There's no such thing as "hydrostatic shock" in wound ballistics.
He may have killed a lot of animals and studied the wounds, but, unfortunately, he's way out of his lane when trying to explain physiological effects of gunshot wounds, and the physics involved.
The claims made in the
Effective Game Killing article remind me of when Courtney attempted to convince anyone who would listen to him that his newly coined term BPW (blast pressure wave) was a remote wounding mechanism when in fact it was really nothing more than the Hugoniot shock front that precedes an object as it strikes and penetrates a target material.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Hugoniot shock front velocity (and the dynamic pressure associated with its passage) is dependent upon the target material's bulk modulus (K), mass density (ρ), and internal sonic velocity (c
o) and are expressed as EOS. EOS, or equations of state, are mathematical equations that describe the nature of the Hugoniot shock front in terms of the target material's bulk modulus, mass density, and internal sonic velocity.
The value of Hugoniot shock EOS is that they can be used to establish the dynamic equivalence of soft tissue simulants to human soft tissues based upon their respective physical and acoustic properties.
Hugoniot EOS are usually—but not always—expressed as linear equations and take the form of—
U = c
o + Sv
—where the equation’s intercept value, c
o, is the medium's temperature-dependent internal sonic velocity (in km/s), the equation’s slope, S, is a first-order derivative of the medium’s bulk modulus (K) expressed in N/m², v is particle velocity (in km/s), and U is the shock Hugoniot velocity (in km/s).
Human Adipose Tissue: U = 1.465 + 1.781v
Skeletal Muscle: U = 1.547 + 2.136v
H
2O: U = 1.483 + 1.867v
10% Type 250-A ordnance gelatin: U = 1.513 + 2.024v
The slope and intercept values of all four EOS are very close to one another (low divergence) indicating that there is considerable similitude and dynamic equivalence amongst all four mediums. The Hugoniot EOS of the two types of human soft tissues listed above are comparable to those of water and 10% Type 250-A ordnance gelatin making them both suitable for use as soft tissue simulants in terminal ballistic testing.