I've had my finger plugging pencil-sized (.25 caliber) holes in a heart while a surgeon is throwing pledget sutures around the hole in an attempt to prevent the patient from bleeding to death before putting them on by-pass. There are only a few sure-fire 'instant death' injuries, and a pencil-sized hole through the heart is not one of them. Any real hunter or trauma surgeon would know that.
Any my point is, sure, you CAN kill a grizzly bear with a bow and arrow, but that doesn't mean most folks should. I'd prefer a .44 Magnum, or better yet, a high powered rifle. Just because you CAN kill someone with a .22LR, doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job. Higher caliber rounds are more effective manstoppers, period, and effectiveness generally scales with both muzzle velocity, caliber, and bullet weight (oddly enough, the factors determining energy... yep, those foot pounds).
First things first: When the guy attacking you has a doctor suturing up his hole, we'll talk. But then he's probably not in the best shape to fight back 🙂 When you've seen a deer with a .223 solid-sized hole through its left ventricle bolt about 30 yards then drop like a sack of doorknobs, you get convinced that a hit to the heart will kill. Of course it's not instant death. I actually worked at a hospital for three years (summers) and I saw a case where a guy took a bullet to the forehead that bounced off the back of his skull and continued down, ending just shy of the corpus collosum, and he lived. Then again, he wasn't in much of a mood to fight back. The human body can live through a whole helluvalot. So of course I'm not a "real trama surgeon." Don't tell me I'm not a real hunter or that I don't know what kills though. You criticize me for taking a dissimilar circumstance in hunting elephants, then you cite an emergency room.
As for elephant hunting being offensive, you're basically right. In his career of shooting over 3 000 elephants and an untold number of cape buffalo, we must assume that some of the animals charged him, as elephants and buffalo are wont to do. We then must assume that it was his insanely good aim that kept Bell alive. Furthermore, I'm going to assume you're not very familiar with elephant hunting. There are any number of books that can set you straight--among them are "elephant hunting in east equitorial africa" and anything by Capstick, really. Capstick in particular will tell you that elephants often charge, and that they're often shot at a very close range--that is, you happen upon them at about 20 yards. He uses a larger caliber, but don't forget that the degree to which his caliber is greater than yours for people is far less than the pct by which an elephant outweighs a human; that is, the ratio is really not in his favor. This is why he uses solids, and this is why every account of elephant hunting across which I've stumbled recommends solids. As to hammer09's comments, I'm not at all aware of the effectiveness of human action after a hole has been put into a heart, but I would assume it is significant. In this case, I would wholeheartedly agree that a bigger blow to the torso beats a smaller hole, hands down.
Second, I wholeheartedly that, in two identical cases in which your only option is more ft-lbs or fewer ft-lbs, you will want more ft-lbs. I'm just saying that your best bet is good bullet placement, and it always will be. You seemed to be saying that a .22 was wholly ineffectual, like Think of it this way.... take an icepick, and jam it into a side of beef as hard as you can. It will make a nice round hole in the meat, but not much else.... very little energy transferance. Next, take a veal cutlet, and pound on it with a meat tenderizing mallet. Much better energy transference, hence why the meat is much easier to chew when you bite into it. Same principle with handgun cartridges, but the .22 is the icepick, and the .357 the mallet
My argument is simply that musculature is an entirely different matter than vital organs. I would much rather put some .22 rounds into a heart than some .45 rounds into a thigh.
