Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What Does a Bigger Cartridge Get You?

You can always load the cartridge down, if needed. Some people are only happy with top loaded ammo all the time. But say you want to start your son with a center fire for deer hunting. He starts hunting in farm groves and such and after perhaps ten years he's in the mountains hunting bigger animals and at longer distance.
You can load a 300 Win Mag to 300 savage level to start and up to 300 Win Mag when needed. Of course there's others that like more rifles, such as me. But getting a bigger cartridge is more flexible.

Bigger is better.Ask the ladies!!

To answer the op get a copy of
African Rifles and Cartridges by
John Taylor. The Gun Room Press
copy right 1948 Reprint 1977
whelennut

Just my $.02 but I think we should really look at rifles in therms of game classes. For example in the NA we really only have two classes of "Big Game" and I would group them as medium which would be deer, blk bear, sheep, goats, caribou and elk. Other than those we really only have 4 heavy game animals: bison, muskOx, moose and the great bears. On the medium class a larger cartridge really gets you marginal increments in results because most of our medium capacity rounds say .243-30-06 are more than enough to handle them effectively. On the heavy game animals bigger probably gives you some additional edge over the medium capacity rounds but within the larger rounds say from 300 mag to 375 you probably have plenty of oomph to take any of the heavy game so the incremental results are probably not that great. Now we can argue a bit over the very extremes such as a .243 on really large elk or maybe 30-06 on key deer in Florida etc. but if you want to argue 6.5x55 vs 7mm08 or 30-06 well you are probably wasting time you s/b hunting.

I

I agree with most of this.... Can you really hunt a Key Deer? Would a 243 be enough on a kinda large Elk?

200 gr Partitions at 2700 fps in a cool pre-64 Super-Grade rifle would do it for me.

To come up with a decent answer to this question we're looking at the wrong end of the cartridge/game spectrum.

Look at the little critters and shooting them with different guns and you can see more clearly how this works and why.

A chipmunk shot with a pellet gun will often just have a hole through it with even "fast" pellets and caliber doesn't seem to matter between .17, .20 or .22. You get some with a hole through them and some run off.

Start shooting them with .17 or .224 bullets and speed will vaporize them. As you move up through squirrels, chucks, porcupines, raccoons and coyotes, things begin to change. Even a 30-06 with fragile bullets won't reliably vaporize a porcupine or raccoon like a 35 grain VMax will a chipmunk or red squirrel.

What we're really trying to discuss is when does killing power move from reliably adequate to reliable overkill. Relatively fragile bullets in 50 BMG or 20/30 mm would probably be pretty hard on deer of any size, but might be noticeably less hard on moose and bigger. They would likely produce results more inline with small varmints and .224 center fires on smaller things like raccoons and porcupines. I know a 30-06 with even fragile bullets won't vaporize them like a red squirrel.

When you drop below the reliable overkill threshold, then a lot of other factors begin to come into play. There's nothing in NA that I couldn't kill with a .223 and today's tough bullets. Discussions of people having a bad time of it with large dangerous things like polar/brown bears must of necessity be selective for poor/excellent use of the weapons involved.

Recoil, mussel blast, and more powder usage..

Billy

Lot of assumptions here. Some good and some maybe not so correct. One only has to compare the numbers on the study for some answers. One thing is very clear though, all the results were provided by hunters whose marksmanship abilities met or exceeded a proscribed std. You can't shoot ,you can't hunt period for moose in Sweden. Next as to the answer to the OP's question on whether there is any difference in lethality between the 6.5x55 and the 30-06 not much ,it took the same amount of rds per animal with these 2 cartridges but the ones shot with the SWEDE got dead quicker. 4 whole yards traveled less. A little higher rds per animal with the 308 than the 06 or the Swede but even less travel with the 308. Your basic toss up. Simply amazing but blaringly right in print from the study results is that to increase your lethality from 6.5x55 you have to step up in caliber and down in in caliber from 30 to yes the 7mm Rem Magnum. Fewer hits needed by far and less traveled distance from the shot. You want to improve the 7mm Rem Mag's lethality you have to jump to the 338 Win Mag or the 358 Norma. It's all in the study, read it. The study shows the 375 is never wrong, fact is the study shows all mentioned are adequate. Why do you suppose that the study does not list any weeny guns and magic bullets? A lot of opinions on this forum badmouthing the 7 mm Mag when the blame for it not being used effectively should be on the shoulders of those not competent in Marksmanship using it. I find it somewhat amusing that the 7 mm detractors are all sleeping in or out to lunch on this thread. Magnum Man

Real magnums start at 375 and above!!!

Of the animals I have dispatched with a .284 140 TTSX there was no apparent reaction from the hit. They croaked, yes.

Any cartridge selection has "wiggle room" either side of it, which is the GACK component popular on the internet.

Also, people love to read an article that praises their chosen cartridge and makes them feel superior in their choice and wisdom on the matter. Endorsement builds following, hence the two ballistic theorem popularized by JOC and Keith.

Then, there is observation that instills opinion.

I "see" 3 thresholds where bullet impact meets a new point in visibility. They are:
1. .30/06
2. .375 H&H
3. .460 Weatherby.

Interestingly, they all approximate each other in velocity ranges therefore the real difference between them is caliber and bullet weight.

Yes, critters show more "reaction" to a quicker-expanding bullet in any caliber than the monos. I'm not convinced that they die any quicker, but they stagger more.

For sure.

Placement matters. Sometimes reaching...vitals - only takes 1/3 the potential

Well, if you put it in those terms, even a ............handgun will work.

Generally speaking....with a variety of bullet types, my experience has been that caribou will tip over quicker with something like a 7mm-08 than they will when shot with a 6mm/243. (And I’ve killed a couple truckloads, at least, with both.)

I’ve only run 7 or 8 bullets from 6.5x55 or 7mm-08 into 3 moose - and they died without undue drama. However, the 30-06 which I’ve used on over a dozen moose with a variety of bullets - generally in the classic ribcage type location- has been significantly more positive in effect.

FWIW as it relates to Scandinavian moose hunts, there seem to be a fair number of rather smallish (600-800 pound) animals in the mix. Smaller moose are nowhere near as formidable when it comes to the projectiles needed to get well inside. Neither are the smaller animals as difficult to put down. It seems to me that once a certain threshold is met, more ‘power’ really doesn’t get much additional effect, perhaps until you reach a scale where by you’re beginning to simulate prairie dog type energy effects.

Of course a person who makes brainer shots is not going to see any difference between the 223 and the 460 (although he might shoot a bit less precisely with the latter from time to time for a variety of reasons.)

One of my favorites, is the 9.3X62 also have used the 6.5X55 and 6.5X57. All work well. At higher velocities the smaller rounds cause more meat damage. More explosive hits. With the 9.3X62 I do not have too much recoil, and it has proven to stop most game in it's tracks with little to no meat damage. At least for Whitetails and Mule Deer. Have also used the 8mm Mauser and 30-06. It really depends on the bullet, velocity, and the game one is trying to take. For myself I have found for the most part in woods hunting where long range is not an issue bigger is indeed better.

Maybe I can tag along and clean up the gut pile!
Larry