Discussion Forums

Brian Johnson

Hello from West High, Iowa City, Iowa

First this dad has hunted in Iowa for 35 years mostly with 12 gauge shotguns and 22 rifles and only has shot pistols at ranges while in the USAF. With lots of shotgun reloading for trap shooting experience.

My son and I have been trying to work out what pistol would the best to match a crossbow in FPS and range... the short answer we found searching the internet for several hours was NONE due to ensuring the bullet actually gets out of the pistol’s barrel with the reduced powder load. The closest we could find was an air pistol, witch is not as lethal as a crossbow bolt it seems even though the air pistol should penetrate 3” into ballistics gel vs a bolt going through a foot of it.

We found the average crossbow had an estimated 312 FPS range 120 ft (95 meters per second and 36 meters normal shooting range limit)
Vs
9 mm pistol (our initial comparison) has an estimated 1250 FPS range 525 ft (380 meters per second and 175 meters normal shooting range limit)

(Those numbers may be off - estimated from info gleaned from our internet searches)

At this point this is just a challenge question of what a “new” pistol would look like if it did match. There are surely formulas for figuring out the best bullet size and grains of powder to match crossbow bolt ballistics. We’ve not found the math for it yet and are wondering if any of you have an idea how we can work it out.

Thanks in advance
Brian & son