Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 308 verses the 300 win mag

Regarding velocity... Pictures for those who don’t read. All 180gn .308 bullets. I’m the messenger, if you question the study contact the author. PRM-out.

“Possibly the most significant study on terminal performance of the last many years, from the perspective of the sportsman (if not that of the defense analyst), was documented in the June 1998 issue of Handloader magazine (Gary Sciuchetti, "The Best Hunting Bullet", No. 193, pp. 40 - 44). The author conducted an exhaustive and apparently well considered analysis of .308 caliber 180 grain bullets. His results are a little startling.”

“Perhaps the most striking observation from this penetration data is that increasing velocity has a detrimental effect on penetration for nearly all bullets over the entire velocity range of interest.”

“Although some scientifically minded individuals may object to the test media used (saturated phonebooks), the author prudently tested a variety of media under different conditions and correlated these to shots made into deer cadavers along several shotlines of interest to the hunter.”

“The second very interesting trend that immediately leaps out in looking at these data is that nearly all of these types of bullets, simple gilding metal designs, bonded bullets and monolithics alike, exhibit highly erratic behavior as impact velocities approach and descend below ~2000 fps. ”

“While for some loads the rapidity of death may be improved by high velocity (from, say 2200 fps to 3000 fps), the practical lethality of modern weapons has not really increased significantly, merely their effective range. We're not speaking of whether or not these loads are lethal, merely how quickly.”

- Commercial brands are the Federal, Remington and Winchester soft point lead-core, gilding-metal jacketed bullets;
- Conventional bullets are a larger set comprised of simple gilding-metal jacketed, lead-core design offered by the reloading suppliers Hornady, Sierra and Speer, as well as the major ammunition makers;
- Premium bullets are the major brand controlled expansion designs without bonded cores, such as the Barnes X, Speer Grand Slam, Nosler Partition and Winchester Fail-Safe;
- Custom bonded bullets are heavy-jacketed, lead-core controlled expansion designs by custom manufacturers that all feature a lead core bonded to the jacket.