What ag is at least .40 cal and 400 FPE ?

[HunterWhite]

 What ag is at least .40 cal and 400 FPE ?
That is the new specification for hunting in Arkansas.

[Privateer]

AirForce Texan .45 comes to mind.
Then you have the .458 OutLaw from Quackenbush.
Those are off the shelve Guns I found in like 3 minutes.
The Badger .40 cal could be modded to hit the 400 FPE mark.

[floridaboy]

Bushbuck .45
Extreme Big Bore .45

[Rescue35]

The Umarex Hammer in .50 when it becomes available...

My vote would be for the Airforce Texan in .457. I shot one today at the fun shoot and it was accurate and powerful. I hit an 8 inch gong dead center with roundball at 155 yards. I wish I would have bought one last year.

[Rob M]

new umarex hammer

[Ribbonstone]

HAve often wondered why big bore airguns seem to have skipped the .44 (429"-430").  Are a boat load of applicable cast bullets at hand in lighter weights, a few in heavier weights,

So they've gone with +40/+400.  Won't be a multitude of airgun choices....and I wonder how they'll decide that you're under the energy line.

[HunterWhite]

Right, how can law enforcement enforce the letter of the law? Some manufacturers will specify fpe, but it depends on projectile weight and velocity.  That will depend on how much air pressure,  and the turning of the ag. Someone who changes the barrel and upgrades the valve and porting may have to jump through hoops to be legal. I think that that would be unfare. Plus there is no way to verify that a stock ag that qualified hasn't been tuned for more shots at reduced power.

[AncientSword]

I believe that in Maryland, C.Alls had to chrony his gun for the DNR or whatever they are called there (Here it's the FWC).  They had a 1200 fpe rule at the time. 

I would want to make sure that whatever I was using would clearly pass the bar.  Not worth the chance on not making it. 

The short list has been mentioned above:

Texan .45
Extreme .40 - .72
Hammer .50
PBBA .457
Quackenbush

A Badger .40 would do it on Helium most likely ...

[HunterWhite]

Wow! That's some airgun at 1200 fps. That is AR15 in power.

[AncientSword]

Wow! That's some airgun at 1200 fps. That is AR15 in power.

Extreme Big Bore on Helium in .72 will do close to 1700 fpe ...

[YEMX]

Current Md law is minimum .40 AND minimum 400 fpe for deer.  Anything smaller- pest and varmint (coyote and fox) is whatever the hunter wants... 

I think the .40 and 400 fpe is BS.  Where did they come up with that number, and why is the DNR not attempting to listen to the shooting public?  I sent in a letter a while back, when the state was thinking of looking at the AG law, but haven't heard anything about it since. 

[Ribbonstone]

Going to have to point out that airgun requirement to me...read though the Arkansas on-line information and didn't run into it in reference to airguns.

[HunterWhite]

It was posted in the hunting gate by MunnY.
I live in Texas. The proposed legislation here is 30 cal minimum but power was not specified. That proposal is under review.  I would not be surprised to see the exact language adopted here, or maybe 30 or 357 minimum caliber and 400 fpe. The meeting is next week ( I think ).

[Bullfrog]

As I’ve said before, I think we’ve made a mistake focusing on FPE in measuring an airgun’s hunting effectiveness. If a DNR official did a quick google search to get a crash course in what’s necessary for an air gun to be an effective big game harvester, they’d get the wrong idea even from within our own community.

Airguns are bows by other means. Period. Any power level a bow can kill game with, so can an an airgun. All that matters is that the airgun’s projectile be of the right size or design to make a wound channel big enough to impair the vitals. That’s the message we should have been getting out years ago.

[oneshot61]

Extreme big bore in .40 or 45.  Well documented and repeatable.

[rsterne]

I have to disagree, bullets are not arrows.... Not only don't they have the Sectional Density to provide similar penetration at similar velocities, they don't have the cutting edge diameter of a broadhead, so for equal penetration won't provide the same volume of blood loss.... IMO, this is one case of bigger is better, and a .50 cal roundball at 200 FPE will kill better than a .357 bullet at the same energy.... This is simply because it punches a bigger hole.... Yes, if you drive a .357 HP bullet fast enough to get it to expand to .50 cal at your target distance, then that levels the playing field.... but by the time you drive it that fast, it will have more energy as well.... Killing power is a combination of penetration and wound diameter, which is related to the FPE, but more so to the momentum.... That favours larger calibers, even if the FPE is less....

Bob

[Ribbonstone]

True...some areas require a broad head of a certain diameter (7/8" isn't uncommon) and a certain bow weight...so are slicing at least a .876" hole into the vitals. It's a different way of measuring effectiveness, not reliant on energy levels (what's the energy level of an ice-pick stab though the heart?).


But still....am not opposed to the +40/+400 idea.  Know it can be done with much less energy and a much smaller projectile under perfect conditions....but if that's the goal line, then I'd live by it.

[rsterne]

But still....am not opposed to the +40/+400 idea.  Know it can be done with much less energy and a much smaller projectile under perfect conditions....but if that's the goal line, then I'd live by it.

I agree 100%....

Bob

[Bullfrog]

I have to disagree, bullets are not arrows.... Not only don't they have the Sectional Density to provide similar penetration at similar velocities, they don't have the cutting edge diameter of a broadhead, so for equal penetration won't provide the same volume of blood loss.... IMO, this is one case of bigger is better, and a .50 cal roundball at 200 FPE will kill better than a .357 bullet at the same energy.... This is simply because it punches a bigger hole.... Yes, if you drive a .357 HP bullet fast enough to get it to expand to .50 cal at your target distance, then that levels the playing field.... but by the time you drive it that fast, it will have more energy as well.... Killing power is a combination of penetration and wound diameter, which is related to the FPE, but more so to the momentum.... That favours larger calibers, even if the FPE is less....

Bob

An airgun projectile, especially a pellet's skirt or a large-holed hollow point prior to expansion, is carving out a 360 degree cut, while an arrow is only cutting what its edges are contacting (and those edges need to be razor sharp). Its the difference between running a knife thru something vs running a drill thru it. A large pellet at high speed is performing very much like running a drill right thru an animal. I believe the cutting action of a pellet's skirt has been largely unnoticed by the airgun hunting community and warrants further study.

I would submit that its easier for a wound channel thru the lungs to clot and seal with many different broadheads than it is for the wound channel of a large caliber pellet to clot, and that a .357 or .45 pellet at sufficient speed is going to out perform (meaning out-cut and out-kill) the average bow and broadhead combination at normal bow ranges and velocities. Although blood loss is important, the more important killing factor is the deflation and disabling of the lungs. A tri-shaped hole made by a broadhead won't do much good in regards to recovering and shot and running deer if the slotted hole can clog up enough to clot while the deer is on the hoof. If it clots, his lungs can re-inflate and he can keep going for a long time. The reason broadhead holes can often reclot is because the actual area being cut within the wound cavity is small and the tissue is being left pretty much intact. Think about the flaps of flesh you've probably seen on many broadhead wounds. The broadhead just cut slots and left the skin and tissue in place as a tri-shaped set of flaps. Those flaps trap clotting blood and can reseal. Its like busting a hole in a beaver dam. A hole that leaves lots of limbs in place gives the trash flowing thru it something to get stuck on and it becomes self-sealing. You want the hole to be a clean of obstructions as possible so the water keeps flowing. I submit that a pellet makes a cleaner hole than a broadhead.

I agree that the bigger the hole is, the better. But FPE is only relevant to making sure that the projectile has enough energy to make the hole in question as deep as it needs to be. The difference between a 100fpe and 400fpe projectile is irrelevant in terms of causing hydrostatic shock in the same was a 2000fpe firearm does.

Concerning penetration and sectional density, on paper, yes arrows should out penetrate almost every other projectile there is. But in reality, there's aspects about an arrow's design that can stop it from penetrating as deep as another projectile that doesn't have as high of a sectional density. If you watch several ballistic gel tests on Youtube, you'll see that often arrows won't shoot clean thru the block in the same was an airgun projectile will. The slower velocity of the arrow is allowing the [simulated] tissue to contract back around and grip the shaft as the arrow is passing thru in a way it can't on a small, fast, projectile that (in the case of a pellet's skirt) is cutting and flailing back the tissue all the way around as it goes. I think that's why hard-skirted pellets can penetrate so deep. They're cutting away the resistance as they pass.

If both a pellet and and arrow have enough energy to double-lung shoot the game animal in question and possibly pass thru, then I submit that yes, they very much are the same weapon in terms of the relevance of FPE. The same question applies to both, what design or size projectile does the hunter need to disable the lungs and cause as much bleeding as possible?

[rsterne]

While I won't get into arguments about "clotting" and how rapidly that might happen or not occur inside lung tissue (I personally think an animal would bleed out long before the lungs would clot, but that is JMO).... but if you add up the six 0.437" long cut surfaces that a 7/8" broadhead makes.... it would take an .83 cal bullet to have the same circumference....

There is actually a direct correlation between FPE and penetration, and hence wound volume, if you choose a given bullet.... Penetration is proportional to Velocity times Sectional Density (for non-expanding projectiles), with shape (BC in flesh) being the other factor.... and of course the density of the material impacted (skin, muscle, bone, or lung).... Since velocity varies with the square root of the FPE, for a given bullet and target density, 400 FPE will penetrate about twice as far as 100 FPE, creating twice the volume of wound channel.... Of course if both penetrate completely through the animal, then the wound channel is the same volume, although I would suggest the animal would still react differently to a 400 FPE impact than a 100 FPE impact.... I know shooting a Grouse is more effective in anchoring it with an 18 gr. pellet than a 14 gr. at the same velocity and caliber, even though both give complete pass-throughs.... Also, a .25 cal pellet will anchor a Marmot far better than a .22 cal of the same FPE....

Bob