Thankyou, Ka'imiloa - appreciated. If you go to Veral Smith's site - Lead Bullet Technology and order his little book(cheap), you'll have the greatest written data on this subject. The book is called "Jacketed Performance with Cast Bullets" -- it is an excellent read and packed with important information, photo stats and techniques - soft point cast bullets, etc. I got mine back in about 1978 or '77 and have been using these techniques ever since. Shooting through 3' to 4' diameter, solid Spruce trees (and other stuff) is a blast with an 1874 Sharps buffalo rifle. Just one of the tricks of the trade.

Oh yeah - I meant to say that buffalo sure bled a lot from the hip shot. Makes me wonder who killed the buff, where it was shot to kill it and with what.