Paper Ballistics

An Addiction of the Modern Rifleman

The best indicator of rifle cartridge performance is discovered on the range and in the field as opposed to on paper or through some ballistic APP.

Imagine a world where ballistic numbers did not exist. You could not determine bullet velocity, bullet energy, or bullet BC. You could establish trajectory by actually shooting at different distances, but as for all the numbers so many of us fret over in those ballistic charts, they would not exist. Think about how you would look at and compare different rifle cartridges in a world like that. If you wanted to know if a certain rifle cartridge and bullet would kill a deer, you would need to shoot a deer with that cartridge and bullet and see what happened. Wouldn’t that be a novel approach.

Without paper ballistics how could you tell the difference between a 308 Winchester and a 30-06 Springfield? Would it even be possible? You could not tell by the reaction of an animal when you shot it, you could not tell by conducting a post-mortem examination of the dead animal, and you could not even tell by looking at the bullet if you recovered it. Aside from looking at the two cartridges side by side, about the only measurable difference between them would be recoil.

Paper ballistics will convince you the 30-06 Springfield is measurably superior to the 308 Winchester, but in the real world their performance is indistinguishable.

As mentioned, you could establish bullet drop. Though you would have no way of knowing it, the 30-06 would have on average about a 75 fps advantage over the 308. So how much advantage is 75 fps? At 500 yards—which is a hell of a long way to shoot at an animal—the 30-06 bullet would drop about 3 inches less. At 300 yards—which is a much more practical distance to shoot at an animal—the 30-06 bullet would drop about an inch less. That’s hardly enough to matter and within the estimated point of impact of the bullet at that distance, given a rifle and shooter who can hold within one MOA.

Those who worship paper ballistics often like to argue kinetic energy is a representation of killing ability. It’s not. What it does represent is a bullet’s potential to do stuff like change shape, damage tissue, and penetrate. However, a lot of kinetic energy is used to make the bullet upset or deform, and while heavier/larger bullets are often considered more deadly because of their additional kinetic energy, what’s often overlooked is that heavier/larger bullets use more of the kinetic energy to upset or deform. With the same weight bullet, the extra 75 fps the 30-06 bullet would deliver only provides about 150 additional foot-pounds of kinetic energy, which is about the same as the energy of a high velocity 22 LR cartridge. The world’s best forensic analyst could not look inside a critter and tell the difference.

The damage seen inside animals will not illustrate the minute differences in paper ballistics hunters often want to argue about.

Without paper ballistics, experience would be monumental. For example, I’ve shot a bunch of deer with the 223 Remington. Most fell within a few yards of where they were hit, and a few managed to run off, but never very far. With that experience behind me, why would I ever think I needed a cartridge with a larger caliber bullet or more power? This experience thing is why a lot of folks trusted what the old gun writers wrote and what grandpa told them. Yes, we’ve had paper ballistics for a long time but how do those numbers really translate to lethality or tissue damage, especially considering differences in bullets and shot placement?

Still, paper ballistics are the driving force behind almost all cartridge selection decisions. I really like 0.25-claiber cartridges and have used most of them on deer. Now granted, it does not require much of a gun at all to kill a deer, but at least with most of the 0.25-caliber cartridges I have real world experience to tie to the paper ballistics often used to make cartridge decisions. The below table illustrates some paper ballistic differences between seven 0.25-caliber cartridges, spanning 130 years of innovation.

The blue section of the chart compares the cartridges if they were all loaded with the same bullet. I know that a 25-35 Winchester, which has the slowest velocity and least energy, will for damned sure kill a deer, so ignore velocity and energy figures and just look at the 1/3 second distance for each cartridge. It’s important because it shows the distance you can hold dead on a deer and still place your bullet in the kill zone. Except for the 25-35 and the 250 Savage, the differences are not substantial.

Now the most modern 0.25-caliber cartridges, like the 25 Creedmoor and the Weatherby 25 RPM, can shoot much more aerodynamic bullets because of their fast twist barrels. If you look at the orange section of the chart you can see how each cartridge performs with its highest BC bullet offered in factory ammo. Other than the 25-35 there’s still not much difference; the 257 WBY MAG has a 50 yard reach advantage over the much older 250 Savage. Additionally, we know a 25-35 will kill a deer at 100 yards, so if you like kinetic energy just look at the distance where the kinetic energy of each cartridge falls to the 25-35 Winchester 100-yard level.

Although there is the uncalculated element of rotational velocity which does impact bullet upset, these paper ballistics tell us that at 435 yards a 257 Weatherby RPM will kill a deer no better or worse than a 25-35 Winchester will at 100 yards. Interestingly, I proved just that last year. I shot a whitetail buck at a laser rangefinder confirmed 429 yards with the 25 Weatherby RPM and the deer dropped and died just like the deer I’ve seen shot at almost 100 yards with the 25-35 Winchester. Of course, bullet design and shot placement matter, but what you really get with more velocity is not a deadlier cartridge, it’s just more reach.

This buck was taken at a distance where the bullet fired from the Weatherby 25 RPM performed much like a bullet from a 25-35 would perform at 100 yards.

The point of all this is that we really don’t need paper ballistics to hunt anything. We know that when animals substantially increase in size that larger caliber and heavier bullets tend to work better. Our ancestors learned this when they went west with their small caliber—deer killing—muzzleloaders. Also, as opposed to consulting a paper chart or newfangled APP, our ancestors also shot their rifles at different distances to learn how to hit animals and Indians. It’s where the old saying, “hold a fine bead” comes from. When you were shooting at longer distances you held more bead than you did for close distances.

Our ancestors did not consult paper ballistics to get their hits, they shot their rifles at distance to learn the trajectory of the bullet.

Even if you’re addicted to paper ballistics you cannot look at them and make any definitive conclusions without some experience to base those conclusions on. All the numbers in the world, no matter how many columns you put them in or how you compare them, will not tell you anything unless you can tie at least some of those numbers to real world experience. The more experience you gain the less those numbers mean, and with enough experience those numbers become unessential.

This addiction to paper ballistics is why I wrote my latest book, Rifle Cartridges for the Hunter. I wanted to illustrate the capabilities of rifle cartridges with actual field experience as opposed to paper ballistics. After all, numbers on a piece of paper or in some ballistics program have never killed a damned thing other than the valuable time you spend studying them. It takes good bullets put in the right spot, and the best way to do that is to learn how to shoot your rifle up close and at distance. Paper ballistics discourage shooting and encourage pontification. Real world experience establishes fact, and you’re much better off armed with fact than you are with theories.