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Bullet Penetration...Weight or Energy???

Permanently deleted user
I just purchased a .460 S&W with a 2.75" barrel for a bear gun. I'm wondering if I'm better off with a lighter bullet which has higher energy, or a heavier bullet with less energy (please keep in mind that this is for Grizzly Bears). Given the choices below, which bullet would you choose (all Corbons). Please also consider bullet type:

200 gr with 2350 ft lbs energy (XPB, Barnes Pistol Bullet)
275 gr with 2034 ft lbs energy ("""""")
325 gr with 1965 ft lbs energy (Bonded Core)
395 gr with 2040 ft lbs energy (HC, Hard Cast)

Thank you!

This is a duplicate post, posted in different forums for more exposure.
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Comments

13 comments

Date Votes
  • use enough gun
    I'll take the heaviest bullet every time. Dave
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  • Colt Super
    Me, too.

    Doug
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  • Kimbercolt
    take as heavy as you can get.
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Faster velocity and more energy should equal better penetration.?.?
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  • SW 357Mag
    395 grain
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  • longsantafe
    lighter and more mushy in spring ,hard and heavy in fall, better yet bring a fat slow companion on the hunt.
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  • Horse Plains Drifter
    I too would take the heavy one.
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  • tsavo303
    heavy provides more reliable pentration.
    some deer rifle rounds pentrate further at long range where the bullets hit at speeds that dont break them up.
    you want mass and solid construction
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  • elkoholic
    Either of these will work well but I would go with the hard cast bullet to maximize penetration.

    325 gr with 1965 ft lbs energy (Bonded Core)
    395 gr with 2040 ft lbs energy (HC, Hard Cast)

    A good article on handguns for bear defence can be found here...

    http://www.garrettcartridges.com/031000.asp

    Here is a C&P of the bullet selection part of the article.
    Where defense against bear attack is concerned, the best bullets for the large caliber handgun are clearly proper hard-cast bullets. Expanding bullets are far too likely to fracture when impacted into the tough bone of a bear's skull. This should be rather obvious as any bullet designed to expand against the light resistance of a deer's rib cage cannot be depended upon for major bone busting on a big bear. When selecting a hard-cast bullet for such applications, one should be careful to choose an extremely heavy bullet with a broad frontal flat (meplat). It is also important that the casting possess substantial inherent strength, with a hardness rating of at least 19-Brinnell. The importance of selecting a heavy bullet is twofold. First, heavier bullets penetrate deeper than lighter bullets. Second, since heavier bullets cannot be driven as fast as lighter bullets, they experience less impact stress and are therefore less likely to fracture upon impact. This is very important, as the amount of stress experienced by a bullet upon impact is the result of the speed of impact and the toughness of the target. When the target is close and extremely tough, reliable performance is always best achieved by increasing bullet weight and decreasing velocity. The importance of selecting a bullet with a broad meplat is also critical, as broad meplated bullets tend to penetrate deeper than small meplated bullets. It has become obvious to me through the years that although logic would seem to suggest that heavy bullets with small meplats should penetrate deeper than blunter bullets of the same weight and velocity, they usually don't. This is quite interesting, as it would seem that the bullet with the smaller meplat would offer less resistance to penetration and therefore should penetrate better than the blunter bullet. However, nearly three decades of penetration testing with the 44 Magnum has established beyond any doubt that the blunter designs penetrate the best. The truncated cone is an excellent example of this. Although possessing meplats in the .210-inch to .230-inch range, truncated cones do not penetrate as deeply as semi-wadcutters of the same weight and impact velocity, and yet the semi-wadcutters I have tested possess meplat diameters of about .285-inch. Later testing revealed that penetration would continue to increase as the meplats increased in diameter up to about .320-inch. However, my penetration testing demonstrated that meplat diameters significantly greater than .320-inch, in 44 caliber, did not increase penetration depth, but instead led to decreased penetration depth. It is always easier to observe than explain, however it is my opinion that the reason for this pertains to the disparity in weight distribution of small meplated bullets. Simply stated, when the back half of the bullet carries significantly more weight than the front half, the back half tends to over-take the front half upon impact. In other words, the bullet tends to go sideways since the back half carries more weight and has more inertia. As the weight disparity between the two ends of the bullet is reduced, as in blunter designs, there is clearly less of a tendency for the back half to over-take the front half, and the bullet takes a straighter and deeper path. However, once this weight disparity has been corrected, any further increases in meplat diameter tend to decrease penetration depth as terminal stability can no longer be improved.
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  • buschmaster
    penetration depends on several factors:

    1. construction of the bullet. some are made for the purpose of expanding faster, some are made to expand slower or not at all. add to that the fact that some are simply better constructed, while others don't work as advertised and fall apart.

    2. velocity. with higher velocity, resistance against that bullet going through anything -air, gelatin, muscle- increases exponentially. bullet construction is taken into account, but with super high velocities it's harder to keep it together.

    3. mass. all other things being equal, of course the more mass the more it will penetrate.

    put all 3 together and you have one heck of a time figuring out which bullet to use. you can have a light, low velocity bullet that penetrates well due to bullet construction. or you can have a fast, heavy bullet that expands rapidly and doesn't penetrate much at all. anything is possible!

    with the list you gave, first choice would be the 200 gr. 2350 ft-lb. with the XPB, depending on what expansion rate they made the bullet. Barnes is an excellent bullet mfr, they can keep a light bullet together at high velocity and high power if that's what they wanted to do with that bullet. that might not be what they had in mind.

    second choice would be the 325 gr. bonded core.
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  • SG_Niner
    it might say air but give this a try http://www.airgunexpo.com/calc/
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  • buschmaster
    oh yeah, another problem you will have is that short barrel. you have to figure out which cartridge will give you the most power by the end of 2.75 inches. I think the lighter/faster bullets are better for that, whereas the heavier bullets have to use a slower burning powder and so don't develop their power until later on down the barrel.
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  • ripley16
    Guess it's just me but, I'd want a big damn rifle against a Grizzly Bear. No, I'm not kidding.
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