Click on the link and read the article:

https://www.outdoorlife.com/why-hunters-...campaign=buffer

Knockdown power isn't nearly as important as putting a good bullet in the right spot.

If it were legal, I could kill whitetails with a .22 rimfire. As ST said above, shot placement with a good bullet beats ft. lbs. of energy almost every time. I've culled 100's of deer with a .222 Remington.

I agree with Sapper. I hunt with a 22-250 most of the time and haven't lost a deer yet. None have ran over 35-40 yards. Shot placement is the key.

Without reading that article I'd say that term knockdown power is totally misapplied.
If you could
Somehow get a perfectly sized and weighed deer mannequin with the same body density
You could shoot it all day long with your deer rifle and never knock it down.
If you want true knockdown power use your pickup. That's some where around
A million foot pounds.

Yeah I'm bored. Sitting in the deer stand and seeing nothing.

I think a more interesting way to look at this is would be in the form of a wager. Easy 150 yard broadside shot and the wager is that buck has to drop in his tracks or you lose 5,000 dollars and the buck. Now what caliber and bullet combination are you going to use to insure he gets knocked down in his tracks and where are you going to shoot him? I'll stick with my 300 Weatherby, 150 grain Nosler partitions and the high shoulder shot.

The article almost discounted hydrostatic shock as being much of a factor.

"Sometimes heart-lung hit animals die instantly from so-called hydrostatic shock. Evidence suggests this is most likely from the bullet’s impact causing blood vessels to rupture in the animal’s brain."

Hydrostatic shock is what I hear most folk referring to when they say "knockdown power." They are not meaning that they are going to literally blow the animal off its feet.

Point of the shoulder or dead center of the neck, just foward of where the neck and shoulder meet. If he were facing me, center of the throat patch. Facing away, center back of the neck. Otherwise, in the head. 7mm-08. Aw he77 who am I kidding, it's for 5k. In the noggin every time!

It's a crappy phrase. Means nothing really as applied to hunting.

You only need 1 FPE per pound of body weight at 50 yards as long as the shot placement is correct. Deer are shot and killed in many states with airguns. From what I have learned is most require a .25 or .30 caliber or above to legally shot one.

I have never seen an animal knocked down by a rifle or pistol round. I have seen many animals fall down after being shot, but they were not knocked down.

Knockdown??? I was amazed at the "knockdown" power demonstratred on the 1st WTail I shot at about 125/140 yards with a 9.3x62's soft Speer 270gr SP bullet running about 2500/2600fps witha max load of RL15 under it...bullet impact was in the igh/mid crease area at a down angle and resulted in the 3-4 year old mature spike being moved airborne about 40+ feet back up the trail he had entered the food plot from ....and rolled him side to side, from the imprint left in the brushy uncut planted winter grass. Bullet Impact generated a vertically oblong egg shaped blood spray pattern on a fully leafed small tree behind him about 7'/8' wide in the early morning sunrise that I have never seen before or since on any thing I've ever shot.

Entry wound was so small I had to part the hair to find it, and exit wound was perfectly smooth & round and a little larger that a quarter sized coin. Meat damage in the surrounding tissue was neglible...but everything in between entry & exit was soup.

The 2nd WTail I shot with that round was knocked down and rolled, but had enough life force left to get up and run about 75/80 yards. He was hit with high shoulder POA slightly quartering to me at about 160/175 yrds at a down angle from the elevated blind sitting on the high shoulder overlooking a dry wash with a feeder set up on the far side. My friend Crazyhorse, from earlier THF days, who was "guiding" me, called the shot when the targeted mature spike, cleared a small herd of does he was with as they were leaving the unfenced feeder set up, and commented that the 9.3's (.366 caliber) bullet peformance was similar to the 375H&H 260gr'ers he liked to hunt with for everything.

Do I believe in a calibers "knockdown" power...yes ...as I've seen it demonstrated twice on 150+lb WTails...does it mean the targeted critter is instantly DRT? No...but I've never seen a 243, 25'06, 270, 30'06 or 300WMg that I've used to harvest deer with over the 50+ years I've been hunting deer sized animals, have had that same effect on a WTail or Texas Mule Deer.

Only similar experience was a West Texas Mule deer shot with a heavily overloaded 270 130gr 1st Gen NBT, and broke his back, hip and pelvis when he almost escaped us down in the bottom of the dry wash he was bedded in the shade, and the 1st Gen NBT blew up on the hip and pelvis bones with shrapnel exiting his brisket but did not kill him DRT either at the 60+ yard shot, and required another finisher at the base of his neck from overhead when he still had enough "juice to get up and try and gore me when I approached him face to face, dragging his back legs. He weighed 212lb's live weight on Mr Bill Carters scales, as the 3rd largest Muley of the 13 taken by the Industry people he was hosting for a weekend at the White Horse Ranch outside Van Horn.
Ron

I laughed when my daughter shot a spike that was quartering towards us. We were in a 20ft blind and he was in front of the feeder. When he was hit, he jumped backwards and hit the 6ft high feeder barrel that was about 8ft behind him, he actually moved it. Had the feeder not been there the elevation of the jump would have been the 6 ft+ and the length about 16ft, but the barrel stopped him. This is where a lot of people think they blew an animal off its feet. In our case the bullet was going down toward the deer and if knockdown where possible it would have driven the animal into the ground, not up. The deer simply reacted to the sound and feeling of impact, and jumped.

"knockdown" is a pure myth. We've debated this before in another post a few years ago here that got pretty heated. From a physics stand point, the "felt" impact or knockdown powder is about the same as the recoil you feel in the shoulder from the rifle when firing. The bullet contains the energy and transfers the terminal energy into damage inside the soft tissue. From a physics stand point, it's 2 different energy sources. I don't have the desire to hash out the research I did the last time we talked about this.

Yes, there is some "knockdown" power. Is it like you see in the movies- No! Almost all of the energy is used to do damage inside for terminal performance energy, not the actual "knockdown" power.

Chad is correct. Knockdown power is a myth. The perceived impact on the receiving end is similar/equal to the recoil felt on the sending end. On the other hand, hydraulic and hydrostatic effects can disrupt blood pressure and electronic signals to the brain which can cause an instant collapse or an instinctive leap backward to the noise/pain followed by a loss of consciousness.

Thank you Chad and DNS.
Now if you had a 6" cannon...

Very interesting read.

Shot placement is everything.

I knew an old burro hunter, long since passed, who was involved with the knockdown mythology back in the '60s, when it was still legal to shoot burros.
Was the standard question, can a rifle knock a large animal over? They knew the physics, equal and opposite reaction.
Starting with 300 magnums as a baseline they made custom heavy varmint type bullets so all the energy is delivered to the target with no pass through, similar bullets were made for all cartridges used. Second rifle was a large 458 (450 A&M mag I think) followed by a 50 BMG on a Boys Rifle action. All the burros shot fell randomly towards or away.
For the final test a 20mm Lahti was employed, even though with the expanding custom bullets a cartoon size wound was produced the burros still fell toward the gun as often as away.

The good old days before NFA and Wild vermin being protected.

M

Yes, knockdown power is a pure myth--one time Mike Tyson hit a still 120lb. Defenseless Sparring partner right in the jaw. Then a featherweight boxer hit the same sparring partner right in the jaw. The sparring partner said Tyson's blow felt like a blowing whisper of a summer breeze; while the featherweight's pierced him down to his toes. Yep, that's what they said.

Who has the salt?

If "size" doesn't matter, then I guess you all would be happy carrying pistols that shoot 22 shorts as your everyday carry weapon.

What?

I don’t think 50 shorts would kill someone, let alone 22 of them.