FPE needed to kill various animals

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 J-S wrote:

 paulo.baronceli wrote:

Found this on another forum and thought about sharing it here. They all seem a bit low to me, but what are your thoughts?

I would add, just by my own experience (probs all wrong!):

Small/Medium Turkey: 20FPE
Big Turkey: 25FPE
Magpie: 12FPE
Black Bird: 6FPE
Small Mice: 0.65FPE head only (I did it with a plastic BB pistol at 2m ish!!)
Rat: 4FPE

The quoted minimum FPE would be the retained energy down range required for efficient kill - not energy measured at the muzzle. 

So for an 18FPE air rifle, 5fpe is probably the retained energy out at 80yards, so its useful to know the energy required for a clean kill, as well as the ballistic info for your gun / pellet combo so you can judge the safe distance you can stretch to dependent on the animal.

You're dead right, although the muzzle energy can also be a good indicator. The deceleration is exponential after a certain distance, but before then the retained energy drop isn't substantial. Of course it will vary a lot depending on a number of factors - pellet weight, wind, etc, etc - but I still believe that muzzle energy can be a good quick indicator for someone that doesn't want to get too technical about it.

Maybe the other forum's post referred to the energy retained at the target, not muzzle, which would explain the lower than expected - at least for me - numbers.