Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 7mm-08.... The Good, The Bad, The Ugly......

I like my BLR 7 08. Just made some more cartridges 4 it. 140 NP, 160 Speer and 175 hornady interlocks. Harvested both deer and elk with 150 NP s using H 4895.

The point of the 308 Winchester/7.62 NATO was to have .30/06 ballistics in a shorter case. 51mm versus 63mm. Which is a good thing. Any deer shot with either a 308 0r a 7mm-08 is going to die

Does make the 7-08 a 270win?

They're seperated by 150fps, plus or minus, whatever that might be worth to you. If I'm hunting a 23-24" sporter, the short action concept doesn't really matter so much any more, and I'd just as soon have something on the '06 case. Going for handy, I'd rather have a 20" short action rifle and not sweat the extra bit of velocity loss. I hunt ground blinds, tree stands, and box blinds pretty regularly, so I often go for handy over maximum ballistics.

In the almost 60 years that I've been shooting, hunting, or reading about it, I've come to a few conclusions. One is that there is always someone who believes that a certain cartridge has "magical qualities". One so called "selling point" is that a certain cartridge kicks like a baby, yet kills like a bear. I cannot tell you how many times I've read, or heard, that a 7-08, or a 7X57, or a 6.5X55, or a 260 Rem, just to name a few, seem to "kill better" than a cartridge of similar size. I've used all those cartridges to kill whitetails with, with the exception of the 260, and they kill no better than my favorite one, the 270 Win. As far as recoil goes, if you load any of those with a max load and shoot it in a lightweight rifle, you will get some felt recoil. Now, of those that I've listed, the felt recoil was noticeably less in the 6.5X55, but I attributed that to the fact that the rifle was a little on the heavy side, and the loads weren't max. My 7-08 in a Model 700 Mountain Rifle has more felt recoil to me than does my 270, that's in a Model 700 Classic. That's with a 140 grain at 2800 fps in the 7-08, and 130 grain at 3000 in the 270. I attribute that to the 7-08 weighing a little less. I have 2 7X57's, a Winchester Model 70 Lightweight, and a custom Mauser. Again, shooting 140 grain bullets, and max loads, the recoil is similar to that of the 7-08 and the 270. So, my conclusion is that the choice of a certain cartridge is personal, and not because it has any kind of magic associated with it. All I hunt is whitetail deer, and hope to draw a Kentucky elk tag, and I'd be perfectly content to use a 270, or a 7-08, or a 7X57 as my only cartridge for the rest of my life.

[quote=prm]I own a rifle that was a 7-08. Not sure I'd get one though as it strikes me as neither large nor small. It's right in the middle. 308 seems better suited to elk, 6.5/260 seems better suited to deer. I realize the 7-08 is probably a great all around rifle. Funny how certain cartridges appeal and others don't for absolutely no logical reason.

I will say my dad's bull went approximately 0 feet after taking a bullet from a 7-08. maybe it works ok...

Right in the middle with great bullets that is what makes it so good.

I don't believe anyone on this thread has said otherwise. Which makes sense, since the .270 holds more powder.

No, nor is any worse.

You are the magician.

Used them both on Deer a good bit and as far as effectiveness, the .22-250 has worked as quickly. So has a .223AI a few times. One friends Daughter has been using a .223 effectively, young magician she apparently is.


I'd go with the 7mm-08 if I had to choose one and Deer was the game.

Another military advantage of the 308, 7.62x51, was to have a case designed with a heavier/thicker rim construction to reduce the frequency of the rim being torn off and the weapon disabled when used under sustained fire situations in machine guns. Almost every WW2 or Korea USA or USMC infantry veteran will remember when his unit lost its light machine gun support when one or more of their Colt M1919s was disabled due to a 30-06 rim being torn off.

How does one rate effectiveness of their favorite over the effectiveness of another's favorite?

We need a top 10 effectiveness or kill better rating scale.

I wouldn't buy a .270W if Echols made it in JOC's trophy room on a Model 70 pre64 action. Still, bet it rates pretty high on someone's subjective effectiveness/kill better scale.

Well, ain't none 'better'.









Funny, how many Xs we read this or that cartridge is "just as good as the 270"

Seems like a benchmark.


Jerry

I measured 2 firearms - a centerfire bolt action with 22" barrel and a side by side shotgun with 25" barrels. Both are 41.5" long in total. The shotgun is completely handy in any situation (I actually would prefer inch-longer barrels). And I've never wished the rifle was shorter for any use - blind, tree stand or back sear of a truck.

Conversely, you can reduce the recoil 15 to 20% while only losing 8 to 10% velocity by hand loading START (not reduced) loads for a given powder. Those loads will still kill "a lot", depending on what bullet you are using maybe better.

But, you don't get a new rifle that way!

I do find it more than a little funny..

And there's your answer.

Recoil in a 7mm-08?

I've one in a Nula. Load it hot and even Smoke can handle it easily. And he is getting up there.

Well, I’ll throw in some gack talk that has only a minor relationship to the 7m-08 under discussion.

Placement, placement, placement, then bullet construction. If you put a decent bullet in a vital area any animal on Earth will die. “Decent” meaning it holds together well enough to reach the vitals. If you want to shoot from any angle through any obstruction – shoulder bones, paunch full of food, whatever, use a stronger, slower expanding bullet. If you take only broadside shots and can avoid hitting heavier bones you can use faster and/or quicker expanding bullets, I understand the VLD bullets work very well since they come apart violently after about two inches of travel.

Bullets don’t know what case they’re loaded into. Range turns every chambering into a lesser one. A .300 Magnum at 400 yards is no more powerful than a lesser sized case closer up. And animals don't read energy charts in the first place.

Regarding the .270, it achieved popularity at a time when your average deer/elk hunter was using cartridges that threw bullets at 2000 to maybe 2600-2700 fps and had rainbow trajectories. (Yeah, I know, the 2% of rifle looneys were using Newtons and what all, I’m talking about the other 98%) The .270 came along and threw a cup and core bullet of size big enough to penetrate okay at a speed that would let you miss your range estimate out there at 275-325 yards by several yards and still get a hit. That’s what JOC liked about it. Nowadays everybody has laser range finders so you know within one yard how far the animal is and can hold or adjust your scope accordingly.

We've overcome the range problem but wind is still the long range shooter’s gremlin so high BC bullets that drift less are what folks want now, speed which translates to trajectory is not as important as it once was, that's why a lot of folks like smaller brass bottles since they don't kick as hard in equal weight rifles as those ejecting more powder. But those high BC bullets do the same thing in the horizontal plane that the .270 did in the vertical – they let people misjudge the unknown variable a bit but still get a hit.

Each animal is different, each shooting situation is different. I don’t have any empirical evidence of this but I’d wager the animal’s reaction is different if the heart is in its systolic or diastolic condition (or however that is described) and that reaction still varies tremendously with bullet placement.

Swedes have used a 6.5x55 on everything and it kills them. Some folks use .223’s and .22-250’s on deer and even elk with cup and core bullets and have killed them for years. One guy many decades ago used a .17 Remington on feral donkeys and reported that it killed them immediately – provided he hit them properly.

Placement, then bullet construction. The brass bottle is in a distant third place.

I really wish I had videos of multiple deer and elk being shot at various ranges with any of 5 different cartridges, say from the 6.5 Creed up to a .30-06. Ask people to watch the videos and tell which cartridge the shooter used just by the animals' reactions, distance they travel and time it takes for the animal to expire. I would bet goodly money no one could do it except by random chance.

Learn to shoot. Disrupt the animal’s vitals any way you want and it will die. If you want to hit things far out there, get a range finder and use a bullet with a high BC. That high BC will steer you toward the 6mm to 7mm range since that seems to be a nice sweet spot of velocity/bullet weight/recoil – you could shoot a .458 bullet with an equally high BC at 2900-3000 fps if you had the right twist but your shoulder sure wouldn’t like it.

Some brass bottles have minor handloading advantages over others or the barrel might last 10% longer or whatever reason people choose to rationalize their purchases and stroke their ego identity, but those are gack discussions outside of killing power. Bullets don’t know what cartridge they are fired from.

Learn to shoot accurately. Learn your quarry's anatomy so you can put a properly constructed bullet (and there are tons of them these days) where it will kill them. Everything else is illuminated pixels on someone’s computer screen.

Now if you want to talk sheer "stopping" power on large dangerous carnivores then it would seem that bullet diameter has a role to play. But that's a different discussion that I have no experience in but even then you still have to put the bullet in the right place.

If I wanted what I thought would be the worlds greatest Deer cartridge, it would be a Swift using today's stout bullets.