Eeeets Alive Pt I

I once wrote years ago, when I first started dabbling with neural nets and artificial intelligence, that there comes a time in any mad scientist’s life when he feels compelled to grasp the table, lift his eyes to the heavens and exclaim: “EEEETS ALIVE!!!”

I don’t think this is going to push the envelope any in regards to what is known about whitetail deer cartridges. However, this is a good example of one man’s quest for answers to the ultimate question in a deer hunter’s life: What is the best round?

I have been downloading data from the Hodgdon and IMR sites and compiling a database of their published loads. So far, I have built a database of over 1000 loads built on a variety of cartridges. I didn’t grab them all, but I did try to grab the ones that have piqued my curiosity over the years. The range runs from .223 REM to 45-70. I will eventually publish the entire list, but this is an overview.

After I had the database together, I added the bullet database from Pointblank software. That gave me the BC and SD’s on most of the bullets in the Hodgdon and IMR sites. I then spent an evening matching the data up.

Then, I took a exterior ballistics spreadsheet template that I pulled off the net. It’s a shareware piece called “ball1232.zip.”

To summarize: I took a bunch of load data from Hodgdon and IMR, and added sectional density and ballistic co-efficient data. Then I married it up with an exterior ballistics worksheet and fed the whole thing into Microsoft Excel.

Then I added a copy of EVOLVER. It’s like Microsoft Excel’s SOLVER add-in, but it does a lot of tricky non-linear stuff to try and find the optimal answer to a complex question.

Here are the questions I started to ask:

Given the data at hand, which gives you the best bang for the ensuing recoil? If I don’t mind the recoil, what’s the best cartridge for 50 yards, 75 yards, 100 yards? 150 yards?

If I want a 30 caliber load, what’s the best? What if I want something under 30?

Anyone care to guess some of the best ones? I’ve been rather surprised. Not so much as they’re complete foolers. The answers are remarkably similar to popular views.

For qualifying “best bang “ I used the TKO formula. That didn’t quite do it, so I used the Bekker’s KOV variant that uses sectional density in place of bullet diameter. I then created the Shamanic Ratio: Bekker’s KOV divided by the recoil energy in foot/lbs. That gave me a number somewhere under 2. A pea-shooter like 223 REM gave a very low number. Shoulder-fired artillery like 45-70 didn’t fair to well either (but better than some might think). This seemed the best way to penalize a cartridge that was best suited for a light howitzer instead of a deer rifle.

These aren’t hard and fast declarations of fact. The application is limited in a lot of ways. First, there is not a lot of pet load data to feed in. These are just Hodgdon and IMR’s maximum load data. These are benchmarks to keep sane men from blowing themselves up. To modify them somewhat, I gave the app the ability to modify the number of grains so that it could extrapolate up to a 8% reduction from the max load. I tried a bunch of other things too:

1) I did away with the Shamanic Ratio and optimized just for Bekker KOV and Taylor’s TKO. I then penalized the system progressively for recoil over 20 ft./lbs
2) I let the app play with rifle weight and told it that I would punish it if it tried to tell me I should try a 10lb rifle to help offset recoil.
3) I made a rule that 150 yard energy must be over 1000 ft/lbs., and then I tweaked it a bit.
4) The options go on and on.

It’s amazing the sort of games you can play in Excel before the whole thing freezes up and you have to reload the app. The Evolver add-in works with artificial intelligence and it throws around terms like “propagation,” “mutation,” and “organism.” You can create little logical cattle-prods to keep the artificial intelligence processing along the right track. To many prods, however, and it rears up and bites you. I’ve had to restart Excel twice since I started this post.

Mind you, I’m still just toying with this application. These are not definitive answers.
No, I didn’t feed in your pet load, or mine. I didn’t put in all the loads in all the tables, just the ones that interested me. I will continue to expand on this project over time.

Right now, I’m re-running it with a straight concentration on the Shamanic Ratio with an 7.5 lb rifle and no other bells and whistles. This run does not worry about target distance. I’ll let what’s in the Petri dish grow for a while. Any guesses what comes up?