High Speed Tissue Damage
Thanksgiving morning, on my property, there was a small whitetail buck taken at 85-90 yards, using a 17 Fireball(it's legal in my state), with a 20 grain factory load...I believe it is a 20 grain V-max at 4000FPS. The buck was immediately dispatched from the single shot to the back of the neck, approximately 2 inches below the skull. There was no exit wound, and the little bullet severed the spinal cord, and penetrated a total of about 5 inches, dropping the remaining velocity, and about 288,000 RPM's(1 in 10 twist rate) in that distance.
When feild dressing this deer five minutes later, it was discovered that all the blood in the chest cavity, and the blood in the heart chambers was all clotted and dark. When this buck was skinned 20 minutes later, the blood in the blood vessels in his neck was the same.
My question is, has anyone else ever witnessed something like this? If so, what was the cartridge being used? I have killed a lot of deer in my 35 years of hunting, and had never seen anything like this before. The deer was clean, and had no marks or wounds from fighting or being shot before this. Any explainations?
Best
EDIT 1:
Thanks Beany, and texaswildman. Those are very close to what I was thinking.
I was hoping that someone with vast medical experience like Cpermd would chime in too.
Basically sounds like his(the deer) clotting system got short circuited.
When feild dressing this deer five minutes later, it was discovered that all the blood in the chest cavity, and the blood in the heart chambers was all clotted and dark. When this buck was skinned 20 minutes later, the blood in the blood vessels in his neck was the same.
My question is, has anyone else ever witnessed something like this? If so, what was the cartridge being used? I have killed a lot of deer in my 35 years of hunting, and had never seen anything like this before. The deer was clean, and had no marks or wounds from fighting or being shot before this. Any explainations?
Best
EDIT 1:
Thanks Beany, and texaswildman. Those are very close to what I was thinking.
I was hoping that someone with vast medical experience like Cpermd would chime in too.
Basically sounds like his(the deer) clotting system got short circuited.
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Well 30 people have looked at your post . I was not going to reply because I really don't know what to say . I cant see any reason how a small bullet to the neck would have any bearing on how fast blood would clot. . I have seen High velocity rounds cause what I call PURPLE JELLO but most times it is at the point of entry shoulder Hind Quarter ETC. I posted because I am interested if others have seen what you experienced . 0 -
tsr - i've seen this many times. i will try to explain, but maybe one of the docs on the board can do it better. when blood vessels are traumatized, the blood must clot to prevent life from flowing away. the high speed impact from the bullet to the spinal chord destroyed or impacted many vessels. It also probably produced a "concussion", if you will, to the skull, and more than likely, it had a paralysis affect on the body and its organs. this massive body chaos wrecks havoc on the system.
This massive trauma causes lots of bleeding that you initially don't see, but nevertheless, the body detects as bleeding. When bleeding occurs there are a couple of things that take place with the blood platelets and thrombin (clotting agents). The chemical reaction of bleeding causes the platelets to become sticky and adhere to the blood vessel walls. thrombin also reacts (it has lots of proteins) and causes a sticky chain or fiber type clot. the two clot types then begin to stick together or "clot". My guess is the bullet severed the spine from the brain and caused instant death - like chopping the head off.
Works the same way with a "texas heart shot" at the base of the tail. very little apparent bleeding and tissue damage, but very tramatizing to the entire system - a total shock up the spinal column.0 -
I love this question.
Without getting too complicated here, the body's clotting system is designed to activate if it detects certain tissues entering the bloodstream. The point is to seal off bleeding vessels in the case of bleeding.
However, if you get a good amount of tissue introduced directly into the bloodstream (for example, by severing an artery with a super-high velocity bullet), this can induce a phenomenon known as 'disseminated intravascular coagulation' (or DIC for short).
DIC is just what is sounds like. . .its a massive activation of the body's clotting system, and in extreme cases, you can get rapid coagulation of blood within major vessels leading to all sort of major problems.
Animals in particular can have more aggressive clotting systems than people.
So that's your likely explanation.0 -
quote:Originally posted by tsr1965
EDIT 1:
Basically sounds like his(the deer) clotting system got short circuited.
Actually it did what it was supposed to do....0 -
tsr1965,
P.O. Ackley found the same effect when he was testing hyper-velocity .17, .20 and .22 caliber cartridges on Catalina Island several decades ago. He noted in some articles, the instantaneous death of several goats when hit by small caliber bullets traveling at high velocities. The 'autopsies' revealed similar conditions that you noted regarding the coagulation.
This same period of testing also included many tests of the small caliber, hyper-velocity bullets against steel in which he noted the ability of the smaller calibers to penetrate steel plate when the larger calibers simply dented the same plate or created a 'splash' against the surface. He noted that the .220 Swift was very successful in the steel penetration tests.
Best.0 -
I've had that happen with deer and coyotes, using my 264 Win Mag and 100gr Nosler Partitions.
W.D.0
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