22 to put the animals down from small pigs to those around 500 pounds and cattle that some times weighed in well over 2000 pounds. The boss bought the ammo and it was normaly just the normal kind of cheap round nose ball ammo, nothing special just plain old .22 lr rounds and as long as we did our part it would put them down with one shot every time and instantly (no matter what you shoot them with they kick out but don't get up if it was effective). One time he accidentally got the wrong ammo and brought in the same brand and similar weight and such as usual but they were hollow points. With the hollow points they would often just bounce off the skulls of the animals and piss them off and until we got the ammo replaced a LOT of the animals were having to be shot 2 or 3 or even 4 times and even then some of them were just stunned enough for one of us to get to them and cut their throats. So the hollow points were FAR LESS effective than the round nose ball ammo. So are there any ammo's that are glorified that you have shot into animal tissue or some other material that you have found are just hype or rounds generally thought of as worthless that you have found extremely effective?
