“... we are dealing with live animals,, where the medium is not the same 100% of the time.”
----contender
*****
As sparring matches go, this discussion of revolver bullet performance is almost shamefully civil. It sheds light as it draws disparate experience. In the world of guns, the DECLARATIVE STATEMENT has magnetic appeal, as it projects authority. However, truth can get trampled. For example, to say “a brain shot kills instantly,” is a declarative statement. And it is untrue. There are so manny qualities within anatomy, and especially of species and individual size & musculature, with so many variations in strength, stamina, and composure at the moment of trauma, that to subscribe wholeheartedly to a predictable outcome may expose one to overconfidence.
This thread is wholesome and illuminating. And entertaining. Perhaps thanks to strong participants, this thread has not degenerated into innuendo.
Hell, I was content to listen with zipped lip. That is, until a bombastic claim is raised for the upside down Hollow Base Wadcutter .38 as a black bear defense. First of all, the first line of defense against a black bear is to
not run, but to face it and speak with a strong voice. This from Ben Kilham, America’s foremost authority on black bears. (As Kilham says, there have been 75 fatal black bear attacks recorded in the past 100 years, with 80 or 85% of those attacks by males. Not females!) Back to the .38 Special Hollow Base Wadcutter, loaded upside down for maximum SPLAT. Let’s look at the quote: “I load a hollow base wadcutter backwards over 4 to 4.5 grains of Bullseye. I once shot a bear with this load, he entered Valhalla within about 50 feet.”
Makes me wonder what size bear “he” was. Brings to mind a “he” bear I chanced to nurse this past winter. He weighed about 8 pounds, one of a number of orphaned cubs in the care of Ben & Debbie Kilham, and Ben’s sister Phoebe, bears to be released once mature enough.
At the risk of declarative statement, a hollow base wadcutter exhibits a tendency to break into two or three sometimes four pieces. If you are going to load this bullet for self defense, might as well load it as the advocate recommends----upside down. To load in the conventional bullseye manner, with hollow base toward powder, risks blowing off the skirt with anything stiffer than the most anemic charge. But to turn it around, mouth forward, guarantees a SPLAT with little penetration. Beside deficit penetration and potential for fragmenting, a ramped charge of Bullseye is a good way to spring a chamber.
David Bradshaw