Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Are we gravitating toward smaller calibers/cartridges?

SAS nailed it. if there's a change, the internet is driving it. we can get online now and see the results that people are getting. when i was growing up all we had was gun magazines and anecdotal evidence about which cartridge "hit harder"

The converse is, the guys who are content with smaller cartridges seem to have one thing in common.

They shoot a lot.

The bullet that hits the vitals kills..a deer/elk hit at 100 yds with a well designed .243 bullet in the vitals is dead... A deer/elk hit in the hind with a 300 ultra mag is wounded. We had to over come poor designed bullets in the .243/6 mm class when they first came out,that left them with a bad rap for many years and is still entrenched in many peoples minds. If you can shoot a 6mm class rifle better and consistantly more accuratley but have trouble with magnum class rifles I would rather see a Deer/elk hit in the vitals with the 6mm(with good bullet). Larger caliber and Magnum will not make up for poor placement.

Good hunters get close as they can to their pray then take a shot.

While an 06 will do just about anything you need it to... for myself, I have found I really don't need it... where lighter calibers will do the same job...with less recoil

which has given me the opportunity to play with and adopt older traditional calibers...

If I stayed with one case type only, it would be based on the old 57 mm Mauser case... 6mm Rem, 6.5 x 57, and 7 x 57 will cover my non varmint hunting needs just fine..

There are better bullets available now.

Where I hunt and around the people I hunt with it's mostly a 30-06 or 270 conversation. A "boomer" is someone with a 7mm, very few 300 WM and VERY few short mags.

That's about it - nothing much above 30-06 and nothing much below 270.

My uncle uses a 250 Sav and my son uses a 243 but that's about it.

I shot a large bodied 8 pt whitetail at 258 yds in an open corn feild (Close as I could get, he poped up from a drainage ditch) with my Steyr L 6mm Rem. Bullet whent clear though rib cage and dropped him in his tracks. I dont think he would have dropped any faster with a 300 mag. Now could I pull that shot off with a heavy recoiling magnum ? probaly, but I shoot alot, I think if you can shoot a lighter caliber rifle much better than a larger caliber Magnum you should stick to the lighter caliber.

Yes, but sooner or later you are going to come up against a really large deer in an armored vehicle that is facing you at an undesirable angle. Then what are you going to do? (Please note the )

havn't run across that yet.

What many posters here are missing, is that the hunter who buys one rifle and calls it good is a really poor indicator of a trend. He will likely buy whatever his dad or granddad used, and go no further.

Another poor indicator are the posters here who are only one step into the "cartridge awakening". If you started out with a 270, then tried a 300 Mag, and never stepped down the caliber scale, it's hard to get a full view of what's going on here.

Until a person has really tried a wide variety of cartridges, or at least seen them used in the field, it's tough to get a good bead on what doesn't work.

In my experience, after guiding a bunch of hunters for deer, antelope, and elk, there are a few trends I've noticed with cartridge selection:

1. Hunters as a group are getting older. Which means their recoil tolerance is diminishing.

2. Around 20 lb. ft. of recoil is about all the average guy who doesn't shoot much can handle. Get above this number and performance will decrease, which can be seen in the field in the form of gut shot and lost game.

3.Those returning from military service will often use the military round of the time, as they are familiar with the weapon and know what it is capable of. This was seen after WWII with returning GIs, and can be seen today. I know of a whole bunch of vets returning from the GWOT who pack an AR-15, and use them quite effectively on game.

4. When I say bullets are getting better, I'm not talking about the Barnes TTSX. I'm saying bullets since the '50s are better than those from say, the '20s. Before Nosler Partitions, it was sort of worth listening to what guys like Elmer Keith had to say. Same thing with Ruark shooting a warthog in the azz with hollow points, then proclaiming the 220 Swift lacking. Unfortunately hunters are slow to learn, and take old weird advice like that to heart (Read: Savage 99).

5. The internet was by no means the beginning of small caliber usage. Growing up in Montana before the 'net, the 270 or 30-06 were considered a "Big Gun" for elk. Many, many deer and antelope were and still are shot with 22 caliber rifles every year. When someone showed up with a Magnum, they were pretty much laughed at, usually followed by a comment like "What are you hunting, Tyrannosaurus Rex "?

Why did this occur? Because local folks shot all year, and realized big stupid cartridges were loud, kicked too hard, and were simply unneeded. We had also been in on the "Magnum Rodeos", chasing wounded game around the hills, after some dude blew off a few legs and put a couple rounds through the guts and into the hillside around the animal. These same wounded animals were often finished off with 204s, 223s or 22-250s. Funny how that works.

What does all of this mean?
People go through cycles. Often start out with what Dad used. Usually work their way up due to the young man's testosterone fueled "Real men use big guns" mindset. Then work their way back down when they realize it's not needed. We are all at various points on this scale, depending on our experience and degree of rifle looneyness. Some folks find what works for them and quit there. That's fine. But one should really go through the full cycle, and observe what works for others, before declaring a hypothesis valid or otherwise.

Unless of course, you got out and used different cartridges yourself,above and below the 30/06 threshold, rather than depend on 3rd party information.

There is nothing new about small cartridges...lots of Internet chatter,but nothing new.

Agree with what prairie goat stated above in general. I saw the same things when I started hunting the west in the 70's and it was going on LONG before I got there.Those rifles,chambered for 243,6mm,257 Roberts,250 Savage,22-250,220 swift,270,etc etc,were rolling the deer,elk,bear and antelope a long time before I arrived....they looked well worn to me.

But if you hang around home to hunt, draw your cues from limited exposure and camps full of people with 300 and 338 magnums for deer sized game,the use of 6.5's,257's and 243's to kill BG animals may seem "new" and Internet driven, but aren't.Been going on for about 100 years.

There is a strong tendency for folks to believe every trend in shooting/hunting happened during their lifetime.They haven't,not all of them anyway.

My caliber range is .257 to .458 and I have dropped forever calibers below that as I hate cleaning rifles, Small bores infuriate me. After the .257 (which is a custom match grade barrel) is toast I will likely raise that cut off to 7mm.

I shoot a chrome lined 223 cal barrel and hardly ever clean it. A dead dear every time for 26 grains of powder and a 60 cent bullet.

I admit that the internet led me to this sin.

I'm assuming this is another shot at me...

I've been way up and down the cartridge scale. I also have family out west and am well aware of the smaller chamberings being used for years, both there and here.

I've not traveled to hunt a bunch. Most of my hunting is around home, but I've been on a few trips.

I shoot more than most and decided what I liked long ago. The internet didn't develop my opinions, my experiences guided my path. To say the internet hasn't influenced the opinions of some is ignorance, regardless of the topic.

It would be interesting to get some sales numbers over the last 20 years. That would be the true tale of a trend during the Internet time line. I'd be interested to see figures on die sales each year, component sales each year, ammunition sales each year and rifle sells each year. Those figures would tell the tale, then we could have intelligent conversations about "trends". Opinions could be compared to facts.

No. I wouldn't waste my time doing that.

No one said that the Internet does not influence people;you can get information from various sources.Some is reliable and some is not.



The central theme here seems to be whether there is a current trend to smaller calibers....I see it in target shooting.But it's nothing new in BG hunting and has been going on for years.

Exactly.

The same thing goes with long range hunting. While the availability of cheap, accurate laser range finders certainly helped things along, it is by no means a new sport. I was just reading an article from around 1970 on the 6.5-300 Weatherby, where the author lamented the poor long range bullet choices available for the round, which tended to blow up on game due to the high velocity.

Funny how so much of this shooting game is in no way new. I suspect if one traveled back in time to Wimbledon, circa 1875, much of what shooters discuss would vary little from the competitive range conversations of today.

I find the historical aspect and connection to the past in shooting to be quite interesting.

I just saw these numbers. I can't remember exactly where or what order they were in, but both rifles & dies had the same 5 cartridges and IIRC they were: 30-06, 308, 270, 300 WM, and 7 RM.

I am sure JB has seen this and can confirm.

My camp here in Michigan as well as my observations out west (which are admittedly not extensive) confirm those numbers. In my camps around home it's mostly 30-06 & 308. I use the lightest rifles in my group (6-250, 257 AI, 6.5x55) while the 30-06, 270, and 7 RM were most popular out west.

It's easy to think that everyone is "stunt shooting" like we are here when we hang around so often but that isn't what I've observed among non-loonies.

Guys will always figure out new ways to compare their dicks.

End of story....

this is not definitive but at least it is an indication of the most popular calibers.

drover

RCBS 2012 Top 10 Rifle Reloading Die Sales - By Chuck Hawks

Curious about the popularity of centerfire rifle cartridges among reloaders? There usually isn't a dramatic change from year to year; it is more like a glacial movement. Regardless, here is RCBS's 2012 sales list (first published in 2013) for their top 10 best selling rifle reloading die sets:
1..223 Remington
2..308 Winchester
3..30-06 Springfield
4..243 Winchester
5..270 Winchester
6..300 Winchester Magnum
7..22-250 Remington
8.7mm Remington Magnum
9..30-30 Winchester
10..25-06 Remington

Although missing the top 10, .338 Winchester Magnum remains the best selling of all medium bore cartridge reloading dies. The most interesting changes on this RCBS die sales list are the .308 surpassing the .30-06 as the number one big game hunting cartridge among reloaders and the .300 Win. Mag. passing the 7mm Rem. Mag. Since all .300 Magnums indisputably kick too hard for most hunters to handle without flinching, the latter is particularly deplorable.

Less surprising in this magnum oriented hunting climate is the decline of the .30-30, which has slid in reloading die sales over the last decade or so. (Of course, the .30-30 has always been a better seller in factory loaded ammunition than in reloading dies.) I regard this trend as unfortunate, as the .30-30 is all the cartridge most hunters will ever need and it kicks much less than the magnums, allowing more precise bullet placement.