It cracks me up when people generally believe that one cartidge or another is a majic wand and everything shot with it will automatically fall down right where you want it to.
.....
Yeah there really isn't any magic.
My elk hunting education got started watching a Wyoming rancher friend haul in all kinds of elk killed with a measly little 250 Savage.Along the way others hunting the ranch (local guys)used the Roberts, the 243,270,25/06,308 Norma, 7 mags, etc, etc. It seems that killing large animals like elk with smaller calibers is something of a western tradition.
I spent nights with a cold beer or a cup of coffee,and a skinning knife chasing wound channels through elk carcasses and looking at the damage done by various bullets and calibers.It really did not take long to figure out that the trauma inflicted along the wound channels was greater with the 30 calibers than anything much smaller.
Since I was digging around the carcasses of dead elk, it was pretty obvious that the 25's killed them;but it was equally obvious from the size and nature of the wound channels, depth of penetration,broken bones,etc., that the 30's had more of what it takes to be a good elk killer than the 25's,with the bullets of the day.(Of course we have better bullets today in both 25 and 30 caliber so the playing field is equal in that regard).
These conversations go round and round because there is only a singular degree of "dead", but infinite variations of wounding effect, depending on the bullet construction, impact velocity (distance),what we hit, and so forth and so on.
So it seemed to me that the conversation should not be about what "kills" them, but rather what kind of wound trauma we can expect to inflict with a 30 vs a 25 under a broad range of conditions. I think the 30 calibers win hands down.
This may seem a bit arcane but it led me to the conclusion that I'd hunt elk with a 257 Roberts if it's all I had(I've killed piles of deer and antelope with the cartridge);but would rather take a 30/06 or 300 magnum for the job.I have never regretted that decision.I can't wrap my head around the notion of a Roberts being anything like a 300 magnum in terms of effectiveness on animals of the size and tenacity of a big bull elk.
BTW the rancher who got me started on this stuff went from that 250 Savage to a 270;found it very much more effective than the 250 Savage...he has also used some 7 mags and a 300 Win mag. He says the 270 kills them fine, but the 300's just pound them at any distance. He has killed a LOT of elk.
As always, YMMV.
