Taylor Knockout Scale:

[Jordan]

How many of you put stock in the Taylor Knockout Scale when assessing big game loads/cartidges? Why don't we hear it tossed around more often (I did a search here and found very little)?

Give your favorite load a try: Mass X Vel X Cal in inches / 7000
A typical 30-06 load scores a TKO of 21. .375H+H a 40.

Doing a little reading.. that John Taylor sounded like quite an interesting character. He was so busy hunting deepest darkest africa he didn't even know a world war had broken out.

 

[Don't Tread On Me]

Depends, it doesn't take into account all the wonder-bullets.


Consider some of the really heavy .223's. According to his KO factor, the .223 is pretty wimpy. But tell that to the insurgent that just got his insides scrambled and shredded by a massively tumbling and fragmenting 77gr bullet.


Are they getting KO'd?


It is a good formula for a really general, generic way of looking at hitting power. Assuming something won't expand, fragment, tumble or whatever...this will pretty much line up all the various loads in terms of the ability to put down a target.

 

[Jim Watson]

TKO is of very limited application as said by Taylor himself.
He applied it only to how long an elephant hit in the head but missing the brain would be stunned. He figured the values for lighter cartridges of the day only to show how useless they would be on elephant and other really large game.

Magazine writers computing TKO numbers for varmint rifles and pistols are just padding their word count. It has no real world application for any reasonable use of light to medium calibers.

 

[Jordan]

"It has no real world application for any reasonable use of light to medium calibers."

That's my understanding.. It's not really going to help you decide between a 22-250 and a .243 for shooting antelope. It may be more useful for big calibers on dangerous game.

Where big game is concerned, I dare say it's more useful than simply crunching kenetic energies. For example, a Brenneke slug(2300ftlbs / tko 61) has pretty POOR energies compared a mag rifle(~3900ftlbs / tko ~33).. but which would you rather use to stop a dangerous animal charge? TKO numbers reflect this kind of sense.

It really smiled on my .50 Beowulf! TKO of 53!!

 

[rockstar.esq]

Personally I think TKO is an interesting perspective however it favors bore diameter and mass which will likely make varmint cal shooters unhappy. Something kind of neat about the TKO as it applies to .357 mag or .44 mag lever guns is that they are pretty close to the 30-30 and the 30-06 which supports the experience of hunters who've used said rifles to great effect on large game (within reasonable range). Kinetic energy calculations favor velocity and completely ignore bore diameter. Given that the actual performance of a particular cartridge is a function of hundreds of variables (if not thousands) it is unlikely that any equation simple enough for a non physicist to compute would ever really represent what's likely to happen. In some ways I'm glad there isn't a formula that would choose the perfect calibers for us. If that were to happen, the endless .45 Vs 9mm debates as well as the 7.62X39 vs .223 debates would have to end!

 

[JohnKSa]

It has no real world application for any reasonable use of light to medium calibers.

I really can't figure out how a man with the experience of Taylor, who was certainly no cringing violet when it came to taking on dangerous game, drew such positive conclusions given the tremendous range of reactions that the same shot on different elephants can produce. For certainty, an elephant may be knocked cold by the concussion of a slug skirting the brain, but under what seem to be identical conditions, the next one won't do more than toss his head and come for you. Peter Hathaway Capstick, Death in the Dark Continent​

Capstick worked as an elephant cropper during the late 60's and claimed to have "taken several hundred elephants with" brain shots.

If we believe Capstick, and it's hard to discount his opinion given his experience, it would seem that the formula has no real world application whatsoever.

 

[BigG]

Jim Watson has the correct understanding. The TKO chart is only about Rifles and Ammo available in Africa during his time. The long, blunt, heavy bullet in whatever caliber always was the best choice for head shots on elephants.

Peter Hathaway Capstick is rumored to be similar to Jack O'Connor, aiming the sights of his typewriter at a charging elephant, more than actually doing it. A marvelous raconteur and boon companion but not an authority on anything but spinning a good yarn. If I'm wrong about Capstick, show me and I'll apologize.

 

[Jim Watson]

Agreed.
I once read that Capstick did most of his hunting at the bars of Nairobi.

 

[beerslurpy]

I think the application is at the upper limits of what a man portable weapon is capable of. Killing an elephant with a brain shot is going to require something near the upper limits of mass and velocity.

I dont think caliber really matters because almost everyone hunts with lead or less dense substances and rifled weapons cant shoot dart like projectiles. Rifling limits you to a 5:1 length:diameter ratio I beleive. When you say weight, you are really implying a certain minimum of caliber to go along with it.

 

[beerslurpy]

A better measure of knockdown power is to:
1) consider the animal you are intending to kill rather than the cartridge first
2) depth of penetration to vital organs
3) presence of any protection, thick hide or bones in the way
4) special considerations such as unusual dangerousness or unusual ability to withstand damage and blood loss
5) the environment- swamp, plain, mountain, urban?
6) pick a projectile and a velocity that gets the job done at the appropriate range.

A leopard and a deer are similarly sized but the considerations in hunting them are very different. Despite rough size parity, hunting hogs in a brushy swamp is a very different undertaking than hunting antelope on a plain. Humans bring in a whole other set of considerations, especially when armed.

 

[RecoilRob]

Hmmm...wasn't there a fellow named Bell that killed MANY elephants with a 7MM Mauser?

Far from 'the upper limits of mass and velocity'.

Just goes to show the value of sectional density (which helps to create deep penetration) and perfect shot placement, me thinks.

 

[MCgunner]

Might work for black powder "express" rifles, but I don't put ANY stock in it, personally.

If in doubt, just get a Barrett 50BMG

 

[JohnKSa]

Well, I don't know about the authenticity of Capstick's works in general, but Capstick claimed to have worked cropping elephants with Bob Langeveld in the late 1960s.

There was a Bob Langeveld (said to have shot more than 5,000 elephants in his lifetime--by independent sources) who knew Capstick.

At the time Capstick wrote and published his books, Langeveld was still alive. Seems to me it would have been pretty ballsy of Capstick to write lies and tack the name of a still-living person onto them for credibility. But let's leave that alone...

Even if we can't agree that Capstick actually did the cropping he claims to have done, it's pretty well confirmed that he was friends with a man who had far more experience killing elephants than John Taylor. So even if we assume that Capstick didn't do the killing himself (ignoring the fact that available information appears to reinforce his claims), he certainly had access to information from a far more experienced elephant hunter than Taylor.

 

[BigG]

Even if we can't agree that Capstick actually did the cropping he claims to have done, it's pretty well confirmed that he was friends with a man who had far more experience killing elephants than John Taylor. So even if we assume that Capstick didn't do the killing himself (ignoring the fact that available information appears to reinforce his claims), he certainly had access to information from a far more experienced elephant hunter than Taylor.

Huh? That was a long non-sequitur.

If you read the Taylor book you might disagree with yourself, John. Similarly, WDM Bell, the guy who shot them with 7mm Mauser, had a special technique. He would stand atop a ladder with his boys holding the bottom and look above the top of the elephant grass where he would see the tops of jumbos' heads sticking above like rocks above surf. It was an easy matter to put a round into each dome and the 7mm did not kick him off his perch. Thought you might want to know that before concluding the 7mm is the perfect elephant round.

 

[Jim Watson]

Bell started out with a .256 (6.5mm) Mannlicher. Some flaw either in rifle or ammo moved him to the .276 Rigby (British version of 7x57). Later he upgunned again and shot a lot of elephants with a .318 W.R. Real power.

 

[JohnKSa]

Huh? That was a long non-sequitur.

The point is that even if we assume that Capstick DIDN'T shoot any elephants, he was known to be friends with at least one person who shot thousands of them. That would certainly place him in a situation to have received a lot of good information on the topic even if his personal experience were lacking.

That's hardly a non-sequitur given that everyone on this thread is clearly an authority on the topic in spite of a noted dearth of personal experience.

MORE to the point, at least in this particular respect, there is nothing in the evidence to suggest that Capstick's claims are bogus. All of his claims (with regard to elephant cropping) fit well with facts available from other sources.

If you read the Taylor book you might disagree with yourself...

I have the book.

Thought you might want to know that before concluding the 7mm is the perfect elephant round.

I have Bell's book too, but I haven't made any comments here or elsewhere about the "perfect elephant round".

 

[BigG]

Quote:

Thought you might want to know that before concluding the 7mm is the perfect elephant round.

I have Bell's book too, but I haven't made any comments here or elsewhere about the "perfect elephant round".

Sorry, John. I meant that to respond to Recoilbob. That same small bore Karamojo Bell stuff comes up from time to time. He didn't fire it into the face of a charging bull elephant like a lot of guys seem to believe. Sorry for the mixup, I didn't mean to be contentious.

 

[JohnKSa]

I didn't take it that way...

 

[ETXhiker]

Peter Hathaway Capstick is rumored to be similar to Jack O'Connor, aiming the sights of his typewriter at a charging elephant, more than actually doing it. A marvelous raconteur and boon companion but not an authority on anything but spinning a good yarn. If I'm wrong about Capstick, show me and I'll apologize.

Hmmm. For a guy who never did any hunting, he sure has a lot of photos posing with dead game. Ditto, O'Conner. I've never heard anyone 'dis either of these guys before. What is the source of this information?

 

[BigG]

Elmer Keith was the source of the Jack O'Connor accusation and IIRC also Col. Charles Askins, Jr. mentioned O'Connor shooting with his imagination.

I can't remember the Capstick detractor.

 

[ClarkEMyers]

Dunno about elephants but O'Connor's North American trophies have been shown.

No question that Mr. O'Connor was saltier and less polite in person than on paper but at least for thin skinned game somebody shot his trophies and I think it was Mr. O'Connor.

As for Taylor's formula I put it with Hatcher's formula as an historical curiosity easily superseded by Ruark's Rule.

 

[.38 Special]

Ross Seyfried has written some funnily nasty (nastily funny?) things about Capstick. One that I remember concerned buffalo and went something like "Luckily, I began hunting buffalo before the Capstick books came out, so my understanding of them was still based mostly upon fact".

O'Connor shot a hell of a lot of game. Elmer probably shot more, but O'Connor undoubtedly shot a wider variety. If one wanted to attack, one could point out that Elmer guided himself everywhere but africa, while O'Connor was normally guided on all but local hunts.

I'm not interested in attack, though. All four of those folks probably shot more game than most of us will ever even see in our lives.

 

[BigG]

Here is an old thread from TFL that I resurrected, unfortunately, no hard data but several of the members seem trustworthy to me.

TFL Thread on Capstick's Veracity