Guy misses deer but still kills it

[stephen426]

I saw this on YouTube and was wondering if it is really possible that the pressure wave of a .50 BMG is so powerful that an ear miss can still kill. Amazing!

https://youtu.be/6P3uwl5HzzQ

[JohnKSa]

Looks like he shot in one eye and out the other. The spray clearly visible in the video would seem to confirm that.

The video below provides definitive evidence that a near miss from a .50BMG is like a near miss from any other firearm. Anything that doesn't die of fear is going to be just fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrHpe5Z93wM

If a near miss won't knock over a plastic cup or a house of cards, it's safe to say it won't kill a dear and suck the eyes out of its head.

[globemaster3]

John, good link to Demolition Ranch. My kids love his channel and his Pet Ranch channel is good as well.

But I digress...

It's obvious it was a hit in the head, but having seen photos of suicide bombers in Iraq hit by the 50, I really expected more visible damage!

[TXAZ]

Another BMG myth.
I have a Barrett M107A1,like the one used here. While being near the muzzle brake when fired can be a very serious burn hazardous to your skin if you are too close, paper targets at close range don’t shatter, tear, disintegrate, or otherwise self destruct, but end up with a really nice 1/2” diameter hole in them.

Not even a Raufoss Mk211, an explosive penetrating round, will create a shockwave capable of de-limbing from a near miss. (But makes a nice mess of an engine)

[North East Redneck]

I agree, guy hit the doe in the eye, or close to it. Demolition Ranches video of the plastic cups and house of cards shows that a bullet is a bullet. No magic shockwave with a projectile slightly less than .2 inches larger in diameter.
Deer skulls are thin and weak, the bullet from the .50 did not loose much velocity by passing through it. Did not expand at all, just kept going.

[stephen426]

Thanks for the link. That definitively proves it wasn't the shockwave that killed the deer. I was thinking it was shot through the eye as well, but amazing how little damage occurred.

[Scorch]

Back in the 1950s, ol' Roy Weatherby himself was expounding on how even a near miss from the new 257 Weatherby would kill an animal because of the shock wave. Lots of guys tried replicating the experiment and the animals ran off happy and healthy. Ya gotta hit 'em!

[Old Stony]

No way the shockwave could have killed it....just wouldn't happen.

[Double Naught Spy]

The first telling sign is Warren's lack of understanding about what happened to the deer. You can clearly see that it gets hit on the slow-motion video. He claimed it "sucked the eyeballs out...for an ethical kill." So it sucked the eyeballs out without sucking the hair off the deer. Let's look closely at the slow-mo. You can plainly see in the slow motion that the eyeballs were NOT sucked out. How did Keith Warren miss this?

He said he skinned out the deer and that the bullet had not hit the skull. I certainly have my doubts about that. The skull is mishapen AFTER the shot as compared to before the shot. My guess is that the bullet went through the orbits of the eyes and as you can see at the closeup around 5:23, it looks like the eyeball is still there, albeit deflated.

If .50 BMG created suck pressure waves and vacuums to do the damage he claimed, image all the paper targets .50 BMG shooters use. They would be blasted from their target holders!

[Whistlebritches]

Never been a fan of Keith Warren...........just one more example as to why.

[T. O'Heir]

Close doesn't, never has and never will, count with a .50 BMG.
Roy Weatherby was right up there with Sam Colt and P.T. Barnum for marketing.
When these guys publish this kind of nonsense it just proves how bad YouTube really is.

[Double Naught Spy]

Lol, if something is bad on Youtube, then Youtube is bad.
Ergo, if something is bad in a book, then books are bad.
If something is bad on TV, all tv is bad.

It doesn't work like that. You are putting the blame in the wrong place.

[johnwilliamson062]

I once spoke with an soldier who seemed to honestly think a 50 BMG launched from his hmmwv mounted M2 would tear the flesh off any exposed skin if it passed within 4 inches. I was stunned, but decided, given the likelihood he would be relying on the M2 before it was practical to teach him how to actual shoot it, I wouldn't shatter the false sense of power instiled by previous instructor.
Something about Tertius.

[Double Naught Spy]

Shattering his false sense of power might save his life.

[briandg]

The most important question here is 'what is a shockwave? How can you have one form'? It's going to require that moving bullet to transfer energy to the nearby object somehow.

So,here is the point. that thing is a VLD bullet that slips right through the air and sheds an impossibly small amount of energy into the air at any given part of its travel.

If it strikes a steel plate or even water, all of that energy is dumped into a solid substance very rapidly and of course there is a shock. Spread that out over a mile long path through the air, and what do you get?

YOU GET THE CRACK OF A SUPERSONIC PROJECTILE FLYING THROUGH THE AIR.

there's your shockwave. an F16 can rattle windows, right? an eight ton plane moving at mach two surely ought to knock an occasional pigeon out of the air, right? Do you ever see it happen? come on, traffic copters should have been falling out of the air all throughout the years as those things went supersonic over urban areas.

I am surprised at the plastic cups, but that proves everything that I'm trying to say here. There was so little energy transferred through that little membrane of plastic that it didn't even move it, could that same round possibly slip past a deer's head and suck the brains out of that skull?

I just honestly can't believe that I saw that. That's the sort of thing that I heard when I was in grade school.

It follows the form of "it's so impossible and so outrageous that I have to tell people that it's true so they will understand my power over reality."

You tell the guys on the bus that your dad shot a deer with his .44 magnum and there was a hole left that was big enough to throw a basketball through, and listen to them "ooh" and "ahh".

Weatherby said that using his high velocity rounds would kill an animal instantly because the high velocity impact caused a neurological shock, similar to lightning, that destroys the brain when the critter is struck.

Elmer keith said that once while in africa, he shot a buffalo, and when he retrieved it, there was a dead tick bird by it, and a bird had been on the buff's back when he fired. He published the picture, joking that the .577 nitro was so dangerous that it could kill the birds on a critter's back. I think that he was joking.

I wonder if that guy ever realized that he had said something so damned stupid? probably not, or he would have pulled the video by now.

[briandg]

Lol, if something is bad on Youtube, then Youtube is bad.
Ergo, if something is bad in a book, then books are bad.
If something is bad on TV, all tv is bad.

It doesn't work like that. You are putting the blame in the wrong place.

While his chain of reasoning is flawed, yoo toob is still bad. it's evil. It should be banned. It allows the stupid people to prey on the stupid people and makes our entire world unsafe from the forces of stupidity.

Lighting farts doesn't set people on fire, idiots who show morons on the internet how much fun it is to light farts set people on fire. Everyone who has a match and a can of beans is a disco fire in the making, and the only way to stop it is to shut down the internet and jail all who propagate information about the mysteries of flaming denim.

[Double Naught Spy]

While his chain of reasoning is flawed, yoo toob is still bad. it's evil. It should be banned. It allows the stupid people to prey on the stupid people and makes our entire world unsafe from the forces of stupidity.

Got it. You don't like it, therefore, it should be banned. Great logic.

Okay, so y'all are against 1st amendment freedom of expression and/or classify based on the lowest common denominator. Got it. MAC, hickock45, myself, and others will be glad to know you think we are stupid people.

[briandg]

Your sarcasm meter must be faulty. You must be watching too much yoo toob.

[globemaster3]

That escalated quickly....

DNS, I know what the problem is! Your sarcasm detector is off a bit. That happens when you don't shoot enough pigs. Go grab your angry bird plush toy, shoot 2, and call us in the morning!

[Danoobie]

I'm just wondering how truly "ethical" shooting deer with a 50 BMG is. Sort of
removes a lot of the sporting challenge, ennit?

[globemaster3]

Ethical? Let me counter with a question. How dead is too dead?

You can argue overkill (I would), but the animal was dispatched with one shot, with a caliber more than capable of doing the job, and shot somewhere that minimized meat loss. Not sure you can argue ethical with that.

[Art Eatman]

Can we get back to the real world? Please? Pretty please with sugar on it?