Minimum energy for a fox.

Zxthinger

Ye often have people jumping out of their skin over the minimum energy required to kill deer.
Has anyone ever put thought to a minimum energy for taking foxes. Took a few foxes with the 17 rem recently and it's no match for the swift.

For experience I'm starting to wonder if I need more power.

Anyway, seems like a fair topic for here

meathstevie

Fair topic for discussion alright. Over the years I get the impression that what folks look upon as the minimum caliber for any type of hunting has gone up and up.

Go back a few decades and a .22lr and .22wmr were deemed perfectly capable for shooting foxes within the practical limits of the calibers.

These days a .22 center fire seems to be the consensus out there with a .22 Hornet apparently deemed to be too small since they’ve practically disappeared.

CJhaughey

meathstevie wrote: »

Fair topic for discussion alright. Over the years I get the impression that what folks look upon as the minimum caliber for any type of hunting has gone up and up.

Go back a few decades and a .22lr and .22wmr were deemed perfectly capable for shooting foxes within the practical limits of the calibers.

These days a .22 center fire seems to be the consensus out there with a .22 Hornet apparently deemed to be too small since they’ve practically disappeared.

I like my 243 with 58gn ballistic tipped for fox. I’m sure it’s a case of getting closer if you have a smaller calibre. 22 Hornet has taken a lot of fox over the years, but rounds aren’t that cheap for what you are getting in terms of projectile or powder.
It’s allowed as a deer calibre in some countries so I would be happy with it as a fox calibre.

chris20

I use my 17hmr under 100yrds with good shot placement, always does the job

solarwinds

Horses for courses really, .17 Rem has accounted for a large number of foxes over the years and is a very effective round. Any of the .22 foxing rounds even the .22 mag will get the job done within their limits.
I have had all the larger .22's over the years and while the power available was great I found that for within the ranges I shoot I have gone back to the Hornet as I did not need the extra reach or power of the Swift or .223.

.243

meathstevie wrote: »

These days a .22 center fire seems to be the consensus out there with a .22 Hornet apparently deemed to be too small since they’ve practically disappeared.

i dont think the hornet is too small,id say the hornet has been pushed aside with the cheap availabilty of .223 ammo and the lack of quality and quantity ammunition for the hornet

Zxthinger

Shoot placement is critical with all and more so with a reduced load. So just recently I had to take a follow up shot on a fox with the 17rem and and it left me thinking.

The same shot placement with a swift would have been instant.


Ive taken foxes with 22mag and 22lr when it was needed. Both calibers where critical on shot placement. 150m Max with 22wmr on boiler room shots. And 50-60m Max with head shots on the 22lr but only in very limited conditions.

Note that I have also taken boiler room shots on foxes with 22lr and it's was seemingly effevtive, solving the problem and with the dead foxes found later.

I'm start to think that a dedicated fox gun should be advised as being a 223 or higher with a decent BC to give a bit of downrange continuity.

If ye compare deer calibers to the relevant weight of foxes you find that a 1700ft/lbs is factored down to approx 800ftlbs when measured against Sika and 100ft/lbs when measured against reds..

tudderone

I used a hornet for years, loved it, one of my favorite calibres on foxes. But that was 20 years ago when farms and fields were smaller and 150 yards was a long shot. The .223 must be the ideal calibre for foxes, better selection of rifles and ammo.

deerhunter1

Zxthinger wrote: »

Ye often have people jumping out of their skin over the minimum energy required to kill deer.
Has anyone ever put thought to a minimum energy for taking foxes. Took a few foxes with the 17 rem recently and it's no match for the swift.

For experience I'm starting to wonder if I need more power.

Anyway, seems like a fair topic for here

Shot a few foxes recently with .22 sub sonics,dropped them stone dead out to 80 yards

Zxthinger

Were they head shots or boiler room shots.
The problem with head shots is that any small miss is disastrous thus a boiler room shot is better although not instant.
It was a flawed head shot that got me thinking or comparing the swift with the rem17.

solarwinds

Zxthinger wrote: »

Were they head shots or boiler room shots.
The problem with head shots is that any small miss is disastrous thus a boiler room shot is better although not instant.
It was a flawed head shot that got me thinking or comparing the swift with the rem17.

Any of them will do the job but in the end it is all about shot placement if the bullet ends up where you aim that is a dead animal. I would rather shot placement and skill over excessive power to make up for poor marksmanship and that in no way is having a go at anyone.

Zxthinger

I know what yer saying, but more power makes up for a less that perfect shot. Field conditions are not always ideal when a target presents itself so it stand to reason that hunting shots can be rushed..

I suppose I have grown accustomed to the instant stopping power of the 220 swift. It's a manic killer, shoot them from any angle or in any body area and they are dead right there..

The rem17 is not as effective and shots have to be more considered and I suppose my degree of considered "aim" is only as accurate as required by the potency of my ammunition.

I used think that 22lr was only really an occasional fox gun and would leave the user felling under powered and out ranged.
The 17hmr, I felt, was a head shot rabbit gun with 200 years range and fairly consistent on foxes out to 120y
The 22wmr was less accurate than the hmr but 1-1.5 moa was good enough for foxes to 150.
I never owned a 223 and went straight for the 22swift.
So I suppose the 220 swift has to some extent made me ballistically lazy and indifferent to idiosyncratic details of marksmanship..
I pushed her out to 400yards on foxes with instant kills having consider all the external ballistics very closely but at ranges out to 300 in moderate winds it's simply a bit of hold off and bang and bag..

yubabill

IMHO I reckon 100ft/lbs or so at POI (not muzzle) is enough to do a fox. I'm just basing that on short-range boiler house kills using 22LR Stingers.

There is one other new factor that's come into view more recently - bullet design/composition.

The newer ballistic tip ammo and the Lehigh fragmenting designs give extra knockdown power for a given calibre, so the arguments are not as simple as of old, when all you had were FMJ's vs. SP or HP.

And to complicate things further, I was surprised not to instantly kill a fox at 10yds with a boiler house snapshot using 223 50gr Fiocchi HP - though absolutely devastated, she ran 10yds or so before dropping; the key is the bullet's ability to dump all its energy efficiently and to that end I have not experienced anything other than instant karma (even at 10yds) with an equivalent BT.

Feisar

yubabill wrote: »

And to complicate things further, I was surprised not to instantly kill a fox at 10yds with a boiler house snapshot using 223 50gr Fiocchi HP - though absolutely devastated, she ran 10yds or so before dropping; the key is the bullet's ability to dump all its energy efficiently and to that end I have not experienced anything other than instant karma (even at 10yds) with an equivalent BT.

I wonder was the bullet going too fast to expand effectively?

The pigeon man

Feisar wrote: »

I wonder was the bullet going too fast to expand effectively?

That's exactly it too fast to expand because the bullet isn't designed for those ranges although it'll give a perfectly humane kill.

I find fiocchi 50gr ballistic tip for foxes perfect. The 223 has good ballistics, fast round and economical at less than €1 a shot. Hard to justify anything more powerful unless you're shooting at extreme ranges.

Also a mod reduces the noise to an acceptable level. I would imagine a swift would be significantly louder even with a mod.

Zxthinger

I too was left perplexed one night with a 40 grain 4250 fps round. I hit a fox at about 20 yards right in the chest. He should have dropped but instead ran into the thicket.

Hatcher's Notes explains that bullets need time to settle down into a smooth rotation/flight.

He noted that bullets that were allowed time to settle down, penetrated several feet more of oak planking as opposed to similar bullets hitting targets at similar velocity but earlier in their flight..

If the theory is correct then we seeing catastrophic failure due to irregularities in the precession which are only exacerbated by interactions with soft tissue..
I supppse, some shooter may have seen this effect with large surface wounds with little penetration.....
Thinking back now, I believe I have also seen this effect with the 22mag at 30yards on fox using 30 grain ballistic tip Rem at 2200fps.

Zxthinger

The pigeon man wrote: »

That's exactly it too fast to expand because the bullet isn't designed for those ranges although it'll give a perfectly humane kill.

I find fiocchi 50gr ballistic tip for foxes perfect. The 223 has good ballistics, fast round and economical at less than €1 a shot. Hard to justify anything more powerful unless you're shooting at extreme ranges.

Also a mod reduces the noise to an acceptable level. I would imagine a swift would be significantly louder even with a mod.

I only ever fired the swift once without the mod. I would never attempt it again. Lol

yubabill

Feisar wrote: »

I wonder was the bullet going too fast to expand effectively?

Massive internal wounding, pretty sure I clipped the heart - mincemeat inside I reckon.

I first noticed something like this many years ago shooting rabbits with 22LR. And it seems to carry up the calibres; really close shots don't seem to kill as quickly as those a bit further away, despite bullet expansion and massive wounding, going deep - at least when using HP/SP bullets.

I found that the 22LR gave instant kills (with less meat damage) at around 50-60 yds with Winchester Super X standard velocity HP's, say, while no-lesss-reliable but slower kills at shorter ranges. There seemed to be a sweet spot where the combination of energy dump and bullet expansion/penetration were at just the right proportions to give instant lights-out.

As before, ballistic tip ammo does not seem to succumb to this quite as noticeably.

Larry60

I shot a lot of foxes back in the eighties with a .22lr. This required a head shot at no more than 100yds and many times especially when the fox was moving and would'nt stop or could not be inticed closer meant that opportunities to kill a fox were lost. Also at that time we were saving the skins as they had a value. These days (and Nights) I am only interested in culling them and only want a clean kill and do it very effectively with a 5.6x57. Shoots flat no ricochets and kills with any kind of hit.

minktrapper

At slower speeds the bullet tends to tumble. It then does more damage. At least that is what I think happens.

Richard308

Larry60 wrote: »

I shot a lot of foxes back in the eighties with a .22lr. This required a head shot at no more than 100yds and many times especially when the fox was moving and would'nt stop or could not be inticed closer meant that opportunities to kill a fox were lost. Also at that time we were saving the skins as they had a value. These days (and Nights) I am only interested in culling them and only want a clean kill and do it very effectively with a 5.6x57. Shoots flat no ricochets and kills with any kind of hit.

5.6x57 very fast round, unbelievably effective against sika. Used rws and never saw an animal take a second step when hit with it.

tudderone

Richard308 wrote: »

5.6x57 very fast round, unbelievably effective against sika. Used rws and never saw an animal take a second step when hit with it.

Very popular for roe in Germany i believe.

yubabill

minktrapper wrote: »

At slower speeds the bullet tends to tumble. It then does more damage. At least that is what I think happens.

Imagined myself that the expansion at slower speeds allowed the kinetic energy to transfer better into shock, but your guess is as good as mine because I have no evidence and have not seen it examined or even accepted as a phenomenon.

minktrapper

Maybe. I don't have enough knowledge on the ballistics side of things.

Zxthinger

Richard308 wrote: »

5.6x57 very fast round, unbelievably effective against sika. Used rws and never saw an animal take a second step when hit with it.

Similar enough to the 220 swift.

tudderone

Zxthinger wrote: »

Similar enough to the 220 swift.

75 grain, less frangible bullet though.

Zxthinger

tudderone wrote: »

75 grain, less frangible bullet though.

I would think that all things being equal, then yes. But horses for courses. There are bonded bullets for the 220 swift- very few but they exist in factory offerings with more offering to those that hand load or reload.....

On the world stage, is the swift more popular than the 5.6x57?

I know the 5.6x57 was popular AGS policy back in the 70s.. but I have never seen ammo or guns to suit it. IIRC someone offered one on boards (for sale) 10 years ago

tudderone

Zxthinger wrote: »

I would think that all things being equal, then yes. But horses for courses. There are bonded bullets for the 220 swift- very few but they exist in factory offerings with more offering to those that hand load or reload.....

On the world stage, is the swift more popular than the 5.6x57?

I know the 5.6x57 was popular AGS policy back in the 70s.. but I have never seen ammo or guns to suit it. IIRC someone offered one on boards (for sale) 10 years ago

I know a few older lads who use nothing else but the 5.6x57, i'd have one myself if reloading was easy here, but its a pita like everything else. Some of the European rounds are every bit as good, if not better than the American stuff, but for some reason us and the British seem to go for the American stuff.

Uinseann_16

The 6.5x55 i found to be absolutely devastating on foxes, though i only have a few permissions i can use it on being a higher caliber and i personally have a problem with the .22 around local areas in that most foxes seem to be lamp shy from lads with shotguns
A .22 hornet is on the way to fill the gap between the two :pac:

Feisar

Zxthinger wrote: »

I too was left perplexed one night with a 40 grain 4250 fps round. I hit a fox at about 20 yards right in the chest. He should have dropped but instead ran into the thicket.

Hatcher's Notes explains that bullets need time to settle down into a smooth rotation/flight.

He noted that bullets that were allowed time to settle down, penetrated several feet more of oak planking as opposed to similar bullets hitting targets at similar velocity but earlier in their flight..

If the theory is correct then we seeing catastrophic failure due to irregularities in the precession which are only exacerbated by interactions with soft tissue..
I supppse, some shooter may have seen this effect with large surface wounds with little penetration.....
Thinking back now, I believe I have also seen this effect with the 22mag at 30yards on fox using 30 grain ballistic tip Rem at 2200fps.

Must get that book, interesting. Digressing a bit here however I read about bullets "settling down" years ago, see below on the Lee Enfield. I always took this with a massive pinch of salt however maybe there is something to it?

https://web.archive.org/web/20190826135948/http://www.snipercentral.com/british-4-mk1t

yubabill

Feisar wrote: »

Must get that book, interesting. Digressing a bit here however I read about bullets "settling down" years ago, see below on the Lee Enfield. I always took this with a massive pinch of salt however maybe there is something to it?

https://web.archive.org/web/20190826135948/http://www.snipercentral.com/british-4-mk1t

My own hypothesis FWIW; One time I moved my hand underwater really fast and then moved it with a slower, steady pushing motion, I reckon I moved more water with the slower push. As tissue, organs etc. are 90%-plus water, this is the only thing I can think of.