I fixed a minor bug in Field Ballistics. The new version is 1.1.1.0. It is available on the Windows Phone store now.
The bug was that under certain situations you could delete the last target. Other places in the app required that at least one target exist at all times. After deleting the last target the app would immediately crash.
As a side note: I submitted the changed version Sunday evening. It made it through Microsoft certification in less than three days.
Got some pictures, some are kind of graphic – if you don’t like images of meat processing or bullet holes, don’t click. Continue reading
When it has a spectacularly successful bullet failure. Continue reading
I released a new version of Field Ballistics for Windows Phone earlier this week and it made it through Microsoft’s test gauntlet this morning.
Here are the changes in version 1.1:
A crash that occurred when measuring inclines has been fixed.
Auto conditions retrieves air pressure from the weather service and allows manual input of air pressure independent from altitude for user defined conditions.
Target range can now be set in the range edit box in addition to moving the target push pin on the map.
Herra Kuulapaa has some really cool high-speed photos of guns being fired. I don’t want to take his art without permission, but they are pretty good. Pistols, revolvers, AKs, differences in powder, muzzle-breaks and not, pretty good selection.
I found what appears to be a minor bug in some Windows Phone 8 devices.
It showed up in my Field Ballistics program. I have code that looks like this:
// Can we focus only on the target?
if (this.cam.IsFocusAtPointSupported)
{
this.cam.FocusAtPoint(0.5, 0.5);
}
else
{
this.cam.Focus();
}
On someone’s phone this raised a “System.InvalidOperationException” on the call to “FocusAtPoint”.
What appears to have happened is that the phone reports IsFocusAtPointSupported as “true” but doesn’t actually support it. It’s not all that big of deal but it does mean I’ll be releasing an update a little sooner than I had planned.
He probably complied too much, and should have stood his ground on the “Am I being detained” part. I don’t know what I will do when my time comes, but I have been through a similar incident before and it left a bad taste in my mouth. In that case I was in fact in violation, by having studded tires after the deadline for removing them. If I were totally innocent, who knows what would happen? I’ve seen the dog trick before too. It’s bullshit. I do know for sure that I will be asking the criminal posing as a cop to get out a pad and pencil and jot down “18 USC 241” and “18 USC 242” and informing him that he is putting himself at risk for prosecution.
A dashcam would be a good investment about now, to document the crimes committed by corrupt police, if for no other reason than posterity, so future generations can see how and when our republic fell into the shithole.
Via a Tweet from Ry we have still more info on the security issues with Android (emphasis in the original):
The Bluebox Security research team – Bluebox Labs – recently discovered a vulnerability in Android’s security model that allows a hacker to modify APK code without breaking an application’s cryptographic signature, to turn any legitimate application into a malicious Trojan, completely unnoticed by the app store, the phone, or the end user. The implications are huge! This vulnerability, around at least since the release of Android 1.6 (codename: “Donut” ), could affect any Android phone released in the last 4 years1 – or nearly 900 million devices2– and depending on the type of application, a hacker can exploit the vulnerability for anything from data theft to creation of a mobile botnet.
While the risk to the individual and the enterprise is great (a malicious app can access individual data, or gain entry into an enterprise), this risk is compounded when you consider applications developed by the device manufacturers (e.g. HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG) or third-parties that work in cooperation with the device manufacturer (e.g. Cisco with AnyConnect VPN) – that are granted special elevated privileges within Android – specifically System UID access.
Installation of a Trojan application from the device manufacturer can grant the application full access to Android system and all applications (and their data) currently installed. The application then not only has the ability to read arbitrary application data on the device (email, SMS messages, documents, etc.), retrieve all stored account & service passwords, it can essentially take over the normal functioning of the phone and control any function thereof (make arbitrary phone calls, send arbitrary SMS messages, turn on the camera, and record calls). Finally, and most unsettling, is the potential for a hacker to take advantage of the always-on, always-connected, and always-moving (therefore hard-to-detect) nature of these “zombie” mobile devices to create a botnet.
I’ve known there were lots of security issues with Android but this is much bigger than I imagined. If you were concerned about various three letter agencies sucking up data about you (or even your snail mail) then you should be even more concerned that just about anyone that is technologically competent can take complete control of your Android phone.
A little over two years ago I purchased a Android phone with thought of developing apps for it. I never got around to it and after releasing Field Ballistics for Windows Phone I gave it further consideration. I decided not do pursue Android as an alternate platform. I’m glad I made that decision. Would you want everyone and their brother looking at the map on your phone showing your location and the location of your next target? At Boomershoot that would be an invitation to have “your” target poached.
It happened again. Someone asked me what I thought the best caliber is. Granted they didn’t ask it quite that ambiguous. But it did raise the “insufficient information hackles” when I got the email.
The actual question was:
Tell me which caliber you think is best and why: 9mm, 40 S&W, or 45 ACP.
Had the question been, “Which caliber has the best stopping power?” I would have replied, “It’s tough to beat something chambered in 200 mm XM422 with the 40 kiloton yield option”.
The question isn’t quite that unbounded but still it’s insufficiently bounded to give an answer that is credible for even a fraction of the possible values of the unconstrained variables. One must really have more information about the use cases of the firearm before you can give an answer that someone couldn’t drive a Euclid truck through.
When someone asks a question like this what you really need to do is get the person asking the question to answer it for themselves. For all intents and purposes they already know the answer they just don’t know the proper questions to ask themselves. You can help them with this.
The top level question is, “What are you going to use this gun for? Recreation, self-defense, competition, all of the above?” One could drill down to a depth of three or more in the specifics for any of the answers given but here are few of the possibilities:
Everything is a tradeoff. The smaller calibers tend toward higher capacities, higher velocities, lower costs, and, obviously, smaller holes. With the larger calibers the opposite is true. Once you figure out your application then the caliber question should pretty much answer itself.
If you are interested in self-defense “stopping power” then I answered that question nearly 15 years ago and I don’t see any reason to update the conclusion where I agree with Greg Hamilton who says:
The entire discussion of “stopping power” is both stupid and irrelevant. Statistics cannot be applied to individuals. People that need to be shot need to be shot soon and often. They need to be shot until they run out of fluid, brains, or balls.
If during the time you were reading the latest “stopping power” article you were instead practicing to save your life you would be far, far ahead.
Greg Hamilton
May 08, 1998
Of potential interest is what caliber gun(s) do I own and use and why.
I have guns in all three of the calibers in question. I almost never use the 9mm or the .45. The reason has nothing to do with the caliber themselves. It is because a .40 with 17 or 18 round magazines is the best choice for Limited class USPSA matches which I compete in. I can compete in USPSA and Steel Challenge with it and I can carry it for self-defense. I figure the odds of me using it in self-defense are pretty low but the probability of me using it in competition are near 1.0. And even supposing that some other caliber/gun would be better for self-defense the fact that I am going to be practicing with the competition gun is probably going to make up for the (questionable) fact that I wasn’t shooting the optimal caliber.
I found this surprising*. Very pleasing, but surprising:
Field Ballistics on Windows Phone is in the list of “Top paid” sports apps after being out for only a week.
See my announcement here. Purchase it (or get a free trial version) here.
*Assuming no inflation, sales remain constant, and I saved and invested every penny then in another 1000 years I might be able to retire on the proceeds.
I just received notification that Field Ballistics for Windows Phone has passed the Microsoft certification tests and is now available in the store. It may take a day or two before you can search for it in the store but you can install it now using this link.
Some of the cool features are illustrated with the following screen shots:
The shooter and targets are placed on a map. The program automatically computes the range to the targets. It also automatically computes the direction of the wind relative to the bullet flight path. This means that if the wind is from the west and you are shooting at a target to the south you will get the correction the full value of wind drift. But if you then choose a target directly east (or west) of you the wind correction will be zero. Of course all the trigonometry is done to correct for shooting in all directions.
At the bottom of the screen are two columns. The left column is the ballistics solution to make the shot at the selected target. In the right column is data about the target and the bullet when it arrives at that target. Of particular note is that in the case above the bullet velocity is in red (the theme color of the phone). This means the bullet velocity is below the minimum you have specified in the settings. This is particularly important for Boomershooters because the targets won’t detonate if the bullets are going too slow.
Tapping the ‘S’ or ‘T’ icons at the bottom of the screen moves the center of the map to the shooter or the selected target. The down arrow icon moves the selected target (or the shooter if it was selected) to the location of the phone using the phone GPS. This means that you can set up multiple targets on the map, then the shooter can “run and gun” and get ballistic solutions quickly. By using the GPS to get the current location of the shooter the distances and wind corrections are automatically update for each position the shooter wishes to shoot from.
You can add as many targets as you wish* and give them user friendly names. If you tap the “Measure” button you can use the phone camera and accelerometer to determine the incline to the target from your current location.
This is the incline measurement screen using the camera. You put the crosshairs on the target and tap “Done” to capture the incline of the phone for this target. You can also zoom in or out and refocus the camera.
[Please note this is only to illustrate the incline measurement feature, not to advocate shooting in cities.]
The automatic weather conditions are obtained from the current location of the shooter. This doesn’t mean the physical location of the phone. You can position the shooter in another state and the nearest weather station to the designated shooter location will be used. When you define your own conditions you can even use the phone GPS to capture your altitude.
Black Hills and Federal match ammo are predefined. Add as many of your own cartridges* as you desire.
Some predefined rifles are included but you can add as many of your own rifles* as desired.
There are pages and pages of easily accessible help on the phone.
*The trial version only allows one target and one each of user defined conditions, cartridges, and rifles.
This afternoon I received an email from Microsoft telling me my new phone app failed the certification testing.
There were two errors. In the first case I didn’t have a clue I was violating the policy. In the second case I was careless. Both are easily fixed.
Test failure 1:
Test: Content that is offensive in any country/region to which your app is targeted is not allowed. Content may be considered offensive in certain countries/regions because of local laws or cultural norms. Examples of potentially offensive content in certain countries/regions include, but are not limited to, the following:
Group 1: China
Prohibited Sexual Content
Disputed territory or region references
Providing or enabling access to content or services that are illegal under applicable local lawComments: Result: Fail
Your application uses the Bing Maps Silverlight Control for Windows Phone. Bing Maps is not supported for Group 1 countries at this time. You may resubmit your application and deselect the Group 1 countries.
Test failure 2:
Test: Screenshots must only contain app graphics, and must not include any emulator chrome, frame rate counters or debug information.
Comments: The application screenshots contain frame rate counters and debug information.
Three out of the eight screenshots had the frame rate counters and debug information in them. I knew better and just wasn’t paying close enough attention in my rush to get the app submitted.
It will take 30 minutes or so to fix it and resubmit. I’ll get to that sometime tonight after visiting my son and his family.
Now I want a Windows phone. You’ve done what the marketing department at Microsoft could not.
J
June 12, 2013
[This was in response to my post about “shipping” my exterior ballistics app for Windows Phone.
That’s pretty pleasing because one of the things that weighs heavy on my mind is that, as Barb L., reminded me the night before I submitted the app is that, “This is for people that are really into long range shooting and own a Windows Phone. That’s a pretty small market.”
Totally off topic. I don’t know who ‘J’ is in this context but my first thought was the author of this book. I’m pretty sure the author of that book wouldn’t use this gravatar so I can rule her out.
I remember Larry H. giving me copy of that book when he was finished with it. I was sophomore in high school at the time it opened my eyes about some things. Then my dad found it tucked behind some insulation in the attic and took it away.—Joe]
I just submitted my exterior ballistics app, Field Ballistics, to the Microsoft store for Windows Phone. It will be a few days until it is published. In a day or so I’ll give more details but here is some of what I submitted:
Field Ballistics is a revolutionary exterior ballistics application. Previous ballistics app are little more than glorified pieces of paper with ballistic tables. Field Ballistics uses the phones high tech capabilities to give ballistic solutions for multiple targets.
Place push pins on a map for each target automatically computing the distance from shooter to target, use the camera and accelerometer to measure the incline, use the Internet to automatically get up to date environmental conditions from the closest weather station. Select a target on the map and see the exact scope settings needed and information such as the time of flight and bullet velocity at impact.
When the shooter moves to a new location the ballistic solution for each target is automatically updated. Range and wind direction are automatically corrected using the new shooter location and information from the nearest weather station. You just enter in the new scope settings and take the shot.
Select from any of Federal or BlackHills match ammo or add your own. Input chronograph velocities and Field Ballistics corrects for the distance from the chronograph to the muzzle.
Field Ballistics is more than a glorified piece of paper. It uses the full power of your phone to give you ballistic solutions to multi-target problems.
I started seriously working on this about a year and a half ago. It feels really good to get it out the door.
Update:
In response to this comment from Ray what follows is the exact text of the privacy policy stated in the app:
Requests for map and location information from Bing and other Microsoft services are made by this application and may include the current location of your device. This application uses the Microsoft location service for some actions.
These actions will cause the location of your device to be stored on the device. This information, and all other data for this app, can be deleted by using the ‘reset’ menu item. The use of the location services can be disabled by using the ‘disable use of location services’ menu item.
If ‘Auto’ shooting conditions are used then requests for current weather conditions at the shooters location are made from wunderground.com.
Other than as disclosed above, no information of any type is ever sent by this application to any other device, user, application, or web site for any purpose.
For some reason I put together another AR. I’ve had a pretty nice Colt’s Match HBAR for years, but I thought a light carbine would be good to have around for kids, new shooters and such. My daughter might want it at some stage.
This new one is cobbled together from nearly as disparate a set of parts as is possible. I think every parts group is made by a different company. The aluminum, railed gas block, for example, was knocked out on an old Bridgeport mill by Some Dude in Moscow, Idaho– I had to mount it on the lathe and trim it down a bit to make it clear the floating handguard, which is a used piece off of Some Other Dude’s AR. It’s all assembled as a mock-up right now. Mostly new parts, some of the metal being in the white. I wanted to proof test it before taking it all apart again, bead blasting it and giving it a finish of some kind.
Since none of the working parts had ever fired a cartrige before, I cranked off four rounds with the carbine held at arm’s length, one-handed, into a hillside (the thought had come to mind that the thing could blow up, and if it was going to do that I wanted it to happen far away from my face). Perfect function. All ejected cases ended up in a nice tight group off to my right, too.
After putting a few shots on paper at 25 yards, I took it out to 100 to get a good zero on the TX30 reflex sight. Here’s the 100 yard target. I fire two-shot groups for initial sight-in. One-shot “groups” would probably be OK for starters, but I like to get some sense of how I and the rifle are working together. The first 100 yard group is the one holer at the top of the paper, on the “1L” line. I’d thought that the TX30 had 1/3 MOA clicks like an ACOG telescope, so I over-compensated, putting the second group near the bottom of the paper. The TX30 has 1/2 MOA clicks, and the fact that the target was stapled to a log and was slanting back quite a bit accounts for the larger apparent error. Splitting the difference with a few “up” clicks, and a couple clicks left, the third group was pretty well dead on;
I have a padded steel rifle rest and some shooting bags, but I’m using them less and less. If you can’t use your vehicle, a stump, a tree branch, a rock, the ground or your knee, what kind of shooting are you practicing? In this case I was mono-podding, holding the 30 round magazine in my hand and resting the hand on the hood of the pickup. It works well enough. The truck bumper is OK too, or the tail gate, or a front tire steered over to one side. The tip of a longish snowshoe can make a decent place to rest your knee in a kneeling position… There are lots of options, so you can haul around less stuff.
Three consecutive two-shot groups of around 1 MOA and less. I be happy for now. Don’t ask me to repeat it. It was getting dark so I called it a day and let the dog out to romp around for a bit and get wet and smelly before the ride home. Ultimately I think I’ll want a solid 200 yard zero for this reflex-sighted carbine.
Dealing with “issues” while shooting is a good thing. In this case it was failing light, mosquitoes, my dog which hates gunfire (he ended up inside the pickup, and his moving around made the pickup, which I was using as a shooting rest, move just a little bit while aiming) and the fact that I’d ended up out there with no spotting optic so I had to trot the 100 yards back and forth to determine shot placement. That and there were people driving up and down the road, which was close enough I didn’t want to fire while people were so close and make them nervous. So I’m looking around, listening, swatting bugs, dealing with the dog, hurrying, and huffing and puffing a little. It’s an exercise in being very still while immersed in little stresses and distractions. That’s part of why I like rifle shooting so much. It’s wonderful. Sometimes it works out great and other times you chalk it up to learning. This time was like a dream, but I’ll have to figure out what happened to my 20×60 binocs.
This new light carbine is pounds lighter than my scoped HBAR rifle. I think it’s going to be one of my favorite shooters. I’d never “built” an AR before, and even though I’d had my Colt, and a Rock River, apart many times it was surprising to me how easy it was to cobble one together from parts. A fairly small child could do it, with a little bit of instruction.
Given the speed of sound and how fast you’ll drop, you’ll never hear the shot.
Phelps
March 31, 2013
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Down the rabbit hole into the esoteric. Before the current ammo shortage I decided to start casting bullets, just because I liked the idea of an extra level of independence. The 30-30 cast bullets worked OK but there’s more to do there. This time though its the 10 mm Auto.
I’ve been loading the Hornady 180 XTPs with good results, but I wanted a 200 grain cast bullet too. The RCBS 200 SWC has gotten good reviews so I got that two cavity mold a while back. The mold handles I use for the Lyman molds didn’t fit the new RCBS mold, and people were starting to run low on things. Buffalo Arms in Idaho sells a hand-fabricated-looking handle set that works like a pair of Vice-Grips. Pretty expensive and heavy, but they had them in stock. They’re great. You get VERY consistent closing pressure for each pour. I weighed 20 already lubed bullets tonight and the extreme spread was 1.5 grains, 201 gr +/- .75.
Of course, to “save money” casting bullets from one dollar per pound lead, I had to buy a lube sizer. Seating the lead bullets, I was shaving lead on the case mouths, so I bought a 10 mm M die. It expands deeper into the case than a regular expander die, plus it makes a wider spot at the mouth. I’d been seating crimping in one swipe with the jacketed bullets, but since that’s not really an option for cast, I had to readjust my otherwise permanently adjusted seating die. Now I figure I’ll buy another seat die in this “money saving” venture.
To prevent the case mouth shaving lead from the bullet upon seating, I had to put LOTS more flair on the cases. I tried chamfering the mouths a little and that didn’t help much, so now I’m working the brass a lot more, which means it will work harden sooner. The bullets aren’t getting shaved now, but the cases are so wide at the mouth that the seating die can’t be lowered nearly as much as normal or the crimp taper starts to erase that wide belling, shaving lead anyway. And that means that the seating stem is just a bit too short, so with the locking collar removed from the seating stem and the stem screwed in as far as it will go, I still have to screw the die body down to where it is narrowing the flair just a bit. That means there is no support on the case at all except at the very mouth. I noticed that if I nicely align the bullets on the case mouth by hand before seating, they now don’t get shaved. When the bullets shave, the lead that’s stuck in front of the case mouth interferes with head spacing. It’s not serious, but it is annoying.
Loading dies, at least for straight wall auto cases, are not made with cast bullets in mind. These are RCBS dies, but I doubt there’d be much difference. The whole paradigm is wrong. Since you apparently need much more flair at the mouth, and you’re shoving the case up into the die mouth-first, your die has to be too large to support any part of the case except for the very mouth, or else it will erase your mouth flair. Instead of going mouth-first into the seating die, the cases should be going head-first into a support die, and then up to a seating stem, with the bullet pre aligned before it touches the case. That way, much of the case, and all of the bullet’s drive bands, could be aligned prior to seating. It couldn’t be done “right”, in my opinion, any other way.
But we make it work, somehow, with what we have. There’s still more testing to do, but initially I got two groups of just under 5 inches at 20 yards standing unsupported. Lots more recoil than the 180 XTP loads, but my chrono got lost along a 20 mile stretch of highway in a snowstorm so no vel data. A third group was MUCH larger, so I quit. There was leading in the Lone Wolf barrel. That was before I eliminated the lead shaving at seating. We’ll see later whether the shaving verses not shaving makes any difference.
The load is 9.4 grains Blue Dot, CCI 300, OAL 1.255, #2 alloy, Super Molly lube that came with the Lyman sizer. Still don’t know if it’s a keeper, but I do know I can get off at least 10 decent shots. Whoopie, eh?
At this
time of year I normally hunt in Klickitat County, WA, for deer. Lots of big black-tail / mule deer, and perhaps the occasional
hybrid. My luck at finding them is usually pretty good, though my luck in
finding ones with respectable racks is utterly pathetic – I can manage to find
a 200 lb + mule deer with ears that stick out further than his barely legal
three point rack, which is only three points by the grace of God and an eye-guard
that is about 1.1 inches long, or one that looks like what you’d expect of a mule
deer that cross-bred with a white-tail, with huge ears and all its tiny little points
coming off of one narrow beam, and the other broken off to about 1/3 size. Oh,
well, meat’s meat.
Drove down Friday, looked thing over. Several does frisking
about, and no more than the normal noise from the property across the way (it’s
mostly 20-acre lots in that area, and some government land, with about a dozen scattered
hunting camps and a handful of year-round residents within a mile or two). Light
rain that day kept the dust down, and made the brush a LOT quieter. Lots of
acorns on the trees, I noticed – very different from last year, when there were
almost no acorns, and more hunters than deer. Parked the RV (AKA a minivan with
a seat out and an army cot in the back), got to sleep early, listening to the rain fall.
Got up, weather looked good, headed down for a spot I picked
the day before, partway down in and overlooking a clear-ish spot across a saddle
in the ridge. It has decent visibility, lots of deer trails through there. I
kick up a couple of does while sneaking down there in the dark. Wait for enough
light. See nothing. I hear shooting up behind me on the ridge. Several single
shots, widely spaced in time – either people are doing pretty well, or they can’t
shoot for squat. No way to know at the moment. I’m not seeing anything, except
a couple of does that are heading away from the shooting west of me. Eventually
I quit waiting and get moving, and slowly hunt around in a big loop to see what
can be scared up. Nadda but a couple of does. Light wind keeps eddying around,
so hunting “upwind” is impossible.
About 90% of the way around the loop I run into an old
friend of mine – he’s in his 80s now, was a gunner on a troop transport in
WWII, but still getting out (new just this year is a handicap hunter sign for
his rig, so he can shoot sitting in the cab, or have one of us younger “companion
hunters” do things for him. He said his
son, a spry lad of only sixty, had gone on a big loop up and around similar to
the path I’d taken, but farther out, across to the far side of a large draw and
down through it. So I figure I can go find a good stand up on this side of the draw and see if he
spooks anything my way. I wander off into the thickets. Lots of low brush, large
patches of ten-foot high Oregon white oak, and lots of old pines blown down
like pick-up-sticks (the remains from after a fire swept through the area about
a decade ago). Easy to hide in, lots of forage, and a cast-iron bitch to get
things out of.
I creep along thorough the brush, keeping eyes and ears
open, picking the occasional acorn and popping it into my pockets, which are by
now bulging with them. I find a decent spot with a clear view across the draw
– the far side is about 450 yards away. Visibility closer isn’t great because
of all the oak stands. I stand up on a fallen log to get a better view. Lots of
acorns in reach from there, too. I watch across the draw, watch closer in, pick
acorns absently. Listen to the chipmunks, magpies, and woodpeckers. Wind swirls
around. Nothing moving but birds and leaves. Pretty, but no sign of hunter
orange coming down the far side of things yet. I take off my pack and drop it quietly
to the ground, still standing on the log. A few more acorn are in reach, and
they end up in my pocket.
Then I hear a noise – just barely loud enough to hear, and I
still can’t remember what sort of noise it was, but it WASN’T any of the things
I’d been listening to all morning. I jerk my head to the right toward that
marginally registering sound, and there, plain as day because I know the exact direction to look, I see the “Y” shape of a
deer staring straight at me, mule-deer ears and nose. Just the head – from the
neck down it was hidden in the heavy brush. Not fifty yards away. With a rack.
A small rack (of course), but it’s got a least one clear fork. I’m standing,
balancing on a log, body one way, and it’s off directly to my right. Well, that’s
kind of awkward.
I figure he must have been there this whole time, so slow motions
shouldn’t spook him. I turn slowly until I can get the rifle up into a good
scoping / shooting position. I look. Damn! Only 3 power on the scope, and I can’t
see if there is an eye-guard! I crank the scope to 9X, and look again. Can’t
quite be sure… then the light falling on him changes ever so slightly, and I
can see it! ONE eye-guard! Given the brush and stuff, I figure I’ve got about a
2” square target to hit, off-hand, standing straight up balancing on a log, at
fifty yards. Can’t move to a more stable position because lower would hide him
totally in the brush. Aim too high, miss. Too low, take his jaw off and he runs
and dies miles away or it gets deflected by heavy brush. Left or right, running
injured or clean miss. Just gotta stand tall and deliver. Sure, no pressure. Aim
carefully, breathe in, breathe out, double check the eye-guard to make sure it’s
long enough, breathe, squeeze. BLAM!
I work the action keeping my eyes on where he was. I see no
movement. I walk up carefully. Motionless on a grassy patch amidst the brush. Right
antler blown away. Brains and blood leaking out through the large hole just
above his right eye. I do a double-take, and I don’t see the eye-guard! ARRRG!
Oh, wait. False alarm – just didn’t see if from that angle. WHEW! I measure the
eye-guard; one and a quarter inches – legally counts as a point (1” minimum). Now
I just have to get him OUT of the deep weeds. He’s down amidst the log-sized
pick-up sticks, and a live weight in the neighborhood of 200 pounds – small enough
to be tender and tasty, big enough to be a pain in the ass hauling him out. Then
I hear a shot from up across the draw. Looks like the other guy I know is now
going to be busy with his own deer for a while, so I’m on my own. I gut him
out, drag him uphill as best I can about a hundred yards to where I think it
might be possible to get a vehicle sort’a close. I flag a nearby tree with
engineer tape, and boogie back to the “RV” to see how well a Honda Odyssey is
at off-roading. Turns out, pretty good, if you are careful. Nothing that Ry
would have flinched at, but it’s mostly my wife’s, not my car, and there are
lots of logs and large volcanic rocks around, so….
Anyway, got the deer whacked up, then double-check the regs just
to make sure I wasn’t missing something – last year there was a Fish-n-Feather
check-point examining all hunters at a choke-point in the road out of the area for
the first few days of the season, so I want to make sure I’m all totally legal.
Hmmm… must transport with proof that it was male, either “naturally attached
penis and testicles” (nope, can’t do that, cut off while gutting) or BOTH
antlers “naturally attached to the head”. AH, shit-meister! I must have spent
two hours looking for that blasted second antler. Finally found it about 45 or
50 feet away in the brush – a small, brown, forking, stick-like-looking antler
hides VERY well in the brush and fallen oak leaves, let me tell you.
Finally, I got everything cleaned up, packed up, and back on
road, and just then the rain started. So it all worked out, in the end, pretty
well.
A few of things of note:
1) There was no
obvious exit wound from the bullet. A 165 gr slug from a 30-06 at 50 yards
still has well north of 2000 ft-lb of energy, and while the skull was
dramatically broken up and brain bits here and there, but the bullet didn’t
seem to have come out the far side, and there no obvious bullet fragments left
in the cranial cavity, which was mostly filled with partially coagulated blood and
bone fragments by the time I examined it more closely. Not clear exactly how all
the energy was expended, or what happened to the bullet; totally exploded and
the fragments fell out with the brain, or ricochet out essentially through the
same hole and all the brain pulping was done by bone fragments, or just what.
File it under “weird terminal ballistics event.” and “bone is STRONG.”
2) It was obvious he was totally dead from the hole and
brains-on-the-ground thing when I got close to him, so I slit his throat to
bleed him out. Squirt, squirt, squirt. His heart was still pumping! Weird.
3) The kids both thought the carcass pieces I brought home
were interesting. The daughter though it was gross, but she couldn’t take her
eyes off it, so it turned into an impromptu biology and physiology lesson, comparing
front and back leg structures, pointing out tendons versus ligaments, ball
joints vs hinge joints, bone vs cartilage, what a whole muscle looks like when
not wrapped in plastic as the market, fat deposits, what a heart and liver REALLY look like, etc.
They also thought the ribs looked awfully fatty, but agreed that they tasted good
broiled with a little salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
3.a) The only things that got left on the scene was a spine,
feet, hunks of fat, guts, and hide. I need to get better at skinning them out
so it’s worth getting tanned.
4) The kids ALSO thought that learning how to prepare the
bag of acorns I brought back sounded like fun, particularly for the 4th
grader, who did a big unit on Native Americans last year in school, many of
whom ate acorns as a significant part of their diet. We’ll also be planting
some of them as a science experiment (Oregon white oak are native to the area).
4.a) Last year, very few acorns, very few deer. Normally,
lots of acorns, lots of deer. File data for future reference; check the acorn
crop in September – no acorns, find another place to hunt.
5) Does seem to spook and run easily. Bucks, especially
older ones, are masters of immobility and camouflage, and don’t want to jump
until you darn near step on them. Means you have to have REALLY good eyes, good
binoculars, or have a couple of guys that are willing to spend a LOT of time
stomping around trying to kick them up.
6) I am amazed, again, at the fact that even though guns are LOUD, especially high-powered rifles, I never remember hearing the shot go off, or the recoil as it applies to my shoulder. I remember watching the target, working the action, basic body position, getting the sight back on target, listening for and hearing sounds immediately after the shot (even quiet sounds), but never the sound of the gunshot itself.
Every choice is a trade-off. “You want armor to be light,
effective, and cheap. Pick any two.” So, sometimes you have to figure out what
are the most critical limiting factors, and go from there.
An ideal gun is light weight, accurate, shoots flat, hits
hard, has little recoil and comfortable ergonomics, has long barrel life, is reliable,
is low maintenance, has inexpensive and light weight ammo, and is easy to
operate… Yaahhh…. Riiiight…..
Back to reality.
The bullet does the work – everything else is just delivery
system. So, to stop a person or other living target (or set off a boomer), the bullet needs enough energy when it hits to do the job. Launching
the bullet imparts the energy into the bullet, and that causes recoil, requires
a gun, etc. Generally speaking, the greater the muzzle energy, the more the
recoil, the more wear on the gun, the greater the cartridge weight required, the
higher the chamber pressure, the more difficulty there is in noise suppression,
etc. So, an ideal cartridge would have some maximum tolerable muzzle energy,
and a minimum retained energy out to some desirable range.
What should those three numbers be? It depends on the
application. For the moment, I’ll consider military rifle cartridges (and perhaps Boomershoot guns). Maybe a
future essay will consider other applications.
If you generate much more than about 2000 ft·lb
of ME, a lot of smaller or less experiences shooters may have a problem flinching
or bruising from significant use, unless well trained and given sufficient
practice. Also, at closer range most bullets with more than 2000 ft·lb
will just waste an increasing percentage of their energy beyond the target,
after full penetration, on the backstop. (For comparison, 2000 ft·lb
is a typical muzzle energy for a .243 Winchester). Much less than about 400 ft·lb
is getting into a very marginal area for stopping power, cover or body armor penetration,
etc. (around 400 ft·lb is a typical 9 mm or 45 ACP round ME). For most
shooters, anything beyond a thousand yards is problematic for all sorts of
reasons, but out to that range an argument can be made, especially in places
like Afghanistan or Iraq, or in farm country with large fields, where distances
are long.
Challenge Summary: Muzzle energy less than 2000 ft·lb, greatest possible retained energy at
1000 yards, preferably at least 400 ft·lb.
It’s easy to find cartridges with less than 2000 ft·lb
muzzle energy. The problem is that most of them in larger calibers (30 cal and
up) are relatively fat, light, low BC bullets, or slow heavy ones that have a
trajectory like a rainbow and a time-of-flight measured in cups of coffee. The
smaller calibers (like .223), bullets are too light to carry much energy for
the distance, and start having severe wind problems at significant ranges. (For
comparison, a 5.56 NATO 77 gr bullet has a bit less than 1400 ft·lb
ME, and a 7.62 NATO 175 gr bullet has about 2600 ft·lb ME.)
It’s also easy to find cartridges that retain at least 400
ft·lb
at 1000 yd: just GO BIG. Heavy bullet, big brass, lots of powder, good to go.
But that generates more recoil, higher pressures, needs heavier guns, has
heavier ammo, more recoil, shorter barrel life, and so-forth.
Retaining energy argues that only high ballistic coefficient
bullets will likely manage to meet this challenge. A 6.5mm mid-weight bullet
with a high BC, like a Lapua 123 gr Scenar (BC of .547) launched at moderate
velocities, can be loaded to have both a ME less than 2000 ft·lb,
and have more than 400 ft·lb
at 1000 yards. One of the few current cartridges that meet this challenge is
the 6.5mm Grendel. It still has 372 ft·lb at 1000 meters in a factory loading, shot from a mid-length barrel. For
comparison, at 1000 yards, a 5.56 NATO 77 gr bullet has less than 200 ft·lb
of energy (similar to a .32 Auto), and a 7.62 NATO 175 gr has retained a bit
under 600 ft·lb
energy (similar to a typical 40 S&W shot from a 5” barrel). Also note that for reliable boomer detonation, a velocity of at least 1500 fps is generally required, and a typical 6.5 Grendel round is still moving faster than that at 700 yards (unless you are using a fairly short barrel).
The 6.5 mm cartridges have an excellent reputation with
hunters, as well as target shooters, and smokeless powder 6.5mm cartridges have
been around for well over a century, so there are a wide range of bullets
available for loading your own for any particular application you might have.
Ponder, think, consider, contemplate….
Yesterday I had a bullet in the bore in front of another complete cartridge that was fully chambered. The bolt was in battery, the hammer cocked, and the safety was in the Total Devastation position. But I thought better of dropping the hammer. Well I didn’t think so much as feel that for some non-specific reason it might be a good idea to get out of my ready-to-shoot position and open the action.
I had fired hundreds of these cast bullet loads for a Win ’94 carbine and was having quite a good time shooting, using the new tang aperture sight after getting the sights dialed in. The 311291 mold puts out a “bore rider” bullet, meaning the shank of the bullet ahead of the drive bands kisses the rifling as it’s chambered. It’s supposed to make for better accuracy, and so far these have been pretty good in that department. But my mold produces bullets that more than kiss the rifling– they have to be jammed in with just a tad bit more force than optimum. I’ve chambered and un-chambered lots of them before without observing any sort of problem.
Yesterday, I don’t remember why, I decided to check the status of the rifle before taking a shot. It was harder than usual to extract, so when it came loose, the bolt came back rapidly, expelling an empty case. “Odd” I thought, “I’m pretty sure there was a loaded round in there. Oh well.” (first red flag). So I rammed the lever home to chamber another round. It took more than the usual amount of force to chamber (second red flag). But it chambered.
I actually had the rifle up to fire, and then…”Naw…I’ll be needin’ to see that cartridge.” Again it was harder than usual to extract, and this time I could see fine ball powder all over the action and my hand. “OK then, I’m done with the Winchester for the day.”
That first hard extraction had pulled the bullet from the case, but I didn’t notice the spilled powder because I had my long-range shades on (can’t see close-up very well) and the low, direct sun made for so much contrast that anything in shadow was much harder to see. I didn’t notice the little detail of the still un-dented primer. The next round was harder to chamber because I was forcing the first bullet deeper into the bore in front of the fresh cartridge. The new brass was maybe a little soft, and maybe that bullet was on the large side of the size variation range, and maybe the case was on the short side of the narrow length range I had allowed, the crimp design is very good at preventing bullet set-back (which is the concern with tubular magazines) but poor at preventing bullet pull-out, so anyway the bullet pulled free and stayed behind when I extracted the case. Never heard of such a thing, which is why I bring it up here. Maybe I should get another bullet mold.
You know they say that for a single shot action, you don’t need any crimp at all. After yesterday, with any bore rider design I would recommend a crimp no matter what.
Shooting alone is a real pleasure for me. I love taking other people along and having a good time that way, sure. Some of my best shooting memories come from having other people along. I have to get out alone once in a while though, especially with rifles, and I highly recommend it for everyone. It allows focus, and the contrast between the fire and the total silence during breaks does the heart good somehow. On the issue of focus; I believe that the chances of my pulling that trigger on that double bullet load were fairly high, had there been company along.
Edited to add; Below is the bullet in question. You can just see the engraving from the rifling. That individual bullet fit pretty well, but others are a bit tighter (random variations in casting). I should have posted this photo earlier to avoid some of the confusion. “Regular” bullets begin to taper off right in front of the case mouth, but this one is designed to enter the bore in front of the throat, touching the lands. The design helps align the bullet right from the get go. For actual use, the front drive band at the case mouth (and those behind it) is sized to .309″ to tightly engage the .308″ barrel groove diameter and produce a good seal. Also notice the ring around the back of the short ogive, from the seating plug that was designed for longer ogive bullets. This photo was taken over a year ago, before I fired any of these rounds, and you’ll see that the case is either crimped very lightly or not at all. This was a test seating. You also see that the chamber throat is super short (the rifling comes very close to the case mouth, but it’s a largely non-issue here). That’s not a problem with most modern full-copper-patched bullets either, but it does limit the styles I can use. This #2 alloy cast 170 grain gas checked bullet load reaches 2,000 fps from a 16″ barrel, using White Label Carnauba Red lube and 33.5 gr of Win 748 with a WRLM primer. The powder charge and primer are from the Speer manual as a jacketed load. After 50 shots, the bore looks like a polished mirror (the powder burns clean and the bullets don’t leave lead behind).
