332 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



the rabbit can often run away with the wound. But 

 seventy grains behind the same ball will cut the rabbit 

 half in two. A Winchester '73 model will decapitate 

 a rabbit with its two hundred grains of lead and forty 

 grains of powder almost as completely as an ax would 

 do it. Open a cartridge and take out five sixths of 

 the powder and the ball will barely get through the 

 rabbit's head, leaving it almost uninjured outside of 

 a hole of its own diameter. This difference is prob- 

 ably due to the difference in the spinning motion of 

 the ball as much as to the difference in flattening. 



It is said that at too high a velocity a ball will not 

 flatten as much as at a low one, as a tallow candle at 

 a high velocity will pass through a board without 

 flattening. This is true only where the ball is fired 

 through a thin resisting medium. At a high velocity 

 the candle will cut a smaller hole through a half-inch 

 board than when at a low velocity. But if fired at 

 high velocity through something thick, like a beam or 

 several boards, the hole will be not only deeper but 

 larger at the bottom than when the velocity is low. 

 It is the same with the bullet. A ball grazing a deer 

 an inch or two deep will perhaps, aside from the cut- 

 ting power of increased rotation of ball, cut a smaller 

 hole at a high velocity than it would at a moderate 

 speed. But where the body has any considerable 

 thickness, so that the ball has more time to expand, 

 the higher velocity will tell. 



I have heard good hunters maintain just the reverse 

 of this; to wit, that too much powder would make the 

 ball flatten so as to stop its penetration. There is 

 nothing in this. The penetration of a ball that will 

 flatten at all to any useful extent depends upon its 

 momentum; that is, its weight and velocity. Its pen- 



