Feb 15, 2014 4 min read

Jim Roberts of Prosperity called me and said he was sitting in a boat wearing shorts and a T-shirt. The speckled trout were biting.

He was in Florida staying with relatives. He didn’t invite me, so I hate him.

Isn’t the weather wonderful?

As I sit here at home, I tend to reminisce with a panorama of scenes passing through my mind. All have something in common. I’m always some where warm and sunny.

Somehow I think some of the great myths that are relished by some, and since my hair is gray and I write, I’m an expert.

Regardless, I do receive a lot of questions.

A good one came from the fellow who said he whacked a deer and it ran off. He was sure he hit it in the left ventricle and just as sure that the high speed of his super magnum allowed the bullet to pass through the deer so quickly it didn’t have time to open up.

This is a commonly quoted myth. In reality, the opposite would be true.

A good rule of thumb is, all things being equal, the faster the bullet is moving, the more violent the hit.

Bullets are made up of two parts, the core and the outside jacket. The rifling of the barrel causes the bullet to spin rapidly. The jacket prevents the core from escaping.

So when the bullet strikes something, the bullet something, the bullet comes apart or the jacket peels back. The faster the bullet moves, the more it is affected by contact.

So, in reality, the bullet’s behavior is the opposite of the old theory.

Manufacturers of these bullets do a great job of producing bullets that perform in varying circumstances.

The faster the bullet flies, with all factors equal, the quicker it opens up.

Another myth that is often repeated said that the bullet hit the deer so hard it knocked it off its feet.

I don’t care what super 7mm or 300 mag the hunter was using, that result is impossible.

I have even heard someone say the deer was knocked 10 feet sideways by the super magnum. In reality, the deer might have fallen quickly or stumbled when hit, but it wasn’t knocked over by the bullet.

The next thing I will hear is there was a mushroom cloud rising over the shot deer.

Another common misconception involves barrel wear when those new, hot cartridges are used. Just last Sunday, someone asked me about a new cartridge that pushes the bullet to a higher velocity.

The rule of ballistics is the bigger the case holding the powder, the faster it will move the bullet. The gain might be minimal and not worth the damage done to the barrel, but the big one will be faster.

And it is not the speed of the bullet that causes wear of the barrel would wear more at the muzzle. In reality, the barrel wears at the throat right in front of the chamber.

This tells us it is the hot gases combined with unburned powder that is the culprit.

There are other factors that create wear, and in talks about ballistics, the other factors must be the same. It is unfair to compare a rifle with a 26-inch barrel to one with a barrel that is 22 inches long.

All things being equal, the longer-barrelled rifle will be faster if both loads are identical. If the smaller casing outperforms the larger, the pressure is also higher.

A .257 Roberts can be reloaded to a higher velocity than the 25-06, but the internal pressure has to be higher. There is no magic but good common sense needed when studying internal, external and terminal ballistics.

Like other shooters and hunters, I like to think my pet rifle will outperform other guns.

There are many myths attached to ammo production, but always remember that the bullet, while in the barrel, rotates around the center of form. When it leaves the muzzle, it rotates around the center of the mass and both had better be the same.

When it strikes the target, be it paper or flesh, it had better expand. But one thing is certain, the faster it is moving, the faster it expands.

• We spent four hours Saturday and a couple of hours Sunday measuring deer at the outdoors show at Washington Crown Center last week.

We measured 24 deer Saturday and 12 Sunday. The biggest was one scoring 156. It was shot in Potter County.

March can’t be far away.

George H. Block writes a Sunday Outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter.