OPENING DISCLAIMER: This thread may not be for the squeamish.
I wanted to kick this off in the hopes that we can start collecting and presenting some useful, real-world information on what our hunting bullets actually DO. We get A LOT of questions about what to use in terms of caliber and bullet design theory - my goal is to start presenting some visuals on our answers.
With this being a casting forum, I expect that most of what we end up with will be from cast bullets, but I want to keep it open to anything we hunt with, since that will be useful for comparison. If you hunt with jacketed, monometal copper, or even arrows, it's all good here.
We should keep in mind that every "animal down" situation presents challenges that may keep us from getting all the data, but what I'd generally like to see assembled is:
Data on the ammo: bullet type, alloy used, muzzle and estimated impact velocity.
Approximate range to target and angle of the impact (broadside, quartering, etc...).
Type and approximate size of the animal
Entrance and exit wounds
Affected organs
Recovered bullet or fragments if applicable, along with some idea of how much critter it took to stop it.
Behavior of animal before the shot (calm, agitated, running, etc...), and after (bang-flop, took about _____ yards to fall, needed a second round, etc...)
And hey - it's science, not an ego trip, so if you had something that emphatically DIDN'T work (lost animal or your buddy had to finish it off), let's get some discussion on the specifics of that as well.
Good luck all!