Breaking Bad: Fudd Bible Edition
My garbage MS paint drawing was a hit in another thread. So I thought I’d post an expanded version here, in hopes it helps people escape the Fudd Bible Cult. (I say that with love. I'm still a fudd at heart.)
The Urban Dictionary says the following:
To Break Bad is to reject social norms for one's own gain or amusement. To give up on the typical moral and social norm and go one's own path, regardless of the legality or ethics.
Let me tell you a story about the Fudd Bible.
When I first started hunting, there was the Fudd Bible. Its words were spoken in hushed tones in wall tents all over North America, preaching that small calibres were very accurate to shoot, but made small holes. The bigger calibres were harder to shoot, but make Big Holes. This was the Gospel I was raised on.
And it made sense. And it was true. Small, fast bullets didn't make Big Holes at the time. Holes kill things, so we all picked the bigger calibres, so we could make Big Holes.
Then one day Science showed up. And created amazing projectiles. These projectiles could be slung from those smaller calibre rifles, but would now make Big Holes.
Suddenly a person could shoot those small calibre (but very accurate) rifles and create giant big holes in critters.
This went against the Fudd Bible. The Fudd Bible stated that only the bigger calibers could create Big Holes. But now I was being told small bullets could make Big Holes too.
I fought this fact for a long time. Many hours and many dollars wasted. But eventually science and facts prevailed: You can't kill what you can't hit. If you maximize Hit Percentage, and pair a high Hit Percentage with the ability to make a Big Hole, you will harvest more animals. It's a simple statistics calculation: All things being equal (Big Holes), you will kill more things when you hit them. This meant a guy would want to focus on maximizing Hit Percentage. This also meant maybe that bigger wasn’t necessarily better.
This was my Breaking Bad point. I blasphemed, and strayed from the Fudd Bible. I was disowned from certain wall tents. But such is the cost of enlightenment.
Enlightenment
Big Holes no longer were the domain of bigger calibres. Big Holes could now be produced by projectiles across a large spectrum of bore sizes. So essentially caliber didn’t matter anymore – All calibres could produce Big Holes thanks to Science Tech.
It now became a question of Hit Percentage.
Hit Percentage is defined as “The ability to actually hit the shit that you aim at.” A laser beam has a 100% Hit Percentage. Point it at your target, and the beam will go in a straight line right to your aim point, no matter what. No earthly variables affect the straight-line travel of that beam.
The bullets we shoot, not so fortunate. There’s a bunch of variables that affect bullet flight. The key to having a high Hit Percentage is in the ability to eliminate those variables.
I’m going to save you some time so that you can avoid the internet rabbit hole: The two main reasons you as a shooter miss are (1) Wind, and (2) Flinching. Trust me, they are the 80/20 theory in action. These two variables affect your Hit Percentage the most (so much so that the other variables effectively don’t matter for our purposes.) My thought was that by reducing wind and flinching, my Hit Percentage would in theory increase.
Wind
People way smarter than me have written about this. The summary version is that high BC bullets, plus velocity, will mitigate wind to some degree. But it still comes down to the shooter’s ability to call wind. And wind-calling is an art. So you can mitigate it to a point using technical specs like velocity and BC, but at some point you need to let your inner freak flag fly and become a Wind Talker. This is a dark art, but can be learned.
Flinching
This one is easy. Don’t shoot big-ass heavy-recoiling steroid rifles, and you won’t flinch. That’s all I have to say about that.
The Graph
After being kicked out of the wall tent into the Wilds of North America, aimlessly wandering the mountains trying to find enlightenment, I drew this graph in my sleep one night:
What my idiot-scribble showed is that there’s a Nifty Unicorn Cartridge out there somewhere. It has a Hit Percentage of 100%, and will hit whatever you aim it at every single time. And it shoots magical bullets that create just the right amount of Big Hole that it will kill anything you hit every single time.
This Unicorn is the red “X” at the top of the bell curve. None of us have found the Unicorn cartridge yet, but we can narrow it down pretty easily. You need:
We are all trying to find that perfect combo of “Max Hit Percentage + Big Hole”. The easy way to guarantee Big Holes is to shoot giant heavy shit really fast. But then recoil kicks the crap out of us, and reduces our ability to shoot well. In other words, reduces our Hit Percentage.
One night at camp I stated out loud that the most effective rifle would be the one that generates the highest Hit Percentages, paired with bullets that made Big Holes. That “Bring Enough Gun” would actually just mean more misses. This was not what the Fudd Bible preached. I Broke Bad.
And for that I was forever disowned by my people, and was sent out into the night.
What’s the Point
This long-winded is just a tongue-in-cheek way of explaining why a 223 can now be used to hunt game that we would have never dreamed of back in the Fudd days. The 223 is not the Unicorn rifle, but it’s now in the top part of the bell curve due to its high Hit Percentage factor (thanks to its almost nil recoil), and its ability to now produce Big Holes.
Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.
My garbage MS paint drawing was a hit in another thread. So I thought I’d post an expanded version here, in hopes it helps people escape the Fudd Bible Cult. (I say that with love. I'm still a fudd at heart.)
The Urban Dictionary says the following:
To Break Bad is to reject social norms for one's own gain or amusement. To give up on the typical moral and social norm and go one's own path, regardless of the legality or ethics.
Let me tell you a story about the Fudd Bible.
When I first started hunting, there was the Fudd Bible. Its words were spoken in hushed tones in wall tents all over North America, preaching that small calibres were very accurate to shoot, but made small holes. The bigger calibres were harder to shoot, but make Big Holes. This was the Gospel I was raised on.
And it made sense. And it was true. Small, fast bullets didn't make Big Holes at the time. Holes kill things, so we all picked the bigger calibres, so we could make Big Holes.
Then one day Science showed up. And created amazing projectiles. These projectiles could be slung from those smaller calibre rifles, but would now make Big Holes.
Suddenly a person could shoot those small calibre (but very accurate) rifles and create giant big holes in critters.
This went against the Fudd Bible. The Fudd Bible stated that only the bigger calibers could create Big Holes. But now I was being told small bullets could make Big Holes too.
I fought this fact for a long time. Many hours and many dollars wasted. But eventually science and facts prevailed: You can't kill what you can't hit. If you maximize Hit Percentage, and pair a high Hit Percentage with the ability to make a Big Hole, you will harvest more animals. It's a simple statistics calculation: All things being equal (Big Holes), you will kill more things when you hit them. This meant a guy would want to focus on maximizing Hit Percentage. This also meant maybe that bigger wasn’t necessarily better.
This was my Breaking Bad point. I blasphemed, and strayed from the Fudd Bible. I was disowned from certain wall tents. But such is the cost of enlightenment.
Enlightenment
Big Holes no longer were the domain of bigger calibres. Big Holes could now be produced by projectiles across a large spectrum of bore sizes. So essentially caliber didn’t matter anymore – All calibres could produce Big Holes thanks to Science Tech.
It now became a question of Hit Percentage.
Hit Percentage is defined as “The ability to actually hit the shit that you aim at.” A laser beam has a 100% Hit Percentage. Point it at your target, and the beam will go in a straight line right to your aim point, no matter what. No earthly variables affect the straight-line travel of that beam.
The bullets we shoot, not so fortunate. There’s a bunch of variables that affect bullet flight. The key to having a high Hit Percentage is in the ability to eliminate those variables.
I’m going to save you some time so that you can avoid the internet rabbit hole: The two main reasons you as a shooter miss are (1) Wind, and (2) Flinching. Trust me, they are the 80/20 theory in action. These two variables affect your Hit Percentage the most (so much so that the other variables effectively don’t matter for our purposes.) My thought was that by reducing wind and flinching, my Hit Percentage would in theory increase.
Wind
People way smarter than me have written about this. The summary version is that high BC bullets, plus velocity, will mitigate wind to some degree. But it still comes down to the shooter’s ability to call wind. And wind-calling is an art. So you can mitigate it to a point using technical specs like velocity and BC, but at some point you need to let your inner freak flag fly and become a Wind Talker. This is a dark art, but can be learned.
Flinching
This one is easy. Don’t shoot big-ass heavy-recoiling steroid rifles, and you won’t flinch. That’s all I have to say about that.
The Graph
After being kicked out of the wall tent into the Wilds of North America, aimlessly wandering the mountains trying to find enlightenment, I drew this graph in my sleep one night:
What my idiot-scribble showed is that there’s a Nifty Unicorn Cartridge out there somewhere. It has a Hit Percentage of 100%, and will hit whatever you aim it at every single time. And it shoots magical bullets that create just the right amount of Big Hole that it will kill anything you hit every single time.
This Unicorn is the red “X” at the top of the bell curve. None of us have found the Unicorn cartridge yet, but we can narrow it down pretty easily. You need:
- Something that makes Big Holes;
- Something that doesn’t recoil (mitigate flinch)
- Something with a decent ballistic coefficient (mitigate wind)
- Something with high velocity (mitigate wind), but not so high that you create recoil (Back to mitigating recoil)
We are all trying to find that perfect combo of “Max Hit Percentage + Big Hole”. The easy way to guarantee Big Holes is to shoot giant heavy shit really fast. But then recoil kicks the crap out of us, and reduces our ability to shoot well. In other words, reduces our Hit Percentage.
One night at camp I stated out loud that the most effective rifle would be the one that generates the highest Hit Percentages, paired with bullets that made Big Holes. That “Bring Enough Gun” would actually just mean more misses. This was not what the Fudd Bible preached. I Broke Bad.
And for that I was forever disowned by my people, and was sent out into the night.
What’s the Point
This long-winded is just a tongue-in-cheek way of explaining why a 223 can now be used to hunt game that we would have never dreamed of back in the Fudd days. The 223 is not the Unicorn rifle, but it’s now in the top part of the bell curve due to its high Hit Percentage factor (thanks to its almost nil recoil), and its ability to now produce Big Holes.
Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.
