Agreed- amazing what these "inadequate" calibers can do on larger animals at decent range (me, I like bigger at any range!). Most caribou wounding I witnessed with the .22 centerfires was due to excessive range - beyond 200 yards, sometimes much farther- and not poor marksmanship. Just lousy penetration at range. A hunting partner once dropped a big, head-down bull caribou on a hilltop some 300 yards away with his .264 Mag. That's the only found animal I have never retrieved from the field. As nearly as we could tell among all the gagging and mouth breathing, it had 18 .22 caliber superficial bullet wounds in it, inflicted some days before. It was literally rotting to death.
The .22-250 was preferred in Pt. Hope for it's primary use as a seal gun among the leads and ice flows. Most hunters were not well enough off to afford more than one rifle at a time - so it ended up being used for caribou, polar bear, walrus, and whatever else came along. The Inuit hunters seemed to be quite shy of recoil- perhaps understandable since most were not of especially robust build, and no fools among them. At least not for long.
My friend Henry (about 5"8", maybe 135 lbs if you threw a bucket of water on him- and one of the strongest and smartest men I've ever met) now dead of cancer, told me of the biggest polar bear he ever killed - over 10 foot. He spotted it a half mile off, working down the far side of a pressure ridge, and figured he could beat it to the end of the ridge. Took off running, and rounded an ice block at the end of the ridge with his .243 at waist height, out of breath,and found the bear just 6 feet away. Both were rather surprised. The bear, hip shot, was hit in the neck just under the chin, and went down , without a quiver. Unlike Henry, who freely admitted having to sit down for about 15 minutes.
It was hugely funny in his broken English. We cackled like maniacs.
