Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Brown Bear with a 7 Rem Mag questions

The outfit I hunted brown bears with recommended nothing smaller than a 375, with 416 being preferable. I used my 33 G&A and did just fine but they were skeptical about it, being as they had seen poor results with the 338. They also preferred soft bullets, namely Hornady round nosed type.

I guided a couple Texans with 340Wbys

It's always a Weatherby and (almost) always Texans. At least they could shoot.

When it comes to this discussion of 30 caliber being "more" of everything than 7mm and smaller stuff, I'm going to string along with JJ Hack,since i assume that's where he was headed without saying exactly so.

I did not have time to read everything in the thread.


I like and use 7mm's but think the reason they perform well is that the heavier bullet weights creep squarely into the middle 30 caliber range. You may end up with dead stuff with either but side by side and shot into enough animals, i think that a 30 caliber magnum with a 200 gr bullet is more gun than a 7mm shooting a 160 to 175 gr. Shoot enough animals with both and you will see more damage from the 30's,assuming bullet structure is the same. It simply has the advantage in bullet weight and expanded frontal area(cross section of expanded bullets).


I had some knowledgeable and very experienced trophy elk hunters tell me this back in the 1980's and made the observations many times myself using 300's on elk sized animals.

With heavy 30 caliber bullets at magnum velocities,these guys felt the 30 caliber magnums broke up heavy bone,penetrated more reliably,destroyed more tissue.

This does not mean I doubt the capabilities of 7mm magnums with good heavy bullets,since they work too, but I simply think the 30 caliber magnums with good 180-200 gr bullets are "more gun" based on what I've seen,assuming equally good bullets.

It's always a Weatherby and (almost) always Texans. At least they could shoot.

This 375 minimum talk has surprised me. I thought the 338 and 340 were universally accepted in the Brown Bear world?

Oops! Typo. Yards. Dang autocorrect.

I was going to get into the whole bullet thing,since i was shooting "premiums" at elk and brown bear in the 80's and 90's ( Bitterroots), which are every bit the equal of anything out there today in terminal performance.So....premium bullets aren't anything new to me. I was using them before many on here were born.

But i did not want to get into bullet discussions, because I'm not writing an article,and don't want to take the time to cover another subject.

Obviously, the bullets can make these distinctions between cartridges a bit fuzzy,making smaller cartridges behave a good deal "bigger",especially in the case of premiums lie the Bitterroot, partition, and Barnes etc etc.. I also tried to couch my comments with qualifiers like "bullets being equal" but I guess i did not make my thoughts clear enough.


Also, the same bullet technology that benefits the smaller calibers ( 7mm say), benefits the larger calibers as well ( 30 caliber) so the relationships remain unchanged.

So, no , I don't think I was wrong about the relationship between the 7mm's and the 30's. I have been watching the effects of Bitterroots driven at high velocity from magnum cartridges from 7mm to 375 since the 80's, in the real world, on animals. I would turn a 165 BBC from a 300 magnum on a brown bear in a heartbeat. The results would be devastating.I have seen what happens to elk. Turns their innards to jello.

I don't think it matters a lick in terminal performance if a bullet exits or doesn't. So long as the bullet destroys everything passing from entry to the off side hide, the damage is done,and the hide is a bullet trap.

OTOH I have never had a Partition or a Bitterroot stop "partway" through a brown bear..any that I have used passed completely through the bear to the offside hide or exited, and made a mess in the wound channels. Moot point...really,,,the recovered BBC above was the only one of three recovered, the other two blasting through.

I have no idea what bullets do shot lengthwise in brown bear. I've never shot them that way.



I don't use Accubonds on anything. I'll stand by my comments on 7mm's vs 300 magnums.

I've wondered just how important having the bullet leave an exit hole is? Yes you get two holes to leak out of, which may leave a decent/better blood trail. And depending on the location of the bullet channel, you've gotten good penetration through everything in between, which is important, but is the second hole itself that important?

Say the bullet is lodged against the hide, with no exit hole. You still have almost the same wound channel in the critter and should have basically the same amount of blood loss, with the exception that more of the blood will pool inside the animal. That pooling itself can be fatal if it fills up the lungs, keeping some of the blood inside might actually be an advantage.

We often look at energy, and a fast moving light bullet can have the same energy as a slower moving heavy bullet. Say both bullets are well constructed such as a partition and both have the same energy. The kinetic energy (1/2 mass x velocity squared), is proportional to the velocity squared. The momentum (mass x velocity)is proportional to the velocity and the cartridge with the same kinetic energy but heavier bullet will have substantially more momentum. When a bullet hits an object, the bullets momentum and construction (not energy) will determine how closely it continues along it's intended path without deflection.

The heavier bullet of equal construction will also be that much tougher and less prone to failure, especially at the slower velocity. If in a less than ideal situation, the bullet has to go through tough bone, without deflecting from it's intended path, the heavier cartridge will have the edge. Also with the larger diameter of say a 9.3 or 375 bullet the chances of a decent blood trail should be much greater. As an example the 9.3 bullet starts out with 66% more cross sectional area than the .284 bullet.

All this assumes the hunter can actually place the bullet where it needs to go and that the larger diameter bullet can still manage to penetrate adequately.

Terminal ballistics loonism.

Like jokes in Germany and virgins in Denmark, retained Barnes bullets do not exist!