Distance Travelled
Over on the 24HourCampfire there is a lively discussion going on. One fellow has stood on the Pillar of TrVth and said that high-velocity, lower caliber cartridges produced faster kills than larger slower ones. Of course, this is yet another incarnation of the old Dead Right There (DRT) argument– what makes deer run after being shot? What makes them lie down and take a dirt nap? It’s a perennial favorite.
Here is what I said on the subject:
Personally, I think we still don’t know as much about what actually kills deer as we think we do. Otherwise, there would not be this much disagreement. Mind you, I include myself in that statement.
I had oodles of DRT deer early on in my career. The last few years, it’s been mostly short runs less than 100 yards. The necropsies all look the same: jellied lungs and hearts. The only huge difference are the bullets: 12 Ga slug 180 grain 30-06 in the old days and 165 grain in various .308 bore cartridges since. My last DRT was in 2004 with a .54 cal Hawken.
That’s not to say I don’t agree with the premise that faster and lighter, with some moderation, kills better. I’m just saying I don’t know.
As a shaman, I get to read all sorts interesting stuff. I have an idea that may or may not have bearing on the subject. First off, let me try to cast our understanding of what makes the deer’s lights go out in an historical perspective. For thousands of years, man did not operate under the understanding we have now of the role of organs in maintaining life. It used to be, back when all we had were spears and clubs, that consciousness was thought to rest in either the heart or the liver. The brain was thought to be largely filler. We got well into the era of written history, before our current understanding of the brain and the CNS came to the forefront. You killed based on that understanding too; in the old days you aimed at the heart or the liver and tried to get your opponent to give up his life force that you figured was somehow all balled up in this organ.
About 30 years ago, an anesthesiologist from Houston started studying how nitrous oxide worked on the body as an anesthetic. He knew empirically how it worked– apply gas, patient becomes unconscious. Apply too much, patient dies. He wanted to know why. By the time he started submitting papers, he had discovered a whole separate structure to the body of humans– a previously overlooked network of microtubles. Microtubles had been observed for years and fairly well understood by cellular biologists studying individual cells, but this anesthesiologist was theorizing that the interconnection between cells via microtubles was possibly the seat of consciousness.
That was not to say that the brain and central nervous system was not important. They just might not be the actual place in which consciousness resides. Instead, as this guy theorized, consciousness might be a whole-body kind of thing. It would explain a lot besides just how nitrous oxide works. It would also explain things like acupuncture. It would also explain the vast difference between the observed number of interconnections in the brain, and the astronomically greater number of interconnections that information theorists believe are necessary for a subtle faculty like consciousness and self-awareness to exist– either in a human or in an artificial intelligence program running inside a computer.
There continues to be research in the area of microtuble networks. It would be easy to understand why they were missed for all of human history: they’re just so daggone small you need microscopes that have only been around in my lifetime to see them. If this pans out, it would be the first new system discovered in the human body since . . . what, the Renaissance?
Some day I believe we will be taught about microtubles in elementary school the same way we are taught about the circulatory system and the digestive system now. Remington will produce ads promising better microtuble disruption with their new .30 Light Ultra Magnum, that looks remarkably like a 30-06. We will sit around the barbershop and talk half-wittedly about microtuble disruption the same way hydraulic shock is now discussed.
My point in bringing this up is that even the Egyptians had it right up to a point when they said that if you attacked the liver, all life force would exit the body. We operate under a much more sophisticated understanding, but there is still room for refinement and possibly even a great leap or too. Egyptians were baffled as to why, when you brained someone with a club, they fell down and died– it didn’t seem to effect the liver at all. They probably sat around and argued small club versus large club, while the spear and arrow guys looked on in disgust and wondered what the silliness was all about.
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