Or is it just me?

They hit the fu cking wall way back in the time of the great depression. Some people are just too slow to learn this.

Yeah, that's it.

Speaking of slow.........

Not sure I understand the question....

I think that there have been significant improvements/advancements in bullet and optics technology over the past 50 years, but no similar revolutions in rifles or cartridges. Nobody can predict what will happen over the next 50 years.

I don't see a whole lot of room for improvement for hunting rifles without compromising our sporting ethics. Some would argue we've already gone a bit too far in some ways. We could maybe use some better hunters (I include myself here).

New target games can always be invented or rules changed as new technologies emerge, maybe featuring rapid fire or multiple targets at long range to further challenge the participants. Lots of possibilities exist here ( think 1000 yard dueling trees or some kind of long-range whack-a-mole).

For the military, the sky's the limit. Some of this new laser gear being deployed is amazing. Portable units for soldiers won't be far off.

I hope we are talking about performance, not price!

donsm70

Yes. Hunters are becoming less experimental and more conservative. I would not want to introduce a new cartridge into this climate if I were a gunmaker. It's risky enough offering a once popular round that has fallen out of favor into your lineup. And forget any new lever, pump, or sporting autoloaders.

Pappy348,



This doesn't make any sense to me. For me lighter is better. I purchased a titanium action; an improvement. To go with that I purchased a carbon fiber barrel; an improvement. To go with that I purchased a Kevlar stock and a micro-cell recoil pad to save a few ounces; both improvements. When I was young I carried an eleven pound rifle. Now that I'm in my seventies I carry a seven pound rifle.

We've been killing animals with way more technology than the animals have for generations. What does it have to do with ethics?

i doubt it (assuming I understand the question).

All trends have been toward hitting stuff further away,and using technology to make it easier for shooters.

Hunting will be less of a factor as the number of hunters and affordable hunting opportunities continues to decline. Most shooting will go to the match/tactical guys.I think we are already there.

More shooting will center around target/match /tactical type stuff. And we will see caseless cartridges, remote control rifles and scopes that automatically do the aiming ,compensating,and shooting for those lacking skills.

There will be a decline in basic skills as technology in scopes and rifles compensates for personal competence. We already see these trends in hunting.

"Hitting" will become easier but the trend will be to remove the elements of human error from the equation to the extent possible, thus the decline in personal skill sets. Less stuff to figure out. The gear is gonna do it for you.

I'm one of the dinosaurs who prefer Round Nose Bullets....

so I'm not qualified to answer.

Im the same, hunting distances aside a well manufactured round nose bullet will typically give more reliable expansion and terminal performance at normal hunting ranges of less than 200m. Sectional density and a reasonably fast twist only aid the job.

Nothing wrong with that. Always loved 180 and 220 RNCL out of an Aught Six.

I see you're thinking Bob. I think I've become Elmer Fudd in an ultra tacticool world.

16: Of course I am just speculating. But it isn't hard to imagine. I just saw them advertising bow sights that make 100 yard shots a piece of cake.

Imagine what they can do with rifles,scopes and computer chips in the future?

Have a bunch of .375" 270 & 300 gr Hornady RN. They work very well on jackrabbits,especially the 270 gr RN's.

Like everything else the evolution will continue. As new disciplines are created the technologies will evolve to fill niches or shortcomings. Someday "hunting" may evolve to catch and release with a paintball gun . Think of the technology to allow 300yd shots with a paintball!
As long as there are mice, someone will try to build a better mousetrap.

286 gr. Nosler Partitions work well on hoppers!


ya'

GWB

This has got to be one of the dumbest questions I have seen on the board.

How old are the spiffy little rimfire 17s?

How old is the .204?

How old are the Enduron powders like 4451?

How old are copper monos?

How many years have we had factory ammo that across the board shot as accurately and hand loads and faster?

How many years have we had out of the box rifle that consistently shot MOA groups without a lot of screwing around?

And that very brief list doesn't address figuring out how to use things together like Blue Dot and light Hornet bullets in .223s as UBER performing replacements for .22 lr ammo that is hard/impossible to find.

The improved design and manufacturing processes have given us incredible glass at very reasonable prices. Even blister pack scopes are way ahead of much of the scopes not so long ago.

We are living through the most productive time for improvement to the tools of our sport.

Yup!

If that list of skullphucked schit impresses you, have at it.......

I think that technology is continuing on each and every piece of our arsenal. No question lots of the old stuff works and works well enough, but there is always room for improvement.
I have little doubt that we'll see marked improvements in propellants as the technology there unfolds.
And, the haters are going to contine to hate.

16bore,



You're not pleased with the introduction of temperature stable or copper reducing powders?

Then obviously you've hit the wall too. Stupid is never not funny.

That's been going on since Speer thrower vs. Bow.

And everyone knows the invention of the Crossbow was so unethical.

He's still pissed about that "new fangled" Long Bow.

I know. It will continue.

Remote control is next.

The rifle is a tool. The time in the woods is the important thing to me. Life gets hectic, yours especially so, according to some of your posts. The more hours spent in solitude chasing my quarry the better it is for my peace of mind. Nice to get away from all the obsessing over minute differences in ballistics, especially at the ranges we hunt in Virginia, and just hunt. If it comes to remote controlled I'll give up. Always enjoyed the hunt more than the killing. The killing has always been just a necessity whether in the woods or on the farm. I glean no pleasure from the act.

A little off topic but in a store yesterday to pickup the Grandson a kids fishing rod. I have more than enough .22lr, but asked about them and was told they currently have a buy one get another at 50% off. Asked if there was a limit and was told bring your truck around back and I can give you more than you probably want.

Seems to me there haven't been any really revolutionary advancements in over 100 years. The .30-06 and commercialized Mauser action designs still reign supreme.

Few months ago I ordered a keg of IMR 4451 just because it has been reported to be right up there with, if not better than, H4350/4831 in regards to temp insensitivity.


Not sure how long they've been around but I also appreciate nickel plated #5's. Until I bite down on one anyway.



We are pretty frikken spoiled when it comes to all this chit.

Lets see,Nosler Partitions,Swift A-Frame,Barnes X. Hodgdon Extreme and other temp insensitive powders. No more fogging of scopes,better lenses,better tracking. Synthetic stocks,better metal finishes i.e. more rust resistant.

And is just what I came up with in a few minutes. Most of those were done in the last 20 years.

Bitterroot Bonded Core,Trophy Bonded Bullets,Woodleigh bullets,North Fork bullets,

Those are incremental improvements that don't have much, if any impact how we hunt or make it easier to connect, they just make it easier for you to drag your old, wrinkly azz around in the woods. Light, handy rifles have been around forever. I was thinking about stuff that actually takes over some of the stuff we do like holding and squeezing. The rifles, ammo and sights we have already let us take shots and make clean kills, if we have the skill, at ranges beyond what can or should be characterized as "hunting".

No big game animal I've ever taken couldn't have been taken with a .30-06 or even a 7x57. Rifles, powders, bullets and scopes have improved over the last 100 years plus but the most important changes for me have been elsewhere.

I don't have a horse, I have a bunch of them. They all live under the hood of my 4x4 truck that takes me from the home turf to the hunting grounds in a matter of hours, trips that would take days by horse. Before I leave home I use my home computer, the internet and Google Earth to learn or review the terrain and fauna of the country I will be hunting. I also download the latest maps to my GPS and cell phone so I not only have electronic moving maps showing my current location but also land owner information. If I get hurt I can use my Delorme InReach emergency beacon to summon help via the Iridium satellite system. It also sends out a beaconing signal which allows my family to track me via a web page displaying a map of my travels and exact location. When I'm out of cell phone coverage my family rests easier knowing I made it back to camp.

It's good to be living in the 'good old days'.

I've seen a couple of 100 yard bow shots. Hopefully never again. However when some see these advertisements we will see more lost animals.

Pappy348,



Who set you up as the arbiter of what is not hunting?

If the industry starts releasing new cartridges set up to win like the 6.5 Creedmoor, we are in for some serious growth. If they can get twist rate, throating and mag box length right on new stuff, it could very well be a new era.

Won't happen though.

Why I did, of course.

Priceless..

I have not seen a new thing necessary for decades.

Wonder how much of that is demographics. As people continue the century-old movement away from the country, into the city, we are losing the young people who hunt as a way of life. It's more and more the older folk, who will eventually age out, and hunters will be fewer, more of them regarding it as a novelty, like a technical challenge or faddish sport, rather than just something that they do simply because they don't know not doing it.

Sucker fishing is "never not funny"

Just because a new product or development is unnecessary, doesn't mean it isn't an improvement or upgrade. Seems hunters were killing just fine even before smokeless powder was invented...

I suppose it matters how you define necessary.

I started loading in 1956. Milsurp powder, bullets that wouldn't even make good seconds in today's market, rifles that were as likely to shoot 3-4 MOA as anything, scopes that still didn't have constantly centered crosshairs, glass that wouldn't measure up well against $39.95 blister pack trash, loading manuals that were wildly optimistic about velocities, powders with large enough lot to lot variations that working up a load all over again when you got a new lot was not a bad idea, Just off the top of my head.

For a number of years now I have picked and chosen the deer I shoot. I shoot them close up with speed still so high that it would have probably blown up comparable weight bullets. I shoot them far away enough that bullets heavy enough not to have blown up at 25 feet would have been an issue at range. I shoot them under light conditions that scopes I started hunting with would not have been able to handle.

kill deer at 80 degrees and well below zero. The powders I use need to help me do that, not make it harder.

I have never lost a deer I put the first bullet into. With the tools I have available today, I have much more freedom to pick and CHOOSE, to hunt under adverse conditions and to make better shots at whatever range I CHOOSE and do a much better job killing than I could in decades past.

Wouldn't it be crazy if in a few years they didn't have muzzleloader seasons- instead it's a "Bring Grandpa's .30-06 out to hunt" season? I'd kind of like that!

I think I get the OP question. what is left for us?

We now have tough ballistic tips used by folks who in the past would not have touched them, tons of powders to choose from, great lubes & oils & cheap effortless cleaning products, light recoiling rifles that can be used for Long Distance, smaller cartridges capable of killing bigger game more cleanly, terrific synthetic pillar bedded stocks with bedding blocks already in them, inexpensive rifle scopes that are bright as heck and hold up more than well enough for the box-a-year + shooter, and every single company has made their own low cost Savage clone that seem to shoot better than most of the high dollar stuff- or most things produced just a decade or two ago. Add to that electronic varmint calls and decoys, quick pop up blinds and yosemite binoculars. Winchester is making good products again by most accounts. Great boots, sox, waterproof gear and a crazy amount of camo options. Life is good.

So I think I understand what he is saying.

Of course we also have been introduced to butt-outs, barrel de-resonators, scent sticks and cough silencers.

For me, one welcome area getting R and D attention for lower cost options are good roof binoculars. But no way am I starting another discussion on that front!!!!!!

kenjs1 - WOW, after 5 pages of this post I figure it's time to forget rifles, ammo, scopes, technology and go back to the good 'ol sling-shot! Homesteader

Where can you buy Trophy Bonded bullets?

I'm mounting my rifle on a drone this weekend. I'm wondering if it will handle the recoil of a 375 H&H though...

Don't laugh....there are many who'd do it in a heartbeat.

I'm just trying to get solenoid switch to the trigger...

Not "necessary" but therein lies the rub. Whether we've hit the wall has as much to do with the consumers as the products. If people will pay for new products, we'll keep on seeing them, and we will. The improvements may be more incremental than revolutionary, but they're improvements nonetheless.

And they matter more to a lot of shooters today than they did 50 years ago when a 30-30 and a five year-old box of Corelokts was all most people found "necessary."

They did about 60 years ago

How do I teach my drone to run the bolt???? Reading the manual here. Ah, this chit is confusing...

That's right. All my gear is circa 1960. Especially scopes, that was the heyday.

6.5 I bet you could find a way to do it....

There is an ongoing attack on lead used in bullets.

This internet has taken over from print and recorded media.

The Oracle has spoken.

I like the good improvement in hunting bullets that I use.It has allowed us to use a smaller chamberings for the same effectiveness on game.This allows for a more portable firearm and it can turn your 7x57 into giant killer imo.Swift,Barnes etc are very tenacious and so outperform the old cup and core bullets on large game (elk).It doesn't however improved your offhand shooting and nearly nobody practices that.

Well this is interesting considering we've had the Nosler Partition since about 1945-1950.which killed about everything world wide from that point on,and from such anemic cartridges as the 270 and 7x57 as well......

So if you had a brain and were heads up from 1950 on, you didn't have to use a C&C bullet if you didn't want. I am amused by those who think the use of dinky cartridges for BG hunting is some kind of recent phenomenon.In fact it's been going on for years,way back to the turn of the last century. Anyone remember Bell and all those elephants?

And Bitterroots and succeeding bonded bullets like Swift and TBBC have been around since the late 60's to early 70's. These are fully as good as the best out there today from a terminal standpoint on the biggest, and toughest animals on the planet.

So I have a hard time discerning when the Good Old Days ended and the New Age began. (?). I think it depends on when you started hunting and how much attention you paid. If your head was stuck up your ass in the 1980's you mighta missed a major phase of the whole bullet development thing.

Not that things aren't great today in the bullet department,but I have never seen anyone handicapped with the best of what was available 30-40 years ago. You just have more choices today and more to get confused about.

You can tell by all the "which bullet should I use?" threads.

Hate speech! (aka truth)

Gotta get to my safe space, pronto.

Pappy I guess it's human nature for people to think all the great advancements took place only since they started paying attention....which mighta been yesterday or last year.

Which is why history of advancements is important. I tend to view these things as an ongoing continuum, instead of taking place in the time frame of people's personal reference.

Some of the stuff you read on here you'd think everything is brand new just because someone recently figured it out....

Wow. I don't use monometals much, but from what I can tell a lot of guys have dropped down in bullet weight to get higher velocities, flatter trajectories and very good terminal performance.

If the Partition was the be-all end-all, Barnes Bullets wouldn't exist.

There were some decent bullets even before John Nosler started selling Partitions commercially in 1948. The original Core-Lokts were pretty tough, and the Peters Inner-Belted was apparently even better, since it was sort of a semi-Partition.

But because Nosler Partitions were a LOT more expensive than other bullets available for handloading (including the also-new Hornadys, Sierras and Speers) most hunters didn't become aware of their advantages until Partitions started appearing in factory ammunition--because not as many hunters handloaded back then.

Even then the word didn't get out much because Weatherby was the first company to load Partitions in their factory stuff, and both Weatherby rifles and ammo were expensive. Eventually Federal started loading Partitions in some common cartridges, and in 1978 Bob Hagel published his book on handloads for American hunting, touting the Partition and Bitterroot for larger big game. That's when more hunters really started becoming aware of "premium" bullet performance, and more premiums showed up.

Even the Barnes X appeared in the late 1980's, but the early models had real problems, which is why many shooters didn't discover the "magic" of monometals until the TSX break-through in the early 2000's.

Nowadays, of course, the pendulum often swings the other way: Many hunters don't believe big game (even small whitetails) can be killed "efficiently" with anything other than a monometal bullet, while others just as firmly believe in super-high ballistic coefficient bullets and twirling the elevation knob. It sometimes makes me wonder how in hell hunters killed any sort of big game before the year 2000.

And entirely missing from the discussion is bullet placement. Which seems irrelevant in a discussion of which bullet to use, until you recognize that some very savvy hunters use "target bullets" like the Scenar for better bullet placement.

Not to mention all those fancy German bullets

I just dug out my (second) copy of The Complete Book of Rifles and Shotguns and turned to the page with the photo of all the sectioned bullets. I'd say things weren't all that bad way back when, from a killing-power standpoint at least.

I remember reading (not sure exactly where) Old Jack's description of the original 130gr bullet for the .270. Seems like they got it pretty much right from the get-go with that one. Wonder if anybody's got some of those lying around?

I like "vintage" stuff because I'm a nostalgic kind of guy. I do it because it's my choice, and I recognize that there's a helluva lot of new(er) gear out there that outstrips my stuff by a long shot. So be it. I will admire/appreciate new technology, and like to learn of it, but in the end I adopt that which fits my needs and leave the rest to those whose needs are best fulfilled with it. But in the end, we all benefit from technological advancements, whether we know it or not.

Dang, a curmudgeon with perspective, how'd that happen?

Who needs Barnes?

If you look back in Nosler's advertising of the day(likely further back than most on here are aware) ,one of the things the advertising promoted was the ability to drop down in bullet weight,obtain higher velocity and flatter trajectory,,and get the same or better penetration.

The same was said about the Bitterroot as more folks came to use them but that number was never large....more of a cult following because you just could not get them.But they led directly to Swifts, TBBC, and Northforks of today.

They also allowed you to drop bullet weight,get more velocity and flatter trajectory and were deadly....based on what I've seen of both, quicker killers than Barnes. I am not the only one who thinks that way.....friends who have extensive experience with both, agree. Folks familiar with them know this.

You can live a long, happy and successful hunting life and never use a Barnes.

Actually Id take a NF over anything else out there today for the biggest stuff,before I'd grab a Barnes.

Yes, I understand. As I said earlier, I don't use them.

And the very same thing can be said about the Partition, A-Frame, or any other bullet for that matter.

From what I read of the old writers the Peters Inner Belted was one whale of a bullet. Substantially better than the very good Core-Lokt for penetration.

we've barely touched the + 1/2" market so i'm thinking theres still a lot of room for growth. i vote for the .750 CB cap.

I keep hoping CCI will start loading Partitions in their CB short ammo so I can kill pigs deader. I'm patient but the years are creeping up on me, so I hope they do it soon.

Over-penetration.

The portable, reliable, inexpensive and easily-procured laser rangefinder was a huge step forward, and in fact was the necessary piece of gear to get the whole long range hunting thing up and rolling like it is now.