I'm after a realistic assessment of a gunshot wound from a Colt Navy .44 1851 pattern, shooting with black powder. Assume a range of the width of a typical Western town street (bad guy comes out of door, good guy comes out of door across the street.
At the moment, I'm thinking of a grazing (need to avoid a fractured humerus) wound somewhere around the bottom of the deltoid muscle (no major arteries!).
Ignore the bad guy can't shoot worth beans - good guy "double taps" to the heart and one more for good measure when it looks like the bad guy might be moving.
Bad aim leads to the crease.
As best I can find out, the .44, even shooting black powder, has serious punch and a .44 bullet has real mass. In the right place, this is distinctly a "man stopper".
Soooooo, the question is can a crease "only" do some plowing or does even a glancing strike cause hydrostatic problems (e.g., the M16's "weeny" caliber is magnified by a very high muzzle velocity, hits aren't just holes but hammer blows that can cost an arm, etc.).
Immediately after being hit, good guy (GG) is shocky (well duh!) and has a loosely out of body sense of watching somebody getting a tourniquet, being sewn up, and fed laudanum.
Afterwards he's basically sliding in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day and the following day, and only really "wakes up" two days later.
How much of my proposed series of events is at lease plausible? I'm relating some of my supposition on a pair of not so nice bone fractures (skiing am de debil!), one requiring surgery. Also major elective surgery to the pituitary gland (through the nose - euwwww!).
I know the bulk of movies and books have hideous trauma sloughed off a few hours or a day later. Bull puckey, say I!
At the moment, I'm thinking of a grazing (need to avoid a fractured humerus) wound somewhere around the bottom of the deltoid muscle (no major arteries!).
Ignore the bad guy can't shoot worth beans - good guy "double taps" to the heart and one more for good measure when it looks like the bad guy might be moving.
Bad aim leads to the crease.
As best I can find out, the .44, even shooting black powder, has serious punch and a .44 bullet has real mass. In the right place, this is distinctly a "man stopper".
Soooooo, the question is can a crease "only" do some plowing or does even a glancing strike cause hydrostatic problems (e.g., the M16's "weeny" caliber is magnified by a very high muzzle velocity, hits aren't just holes but hammer blows that can cost an arm, etc.).
Immediately after being hit, good guy (GG) is shocky (well duh!) and has a loosely out of body sense of watching somebody getting a tourniquet, being sewn up, and fed laudanum.
Afterwards he's basically sliding in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day and the following day, and only really "wakes up" two days later.
How much of my proposed series of events is at lease plausible? I'm relating some of my supposition on a pair of not so nice bone fractures (skiing am de debil!), one requiring surgery. Also major elective surgery to the pituitary gland (through the nose - euwwww!).
I know the bulk of movies and books have hideous trauma sloughed off a few hours or a day later. Bull puckey, say I!