mcb
Member
In this thread mcb will ramble, alot, about his campaign to whack the Armadillos (AKA Up-armored-opossums, Tactical-possum, Possum on the Half-Shell, Organic Speed Bump, Pocket Dinosaur, etc) on his hunting property and how the various weapons he has used gives him some insight into the lethality of those weapons/bullets in general and how that relates to our favorite numbers we bandy about in these terminal effect threads.
The first armadillo I ever encounters at close range almost 7 years ago. The only live armadillo to appear in this post.
So for the past ~5 years I have been on a campaign to keep the Armadillo population in check on our hunting property. Tennessee division of wildlife sees them as an invasive species and thus there is no season or bag limit on them. Hunt them year round and with pretty much any weapon you want to use. I am not sure they are really that bad a thing as far as invasive species go but they are fun to hunt and we have a heap of them. In the past five or so years I have easily killed over three dozen of them. I have killed 14+ of them since June of this year alone.
The weapons I have used to kill them so far:
Firearm, Caliber, Weight, Type, Velocity
S&W 442, 38 Special, 130gr PDX1(factory), 820fps
S&W M10, 38 Special, 158gr XTP-HP, 860fps
S&W M10, 38 Special, 148 LHP (Matt’s Bullets), 870fps
5-inch 300 BO, 220gr Maker REX, 870fps
9-inch 300 BO, 220gr Maker REX, 980fps
Big Boar 58-cal muzzleloader, 0.452 MMP sabot w/ 300 XTP-HP, 1420fps
30 Remington AR, 150gr Corelok (Factory), 2400fps
450 Bushmaster, 275gr Barnes TSX, 1850FPS
So for amusement I calculated the follow values for the above guns/bullets:
Kinetic Energy (KE)
Momentum (P)
Power Factor (PF, same as momentum with different units)
Sectional Density (SD)
Taylor Knockout (TKO)
Hornady Index of Terminal Standards (HITS)
Optimal Game Weight (OGW)
Lethality Index (LI)
(I have not bother to include all those numbers mostly due to formatting. If really desired I can include in a later post if someone wants)
I then very subjectively gave each cartridge/gun the mcb ranking between 1-10 for how effective I found my experience with each weapon and their ability to dispatch an armadillo. My ranking is very subjective to my personal experience and is about 75% how quickly it kills and how much damage the round did with the remaining 25% how easy it is to utilize the particular weapon in my hunting environment.
S&W 442 130 JHP: 4
S&W M10 158 JHP: 5
S&W M10 148 LHP: 6
5-inch 300 BO 220 Monolith: 5
9-inch 300 BO 220 Monolith: 6
Big Boar 58-cal 300 JHP: 9
30 Remington AR 150 JSP: 10
450 Bushmaster 275 Monolith: 10
The 442 ranks so low due to the difficulty to shoot at hunting distances and limited data. I have only shot one armadillo with it at very close range and it worked well. I suspect the ammo used in the 442 Winchester PDX-1 if used in my Model 10 would have rank about a 6.
The 158 gr XTP never reliably expanded for me hence the lower score than the 148gr LHP that opens very reliably. I no longer use the 158 gr XTP bullet for 38 Special, too slow.
My good old Model 10 using a 148gr LHP has proven to be the best ammo for that gun I have found. Even with this good bullet it still took two shots to kill him.
The 5-inch 300 BO ranks so low due to velocity, using the same load in both barrel length 300 BO weapons. This really hurt the 5-inch gun due to the reduced velocity. I had at least one bullet not expand, penciling through an armadillo. I also had a round from this gun do a strange but lethal ricochet off the armor of another armadillo. If the velocity was higher so the bullet worked reliably it would have ranked the same as the 9-inch gun. Both guns are roughly equal on shoot ability at armadillo ranges.
My 5-inch 300BO pistol with SDN-6 suppressor. This was a head shot but the armadillo still flopped and hopped nearly 80 yards down a steep hill. He was dead but the damage was not sharp enough to really stop him.
This very dead armadillo carcass was hit with the 5-inch gun. The tear in the back armor is both the entrance and exit of the bullet. My best guess is it entered near the tail but at least one of the three petals of the Maker Rex bullet remained outside the body and then it exited completely at the foremost end of the rip. I heard the bullet make the classic ricochet sound going off through the woods. This was the only hole in the armor. The Armadillo made it to a hole. I heard him die in the hole. I came back the follow weekend with a shovel to dig him out but the coyotes did it for me and I found the above.
The 9-inch 300 BO with the same SDN-6 suppressor. This was a near head shot with the bullet going through the shoulder and neck just behind the head. The armadillo again made it a surprising distance despite the lethality of this shot.
All three rifles are, as expected, significantly more effective than the 38 special or 300 BO subs. It is really night and day. I have shot the most armadillos with the 9-inch 300 BO but I have also lost 2 or 3 armadillos that I am sure I have hit but they got in their holes. With the three rifles its lights out every time even with marginal hits. The 38 special and 300 BO have both required follow up shots more often than not even if the first shot would have probably been lethal. Armadillo are remarkable resilient to the slow moving projectiles, even lethal hits with bullets that expand well does not shut them off. They flop around a lot and often recover enough to head for a hole despite a lethal hit. I have dug out three dead ones that died in the holes only a minute or two after I shot them but they manage to get into the hole despite the hole I punched in them with either the 38 Special or 300 BO.
The Big Boar does not get a 10 for three minor reasons, slightly harder to shoot with just iron sights, slow to reload, and the current bullet I am using, 300gr XTP-HP does not expand reliable even in deer and does not seem to expand at all in armadillos. That said they have all been DRT when hit with it. Will be trying a new bullet (300gr SST) next year for deer and armadillo.
T/C Big Boar 58-cal. This was only about a 15 yard shot. I got the drop on this one from the thick edge of a food plot. He never knew I was there and never moved after the shot.
The 30 RAR does awful things to them armadillos. I had one at about 60 yard that I thought was broadside facing to my right but in the deep leaves had apparently had turned around and was facing to my left. I shot him in what I thought was his shoulder and that turned out to be his rear quarter. He didn't move after hit, the damage is graphic.
This was just before deer season this year. This was a long shot for armadillo hunting and measure about 60 yards with my GPS. The damage is pretty bad, and looks worst on the bottom side.
If anything deserves an 11 the 450 Bushmaster with the TSX bullet probably does. I Texas heart shot an armadillo at ~40 yard. Bullet entered just above the tail and exited grazing the left side of the head. That 275 gr TSX split all nine bands (and the shoulder and rump caps) of that 9-banded armadillo and moved all the internal organs to the exterior through a large rupture in the belly. It was an extraordinary amount of damage.
This was about a 40 yard shot. Notice the split that runs from the tail where the bullet entered to the exit near where it graze the head. Also notice how flat he is. That because most of the innards are no longer in the body cavity. The bottom side was not pretty.
So with those at anecdotal examples to support my very subjective ranking out of the way. I put all the data in Excel and did a linear regression (totally arbitrary model selected for simplicity) to the data. Independent variable the mcb ranking and the depended variable was one of the afore mentioned numbers we all like to throw about. The funny thing is with only one stand out exception the correlation between my rankings to the calculated “number” was not half bad. None of the correlations were awesome (ie a R^2 of .95 or better would be something notable) but most of them where decent correlations and only one with truly no correlation at all.
KE: 0.933857
P: 0.867466
PF: 0.867466
SD: 0.002035
TKO: 0.734469
HITS: 0.678899
OGW: 0.875463
LI: 0.908975
Now before anyone gets too worked up remember this thread is mostly about mcb sharing pictures of his dead armadillos and some guns and having some fun with an Excel spreadsheet. The only thing I really learned from all this other than I enjoy armadillo hunting is that I probably won’t try to take a deer with either of my 300 BO pistols. Would it work, no doubt, but it probably would not work as well as I would like. Maybe from my 300 BO carbine that has a better scope so I could be super precise about placement maybe.
My goals for the next year after this deer season is over it to whack a few armadillo with my 455 Webley, my 6mm Creedmoor, and maybe my 44 Mag revolver and/or carbine.
Wow, if you got to this point in my post thanks! Hopefully it was interesting. Always happy for feed back and will answer any question I can.
Oh and one last piece of advice. If you shoot and armadillo on a steep hill side and they roll down on their side you got a good hit and they are dead or will be by the time they stop rolling. If on the other hand they roll head over tail. Shoot them again you missed or got a bad non-lethal hit.
The first armadillo I ever encounters at close range almost 7 years ago. The only live armadillo to appear in this post.
So for the past ~5 years I have been on a campaign to keep the Armadillo population in check on our hunting property. Tennessee division of wildlife sees them as an invasive species and thus there is no season or bag limit on them. Hunt them year round and with pretty much any weapon you want to use. I am not sure they are really that bad a thing as far as invasive species go but they are fun to hunt and we have a heap of them. In the past five or so years I have easily killed over three dozen of them. I have killed 14+ of them since June of this year alone.
The weapons I have used to kill them so far:
Firearm, Caliber, Weight, Type, Velocity
S&W 442, 38 Special, 130gr PDX1(factory), 820fps
S&W M10, 38 Special, 158gr XTP-HP, 860fps
S&W M10, 38 Special, 148 LHP (Matt’s Bullets), 870fps
5-inch 300 BO, 220gr Maker REX, 870fps
9-inch 300 BO, 220gr Maker REX, 980fps
Big Boar 58-cal muzzleloader, 0.452 MMP sabot w/ 300 XTP-HP, 1420fps
30 Remington AR, 150gr Corelok (Factory), 2400fps
450 Bushmaster, 275gr Barnes TSX, 1850FPS
So for amusement I calculated the follow values for the above guns/bullets:
Kinetic Energy (KE)
Momentum (P)
Power Factor (PF, same as momentum with different units)
Sectional Density (SD)
Taylor Knockout (TKO)
Hornady Index of Terminal Standards (HITS)
Optimal Game Weight (OGW)
Lethality Index (LI)
(I have not bother to include all those numbers mostly due to formatting. If really desired I can include in a later post if someone wants)
I then very subjectively gave each cartridge/gun the mcb ranking between 1-10 for how effective I found my experience with each weapon and their ability to dispatch an armadillo. My ranking is very subjective to my personal experience and is about 75% how quickly it kills and how much damage the round did with the remaining 25% how easy it is to utilize the particular weapon in my hunting environment.
S&W 442 130 JHP: 4
S&W M10 158 JHP: 5
S&W M10 148 LHP: 6
5-inch 300 BO 220 Monolith: 5
9-inch 300 BO 220 Monolith: 6
Big Boar 58-cal 300 JHP: 9
30 Remington AR 150 JSP: 10
450 Bushmaster 275 Monolith: 10
The 442 ranks so low due to the difficulty to shoot at hunting distances and limited data. I have only shot one armadillo with it at very close range and it worked well. I suspect the ammo used in the 442 Winchester PDX-1 if used in my Model 10 would have rank about a 6.
The 158 gr XTP never reliably expanded for me hence the lower score than the 148gr LHP that opens very reliably. I no longer use the 158 gr XTP bullet for 38 Special, too slow.
My good old Model 10 using a 148gr LHP has proven to be the best ammo for that gun I have found. Even with this good bullet it still took two shots to kill him.
The 5-inch 300 BO ranks so low due to velocity, using the same load in both barrel length 300 BO weapons. This really hurt the 5-inch gun due to the reduced velocity. I had at least one bullet not expand, penciling through an armadillo. I also had a round from this gun do a strange but lethal ricochet off the armor of another armadillo. If the velocity was higher so the bullet worked reliably it would have ranked the same as the 9-inch gun. Both guns are roughly equal on shoot ability at armadillo ranges.
My 5-inch 300BO pistol with SDN-6 suppressor. This was a head shot but the armadillo still flopped and hopped nearly 80 yards down a steep hill. He was dead but the damage was not sharp enough to really stop him.
This very dead armadillo carcass was hit with the 5-inch gun. The tear in the back armor is both the entrance and exit of the bullet. My best guess is it entered near the tail but at least one of the three petals of the Maker Rex bullet remained outside the body and then it exited completely at the foremost end of the rip. I heard the bullet make the classic ricochet sound going off through the woods. This was the only hole in the armor. The Armadillo made it to a hole. I heard him die in the hole. I came back the follow weekend with a shovel to dig him out but the coyotes did it for me and I found the above.
The 9-inch 300 BO with the same SDN-6 suppressor. This was a near head shot with the bullet going through the shoulder and neck just behind the head. The armadillo again made it a surprising distance despite the lethality of this shot.
All three rifles are, as expected, significantly more effective than the 38 special or 300 BO subs. It is really night and day. I have shot the most armadillos with the 9-inch 300 BO but I have also lost 2 or 3 armadillos that I am sure I have hit but they got in their holes. With the three rifles its lights out every time even with marginal hits. The 38 special and 300 BO have both required follow up shots more often than not even if the first shot would have probably been lethal. Armadillo are remarkable resilient to the slow moving projectiles, even lethal hits with bullets that expand well does not shut them off. They flop around a lot and often recover enough to head for a hole despite a lethal hit. I have dug out three dead ones that died in the holes only a minute or two after I shot them but they manage to get into the hole despite the hole I punched in them with either the 38 Special or 300 BO.
The Big Boar does not get a 10 for three minor reasons, slightly harder to shoot with just iron sights, slow to reload, and the current bullet I am using, 300gr XTP-HP does not expand reliable even in deer and does not seem to expand at all in armadillos. That said they have all been DRT when hit with it. Will be trying a new bullet (300gr SST) next year for deer and armadillo.
T/C Big Boar 58-cal. This was only about a 15 yard shot. I got the drop on this one from the thick edge of a food plot. He never knew I was there and never moved after the shot.
The 30 RAR does awful things to them armadillos. I had one at about 60 yard that I thought was broadside facing to my right but in the deep leaves had apparently had turned around and was facing to my left. I shot him in what I thought was his shoulder and that turned out to be his rear quarter. He didn't move after hit, the damage is graphic.
This was just before deer season this year. This was a long shot for armadillo hunting and measure about 60 yards with my GPS. The damage is pretty bad, and looks worst on the bottom side.
If anything deserves an 11 the 450 Bushmaster with the TSX bullet probably does. I Texas heart shot an armadillo at ~40 yard. Bullet entered just above the tail and exited grazing the left side of the head. That 275 gr TSX split all nine bands (and the shoulder and rump caps) of that 9-banded armadillo and moved all the internal organs to the exterior through a large rupture in the belly. It was an extraordinary amount of damage.
This was about a 40 yard shot. Notice the split that runs from the tail where the bullet entered to the exit near where it graze the head. Also notice how flat he is. That because most of the innards are no longer in the body cavity. The bottom side was not pretty.
So with those at anecdotal examples to support my very subjective ranking out of the way. I put all the data in Excel and did a linear regression (totally arbitrary model selected for simplicity) to the data. Independent variable the mcb ranking and the depended variable was one of the afore mentioned numbers we all like to throw about. The funny thing is with only one stand out exception the correlation between my rankings to the calculated “number” was not half bad. None of the correlations were awesome (ie a R^2 of .95 or better would be something notable) but most of them where decent correlations and only one with truly no correlation at all.
KE: 0.933857
P: 0.867466
PF: 0.867466
SD: 0.002035
TKO: 0.734469
HITS: 0.678899
OGW: 0.875463
LI: 0.908975
Now before anyone gets too worked up remember this thread is mostly about mcb sharing pictures of his dead armadillos and some guns and having some fun with an Excel spreadsheet. The only thing I really learned from all this other than I enjoy armadillo hunting is that I probably won’t try to take a deer with either of my 300 BO pistols. Would it work, no doubt, but it probably would not work as well as I would like. Maybe from my 300 BO carbine that has a better scope so I could be super precise about placement maybe.
My goals for the next year after this deer season is over it to whack a few armadillo with my 455 Webley, my 6mm Creedmoor, and maybe my 44 Mag revolver and/or carbine.
Wow, if you got to this point in my post thanks! Hopefully it was interesting. Always happy for feed back and will answer any question I can.
Oh and one last piece of advice. If you shoot and armadillo on a steep hill side and they roll down on their side you got a good hit and they are dead or will be by the time they stop rolling. If on the other hand they roll head over tail. Shoot them again you missed or got a bad non-lethal hit.
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