Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles killing efficiency

All the sub caliber fast twist guys will shoot anything at 1000 yards with small calibers claiming everything dies with a good shot, but you bring up a valid point that they may not admit, but I doubt their 6.5 Grendel would be their weapon of choice for that charging brown bear or Cape Buffalo...

Don't think the 25/06 will yield the same energy at 500 as an '06, unless you cherry pick loads. I ran the '06 with a 165 NP at 2800 (easily bettered) and the .25/06 with a 120 NP at 3100 (pushing it), with BCs within about 20 points, and the '06 came out a couple hundred pounds ahead. Also ran your 100gr NP at 3400 and the 150 NP at 3000, and the '06 was still on top. With both bullets still above the threshold for proper expansion, and by making a bigger hole the '06 theoretically should kill "better", but I wouldn't bet much on it. Too many other variables (that you can't measure or even detect) may come into play.

Make a hole in the right place with a bullet that will penetrate through all the works and cause enough damage to disrupt the vital life processes and you will make meat. Fall short of that and you may have trouble. Accomplishing that will get more difficult as the body weight goes up and bones, muscles, and hide get tougher. Until you have your own experience to guide you you have to rely on the experience of others as to what works. There will be times when everything seems to be just right, and you'll stiil end up with a chase on your hands. Another time, a poor shot with a marginal load may drop a critter like a hammer. There may be an explanation for both scenarios, but you'll likely never figure it out.

Trying to come up with some magic formula to measure killing power is and always has been a waste of time that would be better spent fishing or watching dancing girls.

Edit: or watching dancing girls fishing!

Frankly, this sort of thread is getting a lot ridiculous... projectile location, location, location...

Anecdotal evidence is about as weak as it comes and very unlikely to lead to valuable insight on shooting anything.

Frank Glaser is quoted in his book by Jim Rearden saying the Swift was the best killer he ever found for everything up to big bears.

In shooting a charging Bear I feel the 06 would have the edge for several reasons.The 25/06 max load with a 120 produces about 2600 ft-lbs of energy. The 06 loaded to max with a 220 gr projectile produced over 3300 ft-lbs of energy. The 25/06 is a great lung puncher. The 06 is a much better bone crusher. When shooting dangerous game up close you can lung punch if you wish to.....I'll choose the bone crusher method and feel ill likely live longer for doing so. One could always load the 06 down and compare but why? If shooting to crush bone effectively one can ask. Do I want to crush with 2000 ish pounds or would 3000 ish pounds of crush be more effective. If taking a head on shot and neither bullet exit which bullet do you believe created the greater wound channel. The one that had 2600 lbs or 3300?

On the other hand if I'm shooting game where lung punching is appropriate I feel the 25/06 would be more efficient and effective than the 06.


IMO ft-lbs of energy work better and is more effective for bone crushing and Velocity is more effective for lung punching.

There really is no one right answer but the individual circumstance has to be taken into consideration.






Shod

Stopping a charge or keeping it from crossing a line is accomplished with a CNS shot.

A CNS shot is accomplished by having intimate familiarity with your weapon.

The variables for that, and a heart/lung shot are only two:


1) A bullet constructed to do the job and....

2) your ability to surgically place it if necessary.


Caliber/cartridge are pretty secondary considerations...ask Shrap, he killed a grizzly with a .25-35 I believe.
I do a lot of " stunt shooting"- shooting deer sized critters with centerfire .22s...they don't leave a blood trail worth a crap, so it is incumbent to shoot them in such a way that there will be no trail to follow.

There is no substitute for trigger time.

The physics side is predictable. The animal side isn't, so I don't see how x vs y is better. One bullet might act a certain way in theory, and even if the ballistic gelatin looks the same everytime its hit, you still can't predict what something with a brain is going to do when hit with a bullet.

Having said that, there was some recent article about how RN had a noticeable effect at impact. Who the hell knows. Sounds like more BS.

If a 100 grain bullet sheds 50%, then there's 50 grains of schrapnel. 150 grain bullet, then there's 75 grains. Does it mean more tissue damage? I guess so.

I've never lost a deer I poked a hole in, so they all work.



Two things matter the most: not much and very little.

This is true I think.

As to the OP's question I'd pick a 30/06 as an all around BG rifle for 500 yard (or any other shots) over a 25/06.

It just makes sense that at some level the added bullet weight, and bore diameter makes breaking bones and penetration easier on heavy animals, and creates a bigger wound, bullet structure being equal.

If this were not true, 25/06's would be good Cape Buffalo rifles. They aren't. OTOH the 30/06 has laid out a zillion of them.

At some level bigger gets better.



Edited to add: This does not mean I dislike the 25/06 and have used it, and the 257 Roberts on lots of western deer and antelope. They are both solid cartridges but not in the class of a 30/06 IMHO.

Sometimes on here people think that if you prefer one cartridge (or bullet) over another it means you think other choices suck, and that's not so; frequently lost in the message.

What Bob is saying is "270"

I'm convinced that a well built, well placed bullet will take care of 99% of all your meat gathering needs and that things are more similar than different. So as of late, placement is about all I really care about and I think a BC from .425 to .485 with a MV of 2,900 to 3,000 FPS is perfect. Plus the added benefit and a free wind chart. Huh?

Run the numbers on any combo within those parameters at a 100 yard zero. Figure your drop chart to around 500 +/- yards and whatever you dial in MOA, is your 5 MPH wind drift in inches at that distance. Double that number and its 10 mph, and so on. It starts to come apart a little over 500, depending on the BC, but I don't shoot any further than that. And it's so damn close I'll hang my hat on it.

Granted there are angles and atmospheric things that can come into play and the wind never blows at an exact speed from left to right. But it's a damn easy way to do it...

Always figgered a guy with a .270 had little need for a .25/06, myself. The .25/06 makes a nice filler for someone with say, a .223 and an '06.

The OP mentioned SD, but recently I read somewhere that the SD that really matters is the SD remaining after expansion. Good point I think.

Something else that occurred to me is that the heavier slugs have more weight to "give" in the form of fragments to fly around inside tearing stuff up. Math ain't my strong point, but I believe 20% of 150gr is pretty much 50% more than 20% of 100.

A few of us here remember the days before all of the great bullets we have today when Vernon Speer was taking empty 22 casings and reforming them and filling them with lead. In those days the 30-30 was a reliable killing machine (and still is) primarily because the bullets were made for that particular cartridge velocity and performed predictably and rarely if ever came apart.
Today with premium controlled expansion bullets the caliber/cartridge question is just about moot. I prefer a medium caliber at around 2800fps because if I screw up a shot (and I do) there will be less meat damage but that is certainly not the only way to roll.

As it pertains to the original post I would say it depends greatly on the animal being shot. For instance moose are pretty easy to kill, but sometimes take awhile to tip over and velocity isn't going to do much for you. Deer OTOH are pretty impressed by velocity. Same with cats from what I understand,although have no expiereance with.

Damned if I know what "killing efficiency" is.

They are either dead or not dead. Now they can be DRT, or DOT(Down Over There). Over There can be a few feet or a few miles, and depends mostly on placement, rather than other factors, tho, as BWalker mentioned, it may possibly also involve bullet speed and animal weight when using hear/lung placement behind the shoulder. In my experience, bang-flops with boiler room placement behind the shoulder is slightly more likely to occur with fast bullets (MV up around 3,000 or higher), than those "poking along" in the mid 2K range, tho many of those IME were also bang/flops.

IME (21) moose take awhile to tip over no matter what they are hit with, unless placement is into the CNS, or at least one front shoulder is broken down. And then not always with that shoulder shot. I have had a sphincter experience with it, and now prefer CNS on moose if I can get it.

Here is some anecdotal "evidence".

I shot my first caribou with a 308 Norma Mag 180 gr. factory load at about 200 yards, and misplaced the shot slightly forward through the shoulder, rather than behind it. DRT.

The next 23 were with a Ruger 77V .25-06, using mostly 120 grain Speer C&C hand loads to near max book loads (Speer manual #8). Them 87s?? just weren't up to it. Never did try those in the 100 gr. range, the 120s working so well (MOA). Ranges from 70 to over 500, mostly 200 to 400. All bang flops except the first one, which was dead but didn't bang-flop until the second round. First round on him went from base of neck to lodging against opposite rear-leg bone at about 150 yards. The rest were either neck shots, but mostly behind the front leg shots.

We'll skip the .260 and .338WM takes- all boiler room bang-flops. (That pecker-shot with the .260 just made him walk funny until I hit him right with the second shot....a little wind drift, range mis-estimation, and embarrassment there!)

I've taken in excess of 25 caribou with 3 different rifles in .30-06, with barrel lengths of 17, 22, and 27 inches. Mostly with the 180 gr. bullet, some premium, some C&C, some hand loads, some factory. Not all were bang-flops. Some were stand until tip-over, or traveled a few yards (less than 50). I can't tell a lick of difference in "killing efficiency" among the various factors..... but the non-bang-flops were all with 180 grain loads until this last season.

Currently I am using a 27" heavy barreled M98 using 150 grain factory loads. Started with Corelokts in 2013 (all bang-flop, boiler room placements from 300 to 450 yards, estimated. 2700fps MV?

In 2014 3 caribou and 1 moose were bang/flops using the 150 gr. Hornady SST Super-Performance factory loads (3080fps MV) at ranges from 70 or so to 300 yards(RF) in a 2 day time frame. The 300 yard caribou was neck shot, the moose (30 yards) head-shot, the 200 yard walking 'bou broadside behind the shoulder, the 70-80 one quartering toward, base of neck entry, exit just behind ribs. Wound channels started with immediate expansion at the skin, and very large exit wounds. Especially the quartering shot.

In 2015 3 caribou were taken, same load/rifle. The @ 150 yard caribou was spine-shot, DRT, of course. Several inches of back-strap on each and both sides of the wound were lost- not really as much as I expected with a bone hit like that. The 290 yard (calculated after RF the carcass) and 433 (prior to shot ranged) yard kills came several weeks later, a couple minutes apart, behind shoulder, standing almost broadside. I waited until the first went down before whacking the second. Both traveled 100 yards or so before tipping over. Wound channels were much less meat damaging than experienced in the prior year, with nickel sized entry, quarter and half-dollar size exits at rib cage using the same load. The only bone hit was a rib bone on exit on one. Perhaps Hornady changed the bullet construction? After hitting the rib, that bullet also shattered the stem of the off-side shoulder blade, resulting in a base-ball size exit on the leg. And the animal still stayed on it's feet for 30 seconds to a minute, but was obviously gimping. Can't say there was any inefficiency in killing power, tho....

I often wonder if the 6.5 swede punches so well above its weight in Sweden is that the hunters are forced to pass a rigorous accuracy test before getting a hunting license.

Excellent point, but no fair injecting logic and reason into a otherwise perfectly silly thread.

Not just Swedes, but Europeans in general routinely pull off shots I wouldn't even think of trying. They get lots of field practice, and like you said, have to prove their ability before they get to play.