Jul 23, 2026 · 1 hr 25 min · 11 segments
Shove the marketing aside. This is a discussion with Leland Brown, a scientist who has been conducting a study on which projectiles provide the quickest kills. The results changed my mind about which…
Leland BrownGuestJames NashHostSo when, whenever we're talking about ballistics, it's in three categories, right?
That's everything from when the primer gets ignited until when the bullet leaves the barrel.
Reloaders do a little bit, but that's mostly, like, a, an actual, like, rocket science engineering type of issue.
Right? Most people get really interested in external ballistics, so everything between when that projectile leaves the end of the barrel and when it hits the target.
Yeah, all your drop charts and wind drift and all that stuff is what people think about when they think of ballistics.
I was having, having a wonderful time trying to, trying to make a guess at how all these atmospheric conditions are gonna change where my bullet lands, right? What are all the air molecules doing between here and there, and how do they affect this projectile? It's very, very fun.
So what happens with that projectile once it hits the target, and if the target, in the case of hunters or invasive species control specialists, whatever, if you're shooting a critter, you wanna know what is gonna happen to that animal because of that projectile hitting it, and it changes so much from one diameter of a bullet, one, uh, shape of a bullet-
There's a huge number of things that go into it, and it is the most important thing to me.
Shot placement, critically important, but anybody who's hunted for very long at all knows that shot placement doesn't always work out, and we want to have good terminal performance with that projectile, um, whether th- the shot placement is perfect or not.
So when, whenever we're talking about ballistics, it's in three categories, right?
That's everything from when the primer gets ignited until when the bullet leaves the barrel.
Reloaders do a little bit, but that's mostly, like, a, an actual, like, rocket science engineering type of issue.
Right? Most people get really interested in external ballistics, so everything between when that projectile leaves the end of the barrel and when it hits the target.
Yeah, all your drop charts and wind drift and all that stuff is what people think about when they think of ballistics.
I was having, having a wonderful time trying to, trying to make a guess at how all these atmospheric conditions are gonna change where my bullet lands, right? What are all the air molecules doing between here and there, and how do they affect this projectile? It's very, very fun.
So what happens with that projectile once it hits the target, and if the target, in the case of hunters or invasive species control specialists, whatever, if you're shooting a critter, you wanna know what is gonna happen to that animal because of that projectile hitting it, and it changes so much from one diameter of a bullet, one, uh, shape of a bullet-
There's a huge number of things that go into it, and it is the most important thing to me.
Shot placement, critically important, but anybody who's hunted for very long at all knows that shot placement doesn't always work out, and we want to have good terminal performance with that projectile, um, whether th- the shot placement is perfect or not.
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