Transcript

Travis Bader: [00:00:00] I’m Travis Bader and this is The Silvercore Podcast. Join me as I discuss matters related to hunting, fishing, and outdoor pursuits with the people in businesses that comprise the community. If you’re a new to Silvercore, be sure to check out our website, www.Silvercore.ca where you can learn more about courses, services, and products that we offer as well as how you can join The Silvercore Club, which includes 10 million in north America wide liability insurance to ensure you are properly covered during your outdoor adventures.

[00:00:43] Have you ever looked at the information specs on an ammo package and wondered what all those numbers mean? Do you have questions about what the best cartridge or calibre. For your hunting needs. This episode was created for you and also has a supplementary blog posts on the Silvercore website. If we missed anything or you want to know more email Podcast@Silvercore.ca.

[00:01:08] So I’m sitting down today with my longtime friend and hunting partner, Paul Ballard. And if you’re a listener of The Silvercore Podcast, you will have definitely heard Paul before talking about many different subjects, actually, Paul you’re on our, our very first podcast. 

Paul Ballard: [00:01:24] I think that was the very first one with Nick and I. 

Travis Bader: [00:01:27] That’s right. That was a fun one. 

Paul Ballard: [00:01:29] Yeah, no, I look back on that the, uh, the studio’s changed, the equipment’s getting better and, uh, you’ve really embraced the concept of the podcast. And I think as a method of communication to people, it’s, it’s, it’s working it’s, it’s, it’s hip it’s now, it’s happening man. So we’ll stay with that. 

Travis Bader: [00:01:52] You know, one of the podcasts that we did together, that I get a lot of comments on, was information for new hunters. And a lot of people have said that they’ve derived a lot of value out of that. And really all of the podcasts that we do ,I do with a mind towards the end user. If we’re going to be asking for their time to listen to the podcast, we want to impart some value to them. 

Paul Ballard: [00:02:16] Yeah. And I agree. And I, and we pitched this one when we were talking, uh, sort of as a part two to that. So we talk about equipment in the form of glass and rifle and type of action and so on. This one becomes more specific, I think today, because we want to talk about the calibre’s. What, what, what calibre should I be looking at for hunting? 

Travis Bader: [00:02:40] The age old debate. 

Paul Ballard: [00:02:42] Right. And I mean, everybody’s got an opinion on this one, but let’s give some options for people to think about. We’ll go from sort of a basic approach that, uh, I’ve picked up my bolt action rifle, what calibre should I pick it in? 

Travis Bader: [00:02:56] Right.

Paul Ballard: [00:02:56] And what are the pros and cons? And so we got some sort of, uh, you know, we’ll talk historically a little bit. We’ll talk about a little bit of math, but not really get into the math of it. 

Travis Bader: [00:03:08] Right, right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:03:08] But there is some science to this thing, uh, to understand why certain calibre’s are effective, uh, understand some of the emotional side to think, oh, well maybe emotional attachment to certain calibre’s or cartridges, we should actually say cartridges. I think, uh, calibre does factor into it, but the specific cartridges have their own nature. And let’s see where we go. 

Travis Bader: [00:03:32] Well, one of the feedback points that I got, and I got this from a couple of people and they said really, really liked it had to listen to it a few times cause there is a lot of information and some people said, although you and I, as we’re talking, we didn’t feel like we’re talking at any sort of like high level stuff. We also got to remember when somebody brand new to the game, it can be a little overwhelming. 

[00:03:55] So after we’re done here, what I’m going to do is I’m going to make a blog post because you’ve got some material here in front of us, and we’ll probably reference a few things throughout here. So after the listeners go through, we’ll have a more detailed account with some visuals and some graphs and, and for them to reference back. 

Paul Ballard: [00:04:14] And the ability to help them out. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. That’s good. So, whatever, um, you caught in your ear, you can, uh, you can see how it plays out when you’re looking at the page.

Travis Bader: [00:04:27] Absolutely. So when we’re looking at different cartridges and different calibre’s, at the very like introductory level, w what do you think are some of the things that people should be thinking of? Like, for, for my mind, uh, cost, recoil and efficiency of the round. 

Paul Ballard: [00:04:48] Yeah, well, I, I kind of, I made some notes, so I wouldn’t forget things, but how about, uh, effective killing and, and effective killing needs to have some empathy for the animal. Um, it needs to be humane needs to be quick to make it, you know, empathetic. And, and that’s the thing. Of course, you know, the regulations say any centrefire cartridge is suitable for big game. 

Travis Bader: [00:05:14] British Columbia. 

Paul Ballard: [00:05:15] In British Columbia. Yeah. Let’s keep it, uh, where, where we’re living, but that’s not realistic.

[00:05:20] Like there are plenty of those small, you know, 22 calibre centrefire cartridges, which are totally inadequate for, you know, anything larger than a varmint size game. And then that immediately takes away that effectiveness and you know, where, we want a quick kill. We, and, and there are certain things between, you know, not only cartridge selection, but some to do with bullet placement that can lead to that humane quick kill.

Travis Bader: [00:05:54] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:05:55] There’s some understandings about bullet placement that might be reflected upon the cartridge you choose. That uh, so when you’re looking at maybe using a lower velocity, uh, cartridge, still a centrefire adequate for the, the job, uh, because some of the characteristics, the terminal performance, what it does when it physically hits a flesh target, what is what’s going to do? 

[00:06:23] So there are these things, but again, uh, effective killing, absolutely understanding the, uh, you know, the need for follow-up shots, which has to do with recoil. Like you were saying, uh, let’s take a little historical trip, uh, you know, back not so long in our historical timeline, there were no firearms. Uh, people were using spears and arrows and everything else. 

[00:06:49] And when they look back historically on some of the bows that were being used, a lot of those bows were about 25 to 40 pound pull weight on the recurve style bones made of horn and glue and sinew and the like. And What that was, was getting close enough to an animal to drive that arrow in there to, to make the kill.

[00:07:14] There was some, uh, other, you know, heavier draw weights, obviously for the bigger game, but it all still relied on getting close, you know, and making the shot. So we should never, ever get too far outside of that idea. And when I talk today, my opinion, medium to close range. I don’t want to, uh, there is a bit of a trend towards these extreme long distance, you know, hunting.

Travis Bader: [00:07:45] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:07:45] I question the ethics in it, I don’t question the ethics in it. Uh, I think if you’re not highly skilled and the circumstances aren’t considered, I then there becomes an ethical issue in it for me, trying to really reach out. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:03] Well, when you talk about medium range and close range, just for the listener.

Paul Ballard: [00:08:07] Yeah. Oh, hey that’s a good point, in my mind I completely know. So, um, the range is let’s, let’s put the furthest out, we’d say is maybe 400 yards. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:16] Okay. 

Paul Ballard: [00:08:17] Now I say at 400 yards uh, if you’re looking at ground that doesn’t include a huge ravine between you and your objective, um, so that you can eventually get to the animal.

[00:08:28] I can easily say that’s ethical now when I push it to 400 yards, have I trained to shoot that far? Um, you know, is the, is the cartridge sufficient? All these things have to come into play for that. Realistic hunting ranges, my own experience, I think are under 200. Most of the shots I’ve made. And in fact, a remarkable number of those shots have been right in that 60 to a hundred yard range.

Travis Bader: [00:08:55] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:08:55] And, uh, you know, depends on, on the terrain that you’re in the habitat, the animal enjoys, all these things that are there, but, uh, to be ethical, uh, to try and keep it at 200 or less is good. 

Travis Bader: [00:09:12] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:09:13] Be prepared with shooting sticks, rests all the other things to steady that shot. If you’re going to push it beyond those ranges. 

Travis Bader: [00:09:21] Because there’s a few considerations, not even just including the cartridge and the calibre and the performance of at that distance if the animal doesn’t go down right away, trying to locate again afterwards. 

Paul Ballard: [00:09:36] Totally. And I’ve watched a few, you know, uh, shows where they’re shooting out to seven, 800 yards and they’re doing it across a ravine. And so now an animal that’s wounded at that kind of distance, the time it’s going to take for you to get to where the animal was actually hit and then commence to follow a blood trail from there. That’s the part that I really, you know, that circle doesn’t square for me. 

Travis Bader: [00:10:04] Yeah. Some animals are going to leave more of a blood trail than others. If they got heavy.

Paul Ballard: [00:10:09] Some cartridges are going to leave more of a blood trail. 

Travis Bader: [00:10:12] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:10:12] And how that bullet expands within the animal, it may not exit. And you know, so it’s just, it’s out there.

Travis Bader: [00:10:22] Well, this is exciting. Okay. 

Paul Ballard: [00:10:23] Okay. Well let’s try and keep this at, the target audience here is if you’re a, you know, someone who’s in the first couple of years of hunting or looking to get out there and you haven’t really made the decision what cartridge you should be starting out with. We want to address that, or maybe been into this for four or five years and you want to branch out a little bit and maybe look at, you know, adding a lever action rifle and, you know, large bore to that and see, you know, some of the applications. So we can try and cover that as we go through.

Travis Bader: [00:10:58] Did you want to first talk about how animals die. So we can kind of dispel a couple of those things before we get into, or do you want to get into that after?

Paul Ballard: [00:11:06] And one of the things, you know, what does a bullet actually do? Okay. You know, and, and how, how do you kill it? So the bullet does a couple things. It makes direct contact with elements of the central nervous system in the animal, the brain, the spinal column, um, and so on, or it makes direct contact with organs uh, major blood vessels and so on.

[00:11:30] So in the direct contact of the bullet, in the flesh of the animal, there’s a wound channel going to be created. Now the diameter or calibre of the bullet, you know, at even a relatively low velocity that permanent wound channel, the destruction of tissue or meat, uh, will be roughly, slightly larger than the bullet itself, that permanent wound channel.

[00:11:56] But as we now add velocity to that impact, okay, we start to take a transference of kinetic energy to the animal, and then we start looking at shock waves going through the animal. And those shock waves can now extend the way the bullet kills in, in some other fashion. So we look at hydraulic shock and hydrostatic shock.

Travis Bader: [00:12:21] Right.

Paul Ballard: [00:12:22] And often those are interchanged incorrectly. Hydraulic shock when the bullet hits the flesh and starts to move the fluid particles faster uh, in that flesh, you create hydraulic shock. So this will create movement of that flesh. It will, not create a permanent hole, but what it will do is it will create a bit of a temporary wound channel that is larger than that permanent hole by direct contact.

Travis Bader: [00:12:53] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:12:53] Okay. So if we think in terms of, if you have the experience of where you’ve seen a bullet hole in an animal, that’s kind of that jellied bit of tissue that’s around the bullet hole, that you know, was part of that, that temporary wound cavity that was created through hydraulic shock. So that’s just the destruction of tissue around the permanent wound channel. 

[00:13:19] Hydrostatic shock now is where we take that same shockwave, but it delivers through the tissue of the animal to where it interrupts, you know nerves, central nervous system and so on. One of the interesting concepts of hydrostatic shock, when you talk about killing is, is that that knock down or, or, you know, uh, immediate, uh, instant collapse that we might see in an animal. Uh, and every hunter who’s got a bit of experience can talk about that one time where they just, the animal just dropped, like it had been poleaxed and that’s really a good example of that instant collapse.

[00:13:57] And that typically has been from some form of interruption of the central nervous system, a shot through the spine shot through the neck, um, brain shot, you know, or a headshot. Those can almost in every case caused that instant collapse. 

Travis Bader: [00:14:17] And that’s just like a light switch being shut off. 

Paul Ballard: [00:14:19] Correct. But instant collapse can also happen when we’ve hit in certain areas of the body where there’s, you know, ma major nerve clusters and so on, which can also cause that, but then it can turn around with that instant collapse and the animal returns to its feet and starts to move off. 

[00:14:38] So we still need to consider bullet placement into areas of the animal, lungs, heart, and so on that will, uh, bring on a rapid or quick death, uh, and, and, and, you know, allow us to get to the animal. Correct. 

Travis Bader: [00:14:54] So I’ve, I’ve always looked at that and we’ve got CNS, central nervous system, brain, spinal column, or as you’re saying through hydrostatic shock interrupting the central nervous system, and that’s one way that’s the off switch. The second way would be through massive cardiopulmonary decompression through hypovolemic shock. And that’s basically the pressure in the creature drops to a point where it can no longer transfer oxygen to its brain and it’s good night. So the fastest way to introduce that is either through multiple holes, like draining a bucket of water or through proper shot placement into heart and lungs.

Paul Ballard: [00:15:37] And then the drain is within the animal itself. 

Travis Bader: [00:15:39] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:15:39] It doesn’t have to drain out. So in the old days when they were shooting, you know, musket balls, muzzle loading, a big diameter ball that punched a hole in, punched a hole out, you know, without particularly high velocity to create that hydrostatic shock. Uh, the bigger, the, the width of the day of the calibre, you know, the, the more efficient it was, to a point. And those were non expanding bullets right.

[00:16:05] We got to understand that those, those lead round balls, you know, they would deflect, they would, uh, yaw in the animal, which would create a larger permanent wound cavity. Uh, the other side to it was eventually they went from round balls to conical bullets, again, not intended to expand, but certainly capable of tumbling, uh, going into yaw, which would then take the round diametre of the bullet and then turn it broadside, which would create a bigger wound and so on and so forth. 

Travis Bader: [00:16:33] Yaw’s not great for accuracy, but it’s great when it hits an animal. 

[00:16:37] Paul Ballard: [00:16:37] Right. And if the bullet travels accurately and then begins yaw once it enters and without getting in too much of the subject, that’s a military, you know, uh, desirability, particularly in a full metal jacket type of bullet as well. 

Travis Bader: [00:16:52] So that, that’s an interesting one too. So we we’ve had people talking about full metal jacket and the different theories on that. So originally we had smooth bores and we’re throwing different projectiles down, different materials down, and someone said, hey, there’s lead, it’s cheap, it’s ductal, it expands on impact. It’s got great sectional density, which I’m sure you’re going to talk about in some detail. 

Paul Ballard: [00:17:15] A little bit. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:15] A little bit and it’s just not super accurate. And then they decided I know what we’re going to do. Let’s spin it. Let’s spin it like we spin a football when we throw it and it will eliminate pitch, eliminate yaw on the inherent obstacles of an object in flight. 

[00:17:31] And they did that by introducing rifling and that rifling worked awesome until they came up with some heavier duty powders, some smokeless powders, and they found that they’re shoving that projectile down the bore so fast and so hard that it was stripping past the rifling, that soft lead and couldn’t engage and some bright individual said, well, why don’t we keep all those great properties of lead, but put a harder metal jacket around it.

[00:18:04] And that’s when they came up with these full metal jacket cartridges. And from my research that I’ve done full metal jacket, it’s great, doesn’t expand as well as you’d want. And when we talk about the military side, just as a bit of an aside, there is a factory outside of, I think it was Dum Dum India, and they decided to basically expose the tip so that we no longer had a full metallic jacket, usually copper is sometimes steel or nickel that went around the bullet. 

[00:18:37] But we have now an exposed tip, so to expand more and do more damage. And if anyone ever watched Joe Peshy and lethal weapon talking about getting shot in the hand with a dum dum round, right, that’s where that, that term came from. But for the military side, they figured out just was designed to do more damage than a full metal jacket cartridge. And it was a Hague convention that said.   

Paul Ballard: [00:19:01] Yeah, you needed to send people home and in, in, uh, you know, uh, function, more functional state. I think they were still reeling from the civil war where, because the lead, instead of the, you know, of preceding times lead round ball, they were again, you know, large 75 calibre in some case, you know, conical led bullets 400, 500 grain bullets. And just, you know, even traveling at seven or 800 feet per second, that would take somebody in the elbow and just tear the arm off. 

Travis Bader: [00:19:32] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:19:32] The transference of energy of that massive amount of lead would create huge damage to the extremities. Whereas actually even taking one of those in the body, you’d probably still might get a through and through penetration, certainly leak a lot of blood, but probably infection was going to get you in those days. 

Travis Bader: [00:19:53] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:19:53] Right. So they kind of, towards the end of the 1800’s with the conical bullets sort of found around 45 calibre was the optimum. And playing around again with it was, it was that diameter with a rounded nose was giving you that hammer like impact the penetration that you wanted. 

Travis Bader: [00:20:13] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:20:14] Again, all lead non expanding bullets that would maybe turn into y’all a little bit. Maybe they’d hit a bone, they get a little bit larger, but they were giving an effective permanent wound channel with penetration. And that was happening at velocities, you know, that were compatible with lead. As you say, you move into full metal jacket. A lot of what they did in the military was they played with those, um, pointed bullets and hey, let’s just call them pointed bullets. Cause nothing was pointed until they started to do that.

Travis Bader: [00:20:41] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:20:42] Putting things like aluminum and everything forward into the point to change the centre of gravity of the bullets so that when it did penetrate, it tumbled. 

Travis Bader: [00:20:52] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:20:53] So instead of relying on a bullet that expanded. It was tumbling with it and, you know, stoner’s famous, you know, 556 cartridge. Uh, you know, they talked about the tumbling bullets in Vietnam and, and, and one of the interesting thing is that 55 grain hard point bullet, uh, has the tendency on, on ballistics is when it penetrates, it goes into yaw, the stress becomes too great on the cannelure and the bullet then breaks into pieces.

Travis Bader: [00:21:24] And just so the listeners know when we’re talking about yaw, we’re talking about essentially, if you have a stabilized bullet in flight spinning like a football. It doesn’t have yaw effecting, if that football’s nose starts making a bit of a circle and kind of wobbling around that, that’s essentially yaw. 

Paul Ballard: [00:21:42] Yeah, or skidding, you know, a skidding car, a car that no longer. 

Travis Bader: [00:21:46] That’s a good one. 

Paul Ballard: [00:21:46] Travels in a straight line goes into yaw when you see those tire marks where the back tire comes out off the track of the front wheels, that’s yaw, going out of alignment.

Travis Bader: [00:21:56] And then you brought up another term cannelure.

Paul Ballard: [00:21:59] Cannelure, the shoulder, the rounded P well, it’s not truly the shoulder from the point to where it.

Travis Bader: [00:22:06] The ogive. 

Paul Ballard: [00:22:06] The ogive comes into the body so. 

Travis Bader: [00:22:08] The ogive is that kind of, we’ll have all of these on the website. 

Paul Ballard: [00:22:11] On the football where the, in Canadian football where the white line is.

Travis Bader: [00:22:16] Yeah. 

Paul Ballard: [00:22:17] That’s the cannelure. 

Travis Bader: [00:22:18] There you go.  

Paul Ballard: [00:22:18] How does that sound from this point to the fat part of the football? All right. 

Travis Bader: [00:22:23] The rim around. 

Paul Ballard: [00:22:24] So now we get into this jacketed bullet thing and they start playing with it for a hunting round. And this is where things change exponentially. Up to that point, we’re relying on big diameter penetrating efficiently. Well, what happens is when you get a pointed bullet, it penetrates in a much straighter line. So instead of relying on the energy transference to the big diameter, now we’re heading for the vitals and at different angles, we can become more effective. 

[00:22:52] So by changing the centre of gravity, when that bullet can now become more stable in flight, but now the tip is exposed either in a hollow point or a little bit of lead at the end there, as that now penetrates, the hydraulic forces of the flesh push back against it and the shoulder of the bullet changes, which means its centre of gravity comes back. You know, we get like that classic mushroom shape to the bullet changes. 

[00:23:24] So that even though it was a smaller diameter when it went in, it increases, but it maintains a straighter trajectory inside of the animal, which leads us to the ability to add a bad angle on an animal, be able to rely more on the pointed bullets and then bullets that have a boat tail on them that, uh, will again move the centre of gravity forward on the ball. You get longer range accuracy. 

Travis Bader: [00:23:51] So we think of it. 

Paul Ballard: [00:23:52] We’re probably going above where we want to be here, maybe a bit. 

Travis Bader: [00:23:55] If we just think about it like a marker and a pencil, right? So the pencil, you sharpen it up and it’s got nice and pointy sorta like your, they call it a pointed or spitzer bullet, right? 

Paul Ballard: [00:24:04] Yes. 

Travis Bader: [00:24:05] And that will penetrate with greater ease then would the blunt marker, but they would impact energy in a different way. 

Paul Ballard: [00:24:17] And then we got to factor in something else, the speed that the bullet is traveling. So speed and 

Travis Bader: [00:24:21] Massive. 

Paul Ballard: [00:24:22] Weight, speed, and weight are there. So as speed goes down the bill, you know, the, the, the velocity as it drops, the more efficient a flatter or rounder nose bullet can become. Sometimes with expanding bullets, they also lose, um, their ability to expand. Depending on the structure of the bullet and how, you know, toughen metal you’re using. But I, I just want to the, we went back to where we talked about the, um, uh, hydrostatic shock. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:00] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:25:00] Now, hydrostatic shock needs the right combination of velocity and bullet weight. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:08] Right.

Paul Ballard: [00:25:08] Okay. What happens is a bullet, as it gets further out there, and that’s what we got to talk about ranges. Starts to lose velocity and then its ability then to deliver hydrostatic shock is gone. The larger the diameter, in many cases, the more hydrostatic shock can be created at lower velocities. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:32] There you go. Kind of like punching the water with a fist or sticking your finger into the water. You’re going to create different hydrostatic shock. 

Paul Ballard: [00:25:39] Correct. The 30-06 cartridge, which everybody’s familiar with. My personal favorite is the 35 Whelen, which is, was created initially as a Wildcat cartridge, they took the 30-06, hardly changed a thing, opened up to take 358 calibre bullet instead of a 30 calibre bullet.

[00:26:02] And every says, well, why do you want to do that? Well, of course the 30-06 heavy bullet for instance, would be 180 grain Spitzer bullet. And in the case of the 35 Whelen, how about a 250 grain blow? So first of all, you have that heavy bullet, but what really matters more than anything is the diameter of those bullets.

[00:26:25] They both launched from the rifle at about 2,500 feet per second, give or take. Couple of hundred feet per second. So as the bullets get out there and they start to drop into that neighbourhood of maybe 2200 feet per second, the 30-06 will lose the hydrostatic shock that it would have retained at closer ranges and higher velocities.

[00:26:52] Whereas the 35 calibre 358 calibre is still capable of hydrostatic shock. And with almost identical recoil between the two rifles, I feel no difference between my 35 Whelen and a 30-06. Some people do, but you know, it is a consideration and it seems to be, uh, for hydrostatic shock bullets from 243 calibre to 338, like to be going more than 2,600 feet per second, to do that transference.

[00:27:29] If you’re going to rely on hydrostatic shock and you should never have to rely on it, cause bullet placement into, you know, the heart and lungs is always most important, but if you’re gonna, you know, you want everything going for ya. High velocity with those size bullets. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:47] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:27:47] If you’re going to get into closer ranges, lower velocity, than you gotta go for width of calibre, 35 to 45 calibre so there’s. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:59] For the hydrostatic shock. 

Paul Ballard: [00:28:00] At lower velocity. 

Travis Bader: [00:28:01] At lower velocity.  

Paul Ballard: [00:28:02] At lower speed. Takes away range. In a generality, I need to buy a hunting rifle that’s going to cover me for what I’m going to do. So let’s just keep everything at that 200 yard range and the common velocity. So this, we start looking at the 270 Winchester, 280 Remington, 30-06, 308 Winchester, all of those, um, in factory loadings by him across the counter at your favorite, you know, ammunition, retail source, uh, can be got in a combination of bullet, weight and sufficient velocities.

[00:28:44] So that all the way out to 200 yards hydrostatic shock is still on your side, along with penetration and expansion of the bullets. A little bit of research by looking at, you know, what brand name you want to pick. But I mean, you know, the Hornady, Nosler, all make ultra high quality bullets. 

Travis Bader: [00:29:07] Mmm. 

Paul Ballard: [00:29:08] Sometimes we’re seeing, you know, um, different ammunition companies buying these known named bullets and loading them into their premium ammunition. It has been my experience that if you look and there’s a, you know, a white box or a blue box, that’s 10 bucks cheaper than all the other ammo, there’s a reason for that. And usually what happens is, is the construction of the bullet is going to be disappointing at ranges beyond 50 yards, they’ll all kill easily and quickly at 50 yards well-placed.

[00:29:45] But when you start getting into strange angles, non-typical angles something other than a broadside shot, those bullets tend to let you down. And it doesn’t matter what calibre they’re in. They shed jackets, they break apart, they don’t penetrate deeply enough and it’s a disappointment. There is all sorts of theories about, well, this bullet is really good all the way out to 200 yards and then it falls off and that’s pretty much, you know, the normal thing.

[00:30:17] But then there’s other bullets where people talk about them at 400 yards, the bullet performs famously, but inside of that, over penetration, no expansion and so on and so forth. And it, it behooves, behooves I like that word. 

Travis Bader: [00:30:34] Yes, yes. 

Paul Ballard: [00:30:34] You know, it will pay off in spades for you to do a little bit of research and put together. But the optimum is, uh, a well-constructed bullet, like an Amax bullet from, you know, Hornady, uh, that will take you out there to those distances ballistically. Uh, it has a good ballistic coefficient. Uh, it will fly well, it won’t go into yaw and it will expand when it hits at 50 or it hits it 250 or 300 yards. 

Travis Bader: [00:31:06] So you’re introducing some new terms like ballistic coefficient and I think maybe we just touch on that after, but maybe I’ll just do a quick summarization of will co if, how my mind works, I usually like to break things down into small parts, right. And then I’ll take that one small part and then I can branch off after. So if we talk about bullet, all right, so we’re not even talking about calibre or anything. We’re just talking about the bullet construction and something a hunter would want to know about would be, how is that bullet constructed?

[00:31:37] So you already talked about a jacket coming off, and so that’d be the full metal jacket on some of your, the traditional, you’ve got an extruded metal with lead inside it, uh, when it hits an object, if it falls apart inside the animal, you’re, that energy that it would be transferring is going to be a lot less. 

[00:31:55] You’re gonna have fragmentation going through, which could work in your advantage. But if you really want to get that hydrostatic shock that you’re talking about, and that penetration, you want to hold it together. So bullet construction, we’ve got partitioned bullets where they had the bottom part of the bullet that would.

Paul Ballard: [00:32:12] Remain solid. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:13] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:32:14] Or an A-frame style bullet. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:15] Or bonded. 

Paul Ballard: [00:32:16] Bonded. And that that’s the, so the original jacketed bullet was a cup and core model. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:21] Cup and core. 

Paul Ballard: [00:32:22] Okay. So they made a cup out of thin jacketing material. Molten lead got poured in there, bit a molten lead appeared at the tip. The hydraulics of penetration would push against that lead tip. The copper would open up a bit. The lead would mushroom and at too much of a velocity, it would just shed that copper thin copper jacket, somewhere on the original entry.

[00:32:45] And then the led blob now, which is what it would amount to, would continue on its penetrative path. Uh, so then the idea through all sorts of proprietary methods, they’re bonding the jacket and the lead together, they’re changing the lead, you know, the antimony content of the lead so that it bonds better, all sorts of. 

Travis Bader: [00:33:06] Ways to hold it together, the partition or a monolithic bullet.

Paul Ballard: [00:33:10] Yeah. Now that’s the thing like, you know, no led a tall, we’re talking copper, copper alloy combinations now, uh, that have some huge benefit, uh, the barns and, and, uh, the GMX bullets from Hornady where they. What they really have is the ability to penetrate at crazy angles. And crazy angles, you know, you, we all like to look at the target downrange, the piece of paper, the one dimensional piece of paper that has that animal standing broadside, looking at you and truth be known, a properly placed shot from virtually any centrefire cartridge, at those kinds of angles, will get to the heart. 

[00:33:56] It just has to get maybe through a rib that might be the most in, and if you’re lucky, it goes between the ribs, but it penetrates in there. And that’s why, yeah you could kill a moose with a 243 Winchester. But now as soon as that moose turns, you know, away from you, so instead of the broad side, now you’re kind of looking at a three quarter angle, you know, to try and get in penetration in the line that it follows. And those all copper or monolith type bullets are the answer to them. You know, the, uh, to that penetration effect. There’s another name that they’re giving them to the homogeneous.

Travis Bader: [00:34:34] Yes. 

Paul Ballard: [00:34:35] Yes. 

Travis Bader: [00:34:36] Homogeneous, homogeneous. 

Paul Ballard: [00:34:37] Homogeneous. 

Travis Bader: [00:34:38] That same throughout. 

Paul Ballard: [00:34:39] Yeah. And, and so, again, the change with those is typically if you were shooting a particular weight of bullet for the calibre of the cartridge that you’re firing, when you get into these monoliths bullets, because there’s no jacket to separate or shed away yet they’re engineered to expand, often we see is to go lighter. So if you’re shooting a 180 grain, 30 caliper go to a 165 grain, you get a very similar performance and, you know, the increase in velocity to, to help. 

[00:35:16] I mean, there, the bad angle thing is there. Sometimes they can transfer more energy than a traditional jacketed lead bullet. You know, so at closer ranges sometimes the, you know, the, the hydrostatic shock can cause a little bit of gut rupture or other things like that. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:37] Well what those, those monolithic bullets not having lead in them, not having that sectional density or that, that weight behind it in order to get more weight into them, they can’t make them larger in diameter because the calibre is a calibre. They got to make them longer. 

Paul Ballard: [00:35:54] Right. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:54] And when they make them longer, they were finding a couple of problems with them. So they’re finding that you had more bearing surface on the bore as it went down. And so you’ve got some drag and you, they were more susceptible to yaw. We got some smart people make an ammo and they’ve come up with some solutions to that and they’ve got little speed grooves and, um, they, they cut grooves so they’ve got less bearing on a bore as it goes through. 

Paul Ballard: [00:36:19] And, and, and again, lightening the bullet up as well. 

Travis Bader: [00:36:22] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:36:23] You know, allows you to introduce that spin from the rifling, you know, more rapidly, more efficiently. There’s all, you know, the engineering that’s in this it’s, you know, from the days of guys taking a, a 22 casing and then actually forming their own jacket from that, you know, in their garage. And a lot of guys were, you know, the, the founding names of Nosler and Hornady and all those guys. They were garage experimenters, you know, but they’ve since hired very, very established, uh, knowledgeable engineers to move themselves on. 

Travis Bader: [00:36:59] So we’ve talked a bit about the bullet as in, how it’s made up, so. 

Paul Ballard: [00:37:03] And what it does and what we achieve, what we want to achieve. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:07] But the other things in the bullet. So if we’d look at the basic construction, there’s going to be weight of the bullet and why that’s important. And I think you got some, some thoughts on that. And. 

Paul Ballard: [00:37:18] Diameter of the bullet. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:19] Diameter of the bullet and. 

Paul Ballard: [00:37:24] But you know, it’s. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:24] And speed. 

Paul Ballard: [00:37:24] And speed right, the velocity. So all of those, how do we work with that. Well, let’s never forget shot placement, whatever you’re shooting, you need to put it where you want it.

Travis Bader: [00:37:34] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:37:35] So when I talk about bad angles, I know where I want the bullet to go, but it’s not in a traditional sense. I’ve got to get to the heart and lungs, but I may be doing that by going through the floating rib and the diaphragm, or maybe, you know, risking now I have a texas heart shot, which means the animal’s not presenting itself, anything other but square on, on its backside.

[00:37:59] So now I’m going to have to shoot into its ham, losing that meat, but maybe I’ll, I’ll hit, uh, the, uh, artery. Okay. That’s in there, the femoral artery to try and bring the animal down. You know, there’s all these considerations. 

Travis Bader: [00:38:12] Sure. 

Paul Ballard: [00:38:14] Shot placement, understanding where to put your shots. So sometimes you’re hedging your bet by going with these better constructed bullets. Generally speaking, spend good money on your ammunition. 

Travis Bader: [00:38:27] Yes. 

Paul Ballard: [00:38:29] The cheaply constructed cup and core bullet. Great for punching a hole in the paper or ringing the gong, but um bringing home, you know, the winter supply meat, you know what, that meat is worth, how much to you in the end, the ammunition should be worth, you know, the time it takes to get the better. I mean, not everybody’s going to hand load other hand loading changes the whole thing. The perspective is gone now, you. 

Travis Bader: [00:38:55] Sure. 

Paul Ballard: [00:38:55] You pick and choose what you want. The, you know, the world’s your oyster when you hand load. Hand loading going back to the old days was done because there was really poor animal selection. Even in this time of, you know, like today. Absolutely, today there’s probably less, uh, stock available to you, it’s still good. 

Travis Bader: [00:39:13] Well we have quality ammo, that’s for sure. 

Paul Ballard: [00:39:16] We never, it was never like this before. If this had been me starting out, I probably would have never got into hand loading. You know, we’ve been just as easy to buy it off the shelf. Kind of, we need to get back though, the general rule, a good quality ammo, well-placed shot velocity of sufficient, um, to create some hydrostatic shock along with, uh, with an expanding bullet should cover most of the big game hunting situations in British Columbia.

Travis Bader: [00:39:45] So. 

Paul Ballard: [00:39:46] North America for that matter, but.

Travis Bader: [00:39:48] We talk about a couple of things and we’ll throw it up on, on the blog as well. So people can have a cross-reference sectional density. 

Paul Ballard: [00:39:56] Sectional density is a, when you, when you look it’s, it’s, it’s a numerical value assigned basically to the penetrative effect of a bullet. So without getting into, you know, measuring its length and its diameter and its weight and, and squaring those, and you know, all the stuff that.

Travis Bader: [00:40:14] The easiest way to really think about it is how heavy is it compared to another cartridge made at, at something different. Another bullet made at as some maybe lighter material.

Paul Ballard: [00:40:24] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:40:25] So sectional density is the, uh, the ratio of an object’s mass to its cross sectional area with respect to a given access. If that makes sense. So is it heavy? Right. Can we get something in that diameter that’s heavier, it’ll have a greater sectional density. If it’s lighter of the same diameter, it’ll have less sectional density.

Paul Ballard: [00:40:49] Yeah. So when you’re looking at the catalog at these bullets, they will always have the weight in grains, they will have the calibre of course and then it will say SD in BC, sectional density is important to the hunter. BC is important to accuracy, so ballistic coefficient is important. That number is important to you. You will that low ballistic coefficient number, basically how slippery that bullet is, how aerodynamic it is, becomes important for distance. 

Travis Bader: [00:41:24] So the bigger, the number, the more aerodynamic that is. For for, for ballistic coefficient, just how well it can, how streamline that bullet is. So, and that’s when you’re talking about the pointed ones being more streamlined or the boat tail. 

Paul Ballard: [00:41:38] And the boat tail with the, and centre of gravity and everything else, you know, is, is a factor there to make that slippery bullet, get out there and travel on the line that you want. 

Travis Bader: [00:41:50] Right.

Paul Ballard: [00:41:51] Sectional d, so ballistic coefficient gets it there. Sectional density is now what you’re going to rely on once it arrives. 

Travis Bader: [00:41:58] Once it gets there. That’s your terminal ballistics. 

Paul Ballard: [00:42:00] Yeah. And ballistics are always, you know, internal, you know, in flight, terminal ballistics. You know, you can look at it all different ways, but sectional density has a lot to do with termination.

Travis Bader: [00:42:13] Man you got a lot of information. 

Paul Ballard: [00:42:14] Yeah. You know, there is, and. 

Travis Bader: [00:42:15] We gotta make this. 

Paul Ballard: [00:42:16] That’s what blows it away. So now getting back to it. Yeah. Good sectional density. Uh, and it, it typically, uh, all game is looked at in North America in particular is, you know, class one, two and three and four. So class one, small game, uh, coyotes, varmints, uh you know, bunnies, that sort of stuff. And so a relatively low sectional density is just fine. So, uh, something like a 223, uh, round, um, any of those are just fine. 

[00:42:48] Then we move into class two. So medium-sized game, antelope, they always throw antelope in there, but we don’t have any in BC, but, um, you know, something in the domestic goat size is slightly larger. So everything from white tail deer, black tail, uh, mule deer, uh, black bear, uh, would we in that medium size. And so a sectional density that typically is in that range of, oh, about, you know, 250 works, nice, you know, 250 and a little bit higher, uh, sectional density, um, you know, going on and up from there. Um, you know, we have a range, I mean, basically sectional density from 220 to, oh, maybe two, you know, 200. That’s all good for that medium game. 

[00:43:37] The next larger, class three game, that’s moose and elk. Uh, when you know those type of animals, you want a greater sectional density. So the high 200 numbers, for sure. You want to look for something that’s going to come in 275 or better .275 and better. And you know, some of the shockingly small calibre’s, like the 6.5 has amazingly good sectional density. And that comes from this long pencil bullet, uh, that has a great penetrative effect. 

[00:44:12] Uh, but the classics, you know, when you compare, um, one of the greatest cartridges really in the Magnum class is the 338 Winchester Magnum, great sectional density in all ranges of it’s bullets. The 300 Winchester Magnum another great one right across the board for everything from, you know, uh, depending on the bullets, but getting back to the standard classes. Uh, and we look at the heavier weight, the 308 Winchester, 180 grain, 30-06, uh, 200 grain. You can get good sectional density, and that’s a really adequate cartridge for moose and elk. 

Travis Bader: [00:44:52] So let’s, let’s break this down a little bit and let’s say we’ve got something that’s heavy, right? Let’s see, we’ve got a bowling ball and we rest that bowling ball on our foot. 

Paul Ballard: [00:45:02] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:45:03] That’s not going to do too much damage. Let’s say we pick it up a foot or so above our foot, we drop it. Okay, that’s not going to feel too good. And we pick it up above our head and drop it on her foot. We’d be lucky if we don’t break our foot. So, we’re dealing with gravity. Gravity affects everything at the same rate, 32 feet per second, or 9.8 meters per second squared, per second, per second.

[00:45:25] So that is creating velocity in the bowling ball as it’s coming down. So just one way, I guess, kind of look at it, let’s say we’re talking about our projectile now. So we’ve talked with a sectional density, so looked at different bullet construction. So now we’ve got a heavy object that’s going out, but it’s going very slowly when it impacts we’re going to have maybe less penetration, but maybe different transference of energy than it would if it’s going out really quickly. Really quickly, you talked about the primary and secondary cavitation. 

Paul Ballard: [00:46:01] Yes. 

Travis Bader: [00:46:01] I think you use a different word. 

Paul Ballard: [00:46:02] Hydraulic and hydrostatic shock that, that falls. So if we go to a very big, heavy, slow bullet, we get the hydraulic shock. It’s still there. Okay. 

Travis Bader: [00:46:12] Yep. 

Paul Ballard: [00:46:12] And sometimes penetration with those heavier bullets is just the fact that retained energy harder to slow it down. Okay. So you might be able to, your kid comes racing at you on his BMX bike, and he’s coming at you at 20 kilometres an hour and your kid weighs 60 pounds. The bike weighs 40 pounds and you grab him by the handlebars so you can stop him. Right? 

Travis Bader: [00:46:35] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:46:36] Okay. So now the kid is now grown up a little bit and he’s on his 175 CC motorcycle and he’s coasting at you.. Now that motorcycle weighs a couple of hundred pounds, the kids 150 pounds, try and stop that at the same velocity. 

Travis Bader: [00:46:51] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:46:51] When it gets there. So, you know, we are seeing how that weight of the bullet can go on. 

Travis Bader: [00:46:56] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:46:57] So let’s say a 35 calibre to a 45 calibre bullet driven at a lower velocity maybe, or, you know, less than 2000 feet per second. You get that good penetrative effect by that heavy bullet. 

Travis Bader: [00:47:12] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:47:13] Now, another thing you can do to get something out of that bullet is to increase the frontal surface of the bullet, make it out around, or meplat. 

Travis Bader: [00:47:23] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:47:25] French word. We’ve got to give credit to the French. We don’t give enough credit to the French. They.

Travis Bader: [00:47:30] They get enough credit. 

Paul Ballard: [00:47:31] They were the ballistic forerunners of the 1800’s. 

Travis Bader: [00:47:35] They were. 

Paul Ballard: [00:47:35] And they were coming up with the idea of, uh, of a 60% flat frontage of the overall diameter of the bullet for efficiency transfer of energy at low velocity. Uh, followed up by the great Elmer Keith in the, you know, when his development of the 44 special end of the 44 Magnum as a pistol calibre hunting bullet, the idea was non expanding, all lead bullet, big flat front, 60% of the overall diameter. Which puts us into this, hey, I want to get a closer range rifle and you know, you can get a lever action. 

[00:48:14] Traditionally, everybody looks at the 30-30. 30-30 Winchester killed a lot of game in north America, all kinds. And one of the things that, uh, you know, traditionally because of the tubular magazine, there was a blunt or a round nose front to the bullet, lower velocities.

[00:48:32] And we would see in some of the other centrefires that are out there, but it worked. Because of that big front end on the bullet helped to transfer the energy as it went through 44 Magnum lever action. It’s a shockingly good close range. And I mean, and with an all led bullet, shockingly good for, you know, the sub 100 yard ranges, really not so good once we push past a hundred.

Travis Bader: [00:49:03] So when we look at weight, and we look at speed. The interesting thing with speed, is that you square the energy, essentially. 

Paul Ballard: [00:49:16] Right. 

Travis Bader: [00:49:16] So if you double the weight of your projectile going out, you’ll double the energy transfer, but if you double the speed, it’s that speed squared. And that’s what you can get greater penetration with greater speeds.

[00:49:33] And I think this is where a lot of people Sterk. The difficulty that people have is number one, they start looking at the physics and they look at the math and they’re trying to apply that to something that may be a moving or stationary object at unknown distances, with unknown makeups and all of this extra stuff kind of comes in and then it becomes the great debate. So hoping not to have the great debate with the listeners here, but just letting them know some of the variables that kind of come into play. 

Paul Ballard: [00:50:01] I mean we’ve talked lots about it and like you say, let it, but now let’s take the great debate and dumb it down. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:08] Yes, yes. 

Paul Ballard: [00:50:09] Okay. So what should I buy? Well, see that 30-06 rifle right there. You like it cause it looks good, it’s a high quality, you know, modern bolt action 30-06. You don’t have to look any further son. You’re there. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:25] There you go. 

Paul Ballard: [00:50:26] You got it. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:28] That’s the short answer. 

Paul Ballard: [00:50:30] And that is the short answer. But then the next answer is well how about that 308? Why shouldn’t they buy that? Well, absolutely no reason whatsoever. What’s the main distance, or difference between the 308 and the 30-06? It’s that heavy bullet thing in the end. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:44] And what is, so we’ve got three laws from Newton, right? What, first law is an object in rest tends to stay at rest. An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless affected by some other force. 

[00:50:58] Uh, law two is to do with the, uh, energy essentially. Uh, it’s the, the amount of acceleration of a body is proportional to the acting force and inversely proportional to the best the object. And third law is one that everyone knows is for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. So law two and three play into this decision because. Recoil. 

Paul Ballard: [00:51:24] And, you know, I look at my Chuck Hawk’s recoil table here and let me just see what he, oh, see what he assigns to the 30-06 as opposed to the 308 Winchester.

Travis Bader: [00:51:36] Yeah, Chuck was a pretty prolific writer wasn’t he? 

Paul Ballard: [00:51:38] Oh yeah. And I mean, I think he, he actually stole a lot of the stuff too, but as, and let me just. 

Travis Bader: [00:51:43] Everyone does. 

Paul Ballard: [00:51:44] Let me just put in a plug. If you got a question relating to firearms or fighter aircraft, you just put that question in and then add the words Chuck Hawks. And you will come up with some plain language information of great value. Okay. So let’s go hunting with our, uh, 308 Winchester, 180 grain bullet, uh, being driven at 2,800 feet per second, the recoil fell, which has felt recoil. Uh, it gets an assigned number of 17.5. With the 30-06 at 180 grains uh, it’s 20.3. So let’s go for instance. 

Travis Bader: [00:52:27] So you get a bit more recoil. 

Paul Ballard: [00:52:28] A bit and really, yeah, not much. So if you take it down to, um, the recoil that you would get from the absolute smallest, uh, centrefire cartridge, uh, like 17 Hornet or 218 B, you might get 1.3 or 0.7 felt recoil. 

Travis Bader: [00:52:49] Which is nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

Paul Ballard: [00:52:51] No, it barely, uh, over a 22 long rifle. To go to the other end of the scale and let’s go for kind of a common, the 375 H&H Magnum, a long, lived, a big, heavy hitting Magnum. It’s going to rate about 37 to 40 on that scale. 

Travis Bader: [00:53:11] I think that’s your minimum for big game hunting over in Africa. 

Paul Ballard: [00:53:15] Yeah, in a lot of cases. And you know, the 375 H&H depending on how you load, it will cover everything from Dik-Dik to, you know, Cape Buffalo and, uh, you know, they, they, it’s all about what you load in there. But, you know, as generalities speaking, you know, with recoil. So recoil should be a consideration and honestly hard pressed to feel the difference between a 308 and a 30-06. 

Travis Bader: [00:53:39] And I think for a brand new person kind of getting into it. 

Paul Ballard: [00:53:42] They shouldn’t worry about that. 

Travis Bader: [00:53:43] The most offensive things from a firearm are gonna be the noise. 

Paul Ballard: [00:53:47] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:53:47] Right. How loud is this saying? And putting a muzzle break on is a sure-fire way to make enemies with everybody around you, because you’re going to hear a lot more noise and recoil, does this thing kick like a mule? And there are things that people can do to. 

Paul Ballard: [00:54:00] Fit the gun to you properly. That’s the biggest one. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:03] Fit it. 

Paul Ballard: [00:54:04] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:04] Fire it. Wait. So when you talked about felt, recoil is not that recoil changes on a heavier firearm other than the fact that it’s dissipated over a longer period of time and it makes it hard snap feel like more of a harder shove and that could make it more manageable as well. 

Paul Ballard: [00:54:22] And it’s a game of length of pole, you know, from the trigger face to the buttstock, we all are, you know, that’s established by you from your fingertip to the crook of your elbow is your length of pole. So you need to get in there. Um, this is the wonder of today’s modern stocks that come adjustable. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:41] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [00:54:41] You know, they either come in a telescoping fashion with a pistol grip on them. A lot of those are quite good. There’s other ones where you can take all the spacers out of the buttstock and shorten or lengthen. You can change the height of the comb for your cheek weld to line up all these things you can, and you should, you should buy that kind of stock. In the old days, you, you bought your beautiful piece of, uh, you know, American Walnut and then you had the gunsmith whiz off or add to put a new recoil pad or whatever the case and, and you move from there.

[00:55:15] But today you can do it in the comfort of your home. And you can take, you know, the allen keys that come with the stock set and go to the range and practice. And again, I always say too long of a gun will never work, but if the length of pole is too small, a big guy can always shoot it. 

Travis Bader: [00:55:32] Right. Just. 

Paul Ballard: [00:55:32] Big person. 

Travis Bader: [00:55:33] Just, just watch how you hold it so you don’t punch yourself in the face with your thumb. I’ll share a tip from an adjustable stock. I remember one of my first adjustable stocks that I got and I saved up and I spent more money so I can get a quick adjust one so I can just press the button and I can adjust the comb height. I can adjust the height, the length of pull on it.

[00:55:55] And typically they cost more. And I thought this was just fantastic until I accidentally press that button and everything’s adjusted out on me when I needed it the most. I would say, if you’re getting into it, save your money, spend the time to adjust it to you properly have something that just hard locks in, and then you’re done. Unless you’re planning on having everyone and their  dog, shoot after you. Get it set to yourself. Save the money. 

Paul Ballard: [00:56:23] Hey, did I ever mentioned before that I like simplicity? 

Travis Bader: [00:56:27] Mhmm. 

Paul Ballard: [00:56:28] A lot less goes wrong when it’s simple. And same thing, I’m dead on with scopes. I don’t need a scope that’s got a rangefinder built in there and a whole bunch of other stuff to, you know, confuse and attract my attention within the field. You know, in a long range, target shooting competition who cares? Uh, you know, training as a professional, as a sniper who cares?

[00:56:52] Holy smokes, that’s a deer. I just want to be able to bring that gun up, get a good cheek weld and away I go from there. So keeping simplicity. But we’re getting back to, Hey, sectional density, the available sectional density in that 308 or that 30-06 takes you all the way into the class three animal. No problem. No problem. 

[00:57:13] If you want to get up where you might want to be considering dangerous game, then really, since they took grizzly bear out of the picture, uh, here in BC kind of leaves us with may, I don’t think so much bison is dangerous game, but it certainly, there’s a lot of tissue there that you have to consider. So of course the 30-06 is way better at launching a 220 grain bullet, uh, based on case capacity and overall case length, then you would get from the 308. 

[00:57:43] But if you’re going to be a moose hunter, you’re going to be a deer hunter. You’re going to be, you know, a mountain goat hunter, certainly the three-way or 30 out six are totally interchangeable for the rest. Maybe you want to get some more range out of it. Maybe you’re gonna look at ’em right. Later let’s talk about that, but let’s stick with these standard calibre’s. 

[00:58:02] And I call the standards, the 308 Winchester, 30-06 Springfield, 270 Winchester. You take the 30-06, ya narrow the case down at the mouth. You reduce the, the calibre. And first of all, you get higher speed bullet. So the trajectory of the bullet is flatter. So therefore, you know, your considerations as range increases, uh, there’s less issues with hold and placement. You get a little bit more from the 270  in that realm. 

[00:58:35] So a 270, uh, in the heavier grain bullets at 150 or 140 grain will certainly get you in that, uh, mid range of the 200 numbers in sectional density, like 260 to 275 or better in those weight bullets. So perfectly adequate for moose, shot moose with 270, no problem. Uh, good penetrative effect, uh, good expansion on the bullet. It was there. 

[00:59:02] Now, those were moose shot at well under a hundred yards. Uh, if I was now looking at a moose at 400 yards, would I be thinking that my 270 would be adequate for it? And I might question that a little bit more because remember these light bullets, once they get out to. 

Travis Bader: [00:59:20] Energy. 

Paul Ballard: [00:59:21] To distance. Now, the other thing though, that you can, you know, if you’re going to retain energy out there, that’s good. But the construction of the bullet, these super long distance hunting bullets are very soft metals so that they still, you know, will retain their super good accuracy out there, get their penetrative effect and you will get, um, expansion from low velocity. Normally you need velocity to get the expansion, that velocity is getting lost with distance. Um, but softer metal, the ELD. 

Travis Bader: [00:59:55] Hornady’s. 

Paul Ballard: [00:59:55] Hornady’s ELDX I’ll tell you I just loaded a bunch. And the first thing that happened was I noticed a ring forming above the cannelure. 

Travis Bader: [01:00:04] Yeah. 

Paul Ballard: [01:00:04] I immediately called up my friend who’s very familiar with the product. And so what’s going on and I had to get a different bullet plug for my dye so that it didn’t mark the ogive. So, uh, currently have that installed at home, gonna load it up because I wasn’t overly impressed with the accuracy of, of the bullet and. 

Travis Bader: [01:00:24] The factory stuff’s pretty damn good. 

Paul Ballard: [01:00:25] And yes. And it could have very much been that big indentation in. That I’m sure had some effect. So at any rate, getting back to standard calibre’s 270 grade, what happened was Remington looked at the success that Winchester had with that 270 cartridge and they made a 7mm version of it, you know, basically taking the same dimension cartridge and increasing it to some millimetre. And the wonder of the 7mm bullet is it’s sectional density. It’s just, it’s, you know that. 

Travis Bader: [01:00:58] It just sounds dirty when you say it like that. 

Paul Ballard: [01:00:59] I know, but it’s just that length of the bullet and everything else and the 280 Remington, which is the saddest thing in the world never beat out the 270 Winchester, but that’s a great cartridge man, oh man, if you’ve got a 280 and the way to go now it’s actually a 280 Ackley Improved and it’s just slightly different dimensionally.

[01:01:22] You can load 280 Remington in there, you shoot it. And then it’ll fire form to the chamber, but there’s no problems in initially starting out with 280 Remington cartridges, factory loaded by our them, what a great, great cartridge. Totally overlooked by so many people. And a great long range. You’re very effective you know. 

Travis Bader: [01:01:44] So there’s one piece of the puzzle here that I think would be good to talk about. I think it was Townsend Whelen, ascribed. 

Paul Ballard: [01:01:53] My hero. 

Travis Bader: [01:01:56] For energy, uh, a 1000 foot pounds of energy for putting down most deer. And I think it was about 1500 . For like elk. 

Paul Ballard: [01:02:07] Elk, moose. 

Travis Bader: [01:02:08] And moose and. 

Paul Ballard: [01:02:08] Bison. 

Travis Bader: [01:02:09] When people look at their ammunition that they get from the factory. There’s going to be either on the box or they can go online and check it out and they’ll have the average energy. Right? So you’ve talked about internal and external and terminal ballistics, internal ballistics, being everything that happens inside the firearm, the primers hit the powders, burdening the projectiles going out. It’s all internal. We’ve talked about external ballistics, everything that happens the second and leaves the firearm. Gravity. 

Paul Ballard: [01:02:39] Everything. 

Travis Bader: [01:02:39] Affecting, humidity, elevation, wind, all of these things in terminal ballistics, as it hits the animal. And so they see the factory can’t account for every little variance or length of barrel or, but they’ll, they’ll give you a good, fairly close generalization. 

Paul Ballard: [01:03:00] Like a grounding yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:03:01] Right. And they’ll say, hey, at this distance, here’s how much energy your projectile should have. So if you start looking at these charts and you just kinda use the swag system, the scientific wild ass guess and say, well, it’s going to be about this distance. Will it have that energy? Will I I’m shooting on a deer? Will it have a thousand foot pounds of energy? Well, yes. Guess what? You’ve got a cartridge that would be applicable for deer hunting within that range.  I think that’s a quick way. 

Paul Ballard: [01:03:35] And that’s a good, yes, I totally liked that. And you know, so you look at the box and you know, it’s leaving it out 3000 pounds or whatever the case may be, but certainly we’d like to say it hits with a ton of energy at a hundred yards. So you’re still double what you need for a deer at 200 yards, it’s hitting, you know, pretty much at a time, you know, 308 hits with a ton at 200 yards, 150 grain. 

[01:04:00] And then once you push it out to 300, it might be dropping down and you’ve still got more than you need with a 308 or a 30-06 in that medium weight bullet loading, 150 grain, 165, you you’re, you’re good. So, take comfort in picking the 308, take comfort. Uh, it, well, one of the things that has always hurt a cartridge is if it was never adopted by long distance target shooters. 

Travis Bader: [01:04:29] Or military. 

Paul Ballard: [01:04:30] Or military to some degree, but the 308, oh, became the love child for so many long distance target shooters. And then they started to change it around. Oh, good old 30-06 became the base for hunting cartridges. It was the best known. And I think in a lot of cases, pretty good in the United States, the best known hunting cartridge had started as a military. 

Travis Bader: [01:04:54] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [01:04:56] The 270, wasn’t a long distance target shooting, but it was a great long distance north American game cartridge, the 35 Whelen, another variant of the 30-06, you know, the 338-06, another big bullet coming out of a necked up 30-06, never was a long range target cartridge. Well along comes the 308. And the next thing, you know, 243, they neck that down. And man, you got a great long range target shooting cartridge. 243 gets super popular as a light deer cartridge. In addition to of Armenian cartridge and long distance. 

[01:05:35] Then the 6mm start to show up and, you know, without doing too much wild, some cases, they actually cut the case down. They use the, the same head and completely reformed a case out of it. But then, you know, stuff like this, you know, the 6mm’s just couldn’t get ignored. The 260 Remington, uh, you know, and so on where this smaller bullet, you know, was doing wonderful things at long ranges for target shooters.

Travis Bader: [01:06:05] Well Europe. Europe they have the 6.5 x 55, right?

Paul Ballard: [01:06:07] Well yes! And here 

Travis Bader: [01:06:08] It’s like 1800. 

Paul Ballard: [01:06:08] Was this crazy thing I remember all the surplus rifles, it would, people would buy. Guys would turn up with these 6.5 Swedes. That’s what it’s called. 

Travis Bader: [01:06:16] 6.5 Swedes. Yeah. 

Paul Ballard: [01:06:17] Mouser action. And oh, kill moose, like crazy. And you look at this thing and it, this. 

Travis Bader: [01:06:23] Like, how does this to kill a moose? 

Paul Ballard: [01:06:24] This, this hideously long, skinny little pencil bullet in there.

Travis Bader: [01:06:28] Yeah. 

Paul Ballard: [01:06:30] Two words, sectional density. That’s how it works. So now today, the new kid on the block, it’s a 6.5 while there’s it’s being surpassed a little bit, but the 6.5 Creedmoor and then the, uh, the PRC, the 6.5 PRC, they are using sectional density to the nth degree in a super low rate. You know relatively speaking. 

[01:06:55] And here’s the other kicker target shooters want repetitive accuracy. They like a nice stiff action. Well, if you take an inch or two out of the overall length of the action, it stiffens up and you know, people say, well, why does the 308 Winchester seem to be a little bit more accurate than the 30-06? Well it’s that stiffness of the receiver. 

Travis Bader: [01:07:18] The short action. 

Paul Ballard: [01:07:19] Short action could be one of those things. Now there’s a huge argument too, in throwing the length of the action in the heat of battle. And although I have used that as an excuse for myself, I don’t think it’s true. I really, maybe if you’re trying to throw a bolt on a, you know, 378, uh, Weatherby Magnum or something, those are, that’s a long throw on that bolt. 

Travis Bader: [01:07:43] There are some places where an inch matters, but. 

Paul Ballard: [01:07:45] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:07:45] I don’t know if it’s there. 

Paul Ballard: [01:07:48] But again, so stiff, stiff action, 308 accurate. So a lot of people are looking at the 6.5 and when you read the hunting magazines and the writers and everything else, everybody’s liking it a lot, but there’s more and more coming back about some failures on elk and moose size animals. Even though the numbers look like they should work. 

Travis Bader: [01:08:12] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [01:08:14] A bit, a bad shot placement is not helping.

Travis Bader: [01:08:17] I think one of the big things about these, like the 6.5. So a few years back, I reached out to International Barrels. They make premium high grade rifle, barrels team really good at what they do. And I had a 260, great calibre. 

Paul Ballard: [01:08:33] Yes. 

[01:08:34] Travis Bader: [01:08:34] And I thought it was on a Sako 85, a friend gave me and I said, well, let’s, let’s try putting a 6.5 Creedmoor on this thing. See how your barrels work and see how this thing shoots. Because I figured I wanted to set the thing up and let my wife or my kids shoot it because it is a lighter recoiling cartridge.

Paul Ballard: [01:08:53] Oh a 260’s a bit of a vicious bastard, it’s. 

Travis Bader: [01:08:56] Well the 6.5 is a little nicer. 

Paul Ballard: [01:08:58] Yeah. Yeah. But that 260 boy, that’s surprising for what it is hey. 

Travis Bader: [01:09:03] So I ended up keeping it for myself. I liked it so much and they got, they got their own, but it come, came down to, for them particularly. Shot placement and the ability to manage that recoil and feel comfortable shooting that firearm. My, my daughter, she’s going to be 14 and a couple of months here and she fired about 10 rounds off the, standing off a bi-pod a round after round having the time of her life saying, oh, this is so much fun to shoot.

[01:09:35] So I, I think while there are lovers and haters of different calibres and cartridges, if people can understand the energy transference at distance, if they can understand shot placement, if they can understand that maybe it’s time to pony up a couple of bucks and get the better, maybe bonded ammo or monolithic ammo, or do their own research and make.

Paul Ballard: [01:09:58] Those those are going to be well, that’s going to be the dominant, uh, cartridge. I honestly think, I think probably the 6.5 PRC. It’s probably going to. 

Travis Bader: [01:10:05] It’s picking up isn’t it? 

Paul Ballard: [01:10:06] Yeah, it is. It’s in the, you know, so again, without having the tables in front of me, just to me, you know, but the, the, the writers, the, you know, they say, if you already own a 6.5 Creedmoor, you probably won’t appreciate the difference.

[01:10:19] But if you’re thinking of buying a 6.5 Creedmoor, a lot of the writers are saying now, and maybe you should get the 6.5 PRC because it’s going to be just that much better. It’s going to edge it out in the end. And therefore what will happen is, you know, bullet selections will be identical between the two they’re loading the same bullets, but it’s case capacity in, in what you can establish from the PRC that that might make it the better hunting bullets.

Travis Bader: [01:10:44] And it’ll, it’ll have more velocity in that one too, doesn’t it? 

Paul Ballard: [01:10:46] Yeah. So, so those, those factors are going to play into it, you know, you’re, you could kill yourself by trying to stay on top of all these trends. And I did for the longest time kinda buy different cartridge, you know, chamberings for my different rifles and then base hunt’s around  that and, and.

[01:11:07] So I go back to my, my deer and black bear cartridge is a 308 Winchester. I, uh, I, I love the rifle that it’s in, in particular and God bless the good people at Ruger for their designs. And I love that rifle. Um, but that is my that’s my go-to medium game cartridge. I like to shoot iron sights and therefore, I like to get a little closer. So I do love my 30-30 Winchester. 

[01:11:39] I use the Hornady, um, GM GMX bullet, the, the, uh, the, the gummy bear tip. Uh, but, uh, I have duplicated, you know, through my hand loading the same as the factory Hornaday lever evolution 30-30 and you know what that. Talk about bullet placement. I usually make a neck shot and that bullet is just, that really does give that knockdown appearance to that cartridge. And I’m talking range is a 45 to 60, 70 yards, but boy, it works. 

[01:12:18] And yet I confidently can shoot my rifle, my 30-30 lever action to 200 yards. And I know that bullet will transfer enough energy to still do the job at two at 200 yards. 

Travis Bader: [01:12:31] I think there’s a lot to be said for that old saying beware the person with one gun.

Paul Ballard: [01:12:35] Yeah. And I’m not, I’m not though, but yeah. 

[01:12:37] Travis Bader: [01:12:37] But what I’m saying is don’t, rather than chasing all the new cartridges, you found about one gun for certain situations that you’re comfortable, you know, you know, it’s got the energy, you know, you can shoot it.  

Paul Ballard: [01:12:50] Uh, and, and what I’ve done. So in my, my, my big calibre is the 35 Whelen, and it’s really, those are the three centrefires that I use. And with that 35 Whelen, I started playing around now with a lighter weight bullet, traditionally shot at 250 grain partition bullet out of that for moose. I started playing around with a 200 grain and now a monolith bullet, uh, TTSX, uh, Barnes, TTS, TTSX bullet, which significantly increases velocity, and therefore takes it from a, a 200 to 250 yard rifle out into more than capable at 350 to 400 yards.

[01:13:32] The retained energy of that bullet is that. The ex, you know, and it’s now the diameter of the bullet that gives me what I need as the velocity drops. The diameter is up there, so it works, you know, I’m waiting for Hornady to get on the stick and make a better 358 calibre bullet. The only one they make now would be for, you know, something like a, a 35 Remington, a lever action, style bullet, but they’re not really making it a good, uh, you know, good ballistic coefficient, boat tail bullet for, for that sort of stuff.

Travis Bader: [01:14:07] Well, how about a couple of, uh, questions that club members have put forward? Because couple club members caught wind and one question was. Do you want your bullet to transfer all of its energy into the animal and stop inside? Or would you personally prefer to see it go through and through and perhaps create a better blood trail for tracking afterwards? What are your thoughts on that? 

Paul Ballard: [01:14:35] That’s a good question. I would rather see my animal just drop with one shot, literally no blood trail or anything. 

Travis Bader: [01:14:41] Oh totally. 

Paul Ballard: [01:14:42] That typically comes from that huge transfers of energy within the animal. 

Travis Bader: [01:14:47] Okay. 

Paul Ballard: [01:14:48] A well-placed shot, um, in the ribs will probably be a through and through shot. It’s gonna, it’s gonna, you know, if, if you’ve got enough retain energy that’s in there, 180 grain is going to push right out the other side of a deer for sure. 150, 165. Um, I did see a 150, um, Nosler ballistic tip, uh, stayed in the chest cavity of the deer, one that I shot. 

[01:15:17] I gotta tell you when it’s deer, I shoot it in the neck, unless I’m risking that I think I might, you know, knock a great antler off of a good, you know, a trophy type of head, but most, you know, if we’re hunting meat, cause there’s really a lack of, um, meat waste for an neck shot and, and most of those standard calibre’s just, you know, you’re gonna, you get the ganglia, the, you know, all the other stuff that’s in the neck, the processes in the neck, just make that such an effective shot.

Travis Bader: [01:15:53] Well. 

Paul Ballard: [01:15:53] I say that. Yes. To answer the question, I’m off track. I want the bullet to transfer as much energy to the animal as possible in the first instance. 

Travis Bader: [01:16:03] So you want it to stop in the animal. 

Paul Ballard: [01:16:05] I would like it to, so if, if I’m making a, you know, um, uh, a hilar type shot, you know, maybe forward of the shoulder and, and yes, I definitely want to have that happen because I want it all. I want, I’m firing into those nerve clusters and the bunched up portion that’s going to bring on that, you know, catastrophic drop that I want to achieve. Yeah. So that’s going to come from that. If I got too much and that’s going to come from combination of expansive effect of the bullet and the energy and speed of the bullets all there.

[01:16:35] If I got a little bit too much speed, too much velocity on the bullet it’s going to blow through, then I got the ability to track. And that typically when you say you’re already almost always setting yourself up for failure, when you say, well, I want to be able to track it. You see in Europe, they actually pick different target areas. They consider certain things to be inhumane. 

[01:17:01] You know, uh, one of those things being a neck shot, they don’t like that. Uh, we typically, when we look at a broadside shot on an animal, we look at a line going down the back leg of the animal. And then I would always say up one third into the chest cavity to get that lung, heart type location. 

Travis Bader: [01:17:18] Sorry, to be clear the back of a front leg. 

Paul Ballard: [01:17:21] The back of the front leg. Is that what I said? Okay. So the, the back of the front leg and the, that line. Europeans tend to look at the front of the front leg and draw up into there, which is that hilar response or the, you know, that, that portion of the nerve clusters and everything that are in there. And that’s what they tend to shoot for. And particularly when you spot an animal, that’s looking at you, you get a really good presentation of that frontal area that’s there to make the shot up. Just one of those things. 

Travis Bader: [01:17:52] Interesting. Okay. 

Paul Ballard: [01:17:53] We can talk more on that, but, and it’s really hard in a, a verbal interaction. Like we’re having to talk about shot placement. We need pictures and drawings and diagrams and everything else.

Travis Bader: [01:18:03] I’ll see if I can do that on the website. 

[01:18:05] Paul Ballard: [01:18:05] Yeah, yeah, I guess, but more importantly, we’re talking about the standard north American approach and like I see by all means, never forget those standard calibre’s look hard if you’re concerned about recoil and size of the firearm with the 6.5 Creedmoor but let’s not forget those universal magnums.

[01:18:27] When properly loaded are just fine for fairly close ranges, but when it comes down to that 400 yard shot, the retain energy, the expansion of the bullet, man, you know, that universal 300 Winchester Magnum. If the recoil is not an issue to you, that is a great cartridge. Great cartridge. 

Travis Bader: [01:18:49] Well, let’s talk about the next question.

Paul Ballard: [01:18:51] Okay. 

Travis Bader: [01:18:52] So last question we have here. 

Paul Ballard: [01:18:54] Oh. 

Travis Bader: [01:18:55] And it’s to do with shot placement and bear hunting. Bears will have their fur and it will trap a lot of blood, make it more difficult to track, and they’re a dangerous animal. So some people are advocating for shooting the bear in the shoulder and having a round that’s heavy enough to penetrate through that shoulder into the vitals. 

[01:19:17] They said, sure we’ll lose some meat, but then I don’t have to track this bear. I don’t have to worry about having this thing, maybe not be able to find it or having an angry bear when I do find it. Thoughts on that? 

Paul Ballard: [01:19:30] No disrespect to black bears, they taste good. They’re wonderful animals that are out there. I find them to be a bit of a sissy. They are actually one of the easier animals to go down. I still go back to, I would rather put shot placement and energy transference into it. I shot a black bear at less than 60 with my, actually would have been my 300 Winchester short magnum. And that bullet went in and I’m talking 65 yards, so here’s your through and through. That bullet went in, uh, made a perfect entry hole of, you know, 30 calibre and made an exit of about oh 8 inch calibre.

[01:20:22] It blew a big three-quarter hole right out the other side of the bears, rib cage. I mean, went through the heart and everything else that bullet just carried everything out with it, that bear, like they do, and I see bears as they will immediately turn around and this black bear was biting at that exit wound, weird enough and then turned and bit at the entrance wound and then it was dead. 

[01:20:49] Bears when they take off, if they’re wounded, usually take off at a very high rate of speed. They leave a pretty good bear trail that you can follow, whether there’s blood in it or not. Uh, one of the things that I see it always, you get to where you’ve actually shot at the bear you get down low and there’s, I always say if it’s tight cover, there’s a tunnel.

[01:21:09] You can just see, they just clear out a tunnel in the direction they went. Does it make it easier than to track if they’re bleeding? I don’t think so. I think it’s all about shot placement. I just, I got a default back to this. 

Travis Bader: [01:21:23] Right. So it’s. 

Paul Ballard: [01:21:24] I, I wouldn’t, I would in a, in an imminent bear attack, I would shoot for the shoulders absolutely. I want to plant that bear or, or break its legs so that the wheels are gone and it, and it  can’t come on me. I I’m all about that, but if I’m going to hunt the animal, I want to, I want. 

Travis Bader: [01:21:43] Want some Meat. 

Paul Ballard: [01:21:43] To drop it. Hey? I want the meat, I want to drop it. And again, that’s where the hunting part of this comes into. We always say, do I want an adrenaline charged animal for the table? Never.

Travis Bader: [01:21:55] No. 

Paul Ballard: [01:21:56] Never. 

Travis Bader: [01:21:57] Right. 

Paul Ballard: [01:21:57] I want to get that animal while it’s, you know, relaxed. You know, eating, grazing, doing whatever it is. And you know, and even if it’s a bear, I don’t want, I don’t want to jack the animal up. So the chance of getting in their spot and being a little bit patient, let him change his position. If it’s a bear that it’s not going to give you, you know, you’re able to take it.

[01:22:19] You feel good about the shot. It’s not the best shot, maybe are going to have to try. But we should never think that we want the quick kill, not the slow kill. Remember a bullet can also kill through blood poisoning. 

Travis Bader: [01:22:30] That’d be a very slow. 

Paul Ballard: [01:22:32] Right. And, and again, a lot of, you know, a, a poorly placed shot, a gut shot, and that animal can go a day or two before it dies. So, no you want enough gun for what you’re shooting as well. And like I say, if you can satisfy that the 6.5 is that gun. It, that’s probably, you know, in 25 years when, you know, two other guys are sitting here, but they’ll only have little tiny microphones that are the size of a grain of rice and they won’t even have headphones on. 

Travis Bader: [01:23:05] It’ll be implanted in their head. 

Paul Ballard: [01:23:06] But there’ll be talking about, you know, providing the, uh, no, let’s not say it, but you know, providing hunting is still something that people can do. You know, there’ll be something again for them to talk about and there’ll be talking about, yeah when I started, I had the 6.5, you know, boy, it was great, but now I’m shooting whatever. 

Travis Bader: [01:23:25] Whatever. All right. Well, does that get most of the information out that? 

Paul Ballard: [01:23:29] I don’t know. Probably way more information that you wanted to put out, but we’re always open to question here at Silvercore I hear. 

Travis Bader: [01:23:37] And that is the beauty about being a Silvercore Club member is you guys get preferential treatment for any questions coming through. 

Paul Ballard: [01:23:44] Right. So we can blog those, you know, we can put them in writing and we can answer them. We getcha thinking here. I really, like I say, continually, how many people have I taught the Canadian Firearm Safety course to who, you know, say, I want to get into hunting.

[01:24:00] How many people have I taught the CORE program to, I want to get into hunting. And it’s always the same question. It’s always the same. Do I get a 308? Do I get a 30-06? You know, you know, and, and really it’s those standard calibre’s. You can’t go wrong. Manageable recoil, performance down range. You’re good.

Travis Bader: [01:24:21] You’re good. 

Paul Ballard: [01:24:22] And then when you kind of get, you know, the addiction. Start looking at the other stuff. 

Travis Bader: [01:24:28] Paul, thank you very much for sharing your knowledge with us on The Silvercore Podcast. 

Paul Ballard: [01:24:33] That was my pleasure. And we’ll, what’s coming next? 

Travis Bader: [01:24:36] Ooo. Why don’t we get the listeners to let us know what they’d like to hear next?

Paul Ballard: [01:24:41] Yeah. Would you like to hear something maybe about, uh, getting yourself ready for your first self guided fly in Northern adventure?

Travis Bader: [01:24:49] Ooh. 

Paul Ballard: [01:24:49] That could be something. 

Travis Bader: [01:24:50] That sounds good.

Paul Ballard: [01:24:51] We can talk about that. 

Travis Bader: [01:24:52] And you got a lot of pictures we could throw up as well. 

Paul Ballard: [01:24:54] Yeah! Dig those out. Yeah, yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:24:55] Okay. 

Paul Ballard: [01:24:57] That’d be fun. All right.