Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Best cartridge for Sambar, Nilgi, Aoudad etc 270 or 6.5x55 or 7x57?

DF,

Nilgai are much larger than sambar, with thicker hides. Like many African antelope, the bulls also have somewhat different internal and external anatomy anatomy than "deer" like whitetails and elk--or sambar. They have humped shoulders, with the vitals somewhat lower and farther forward.

I have hunted nilgai since the 1990s, and firmly believe that one reason they got a reputation for being incredibly hard to kill was the typical "hunting" method when they first became somewhat popular to hunt. People drove around until they saw nilgai, than chased them with their vehicles, slamming on the brakes occasionally to whack away as the nilgai ran. This naturally resulted in many poorly-placed shots.

Also, many people didn't use deep-penetrating bullets, just typical cup-and-cores, which due to the thick hide and muscular, heavy-boned shoulders often didn't penetrate well. Hence the recommendation for the .375 H&H and similar cartridges.

Among the later nilgai nilgai hunts I went on, post-pickup chase, was one "field-testing" the .270 WSM with 140-grain Fail Safe bullets, with 14 other writers and hunting-industry people. We were each allowed two nilgai, a bull and a cow, and we all killed both, thanks to more careful hunting in the semi-brushy dune country near the coast on the King Ranch. The guides had all been VERY skeptical of ANY ".270" with such light bullets, but by the end of the hunt were calling the .270 WSM one the best nilgai cartridges they'd ever seen used.

In general that has also been my experience with big game animals with reputations for being tough to kill, whether African plains game or American elk. I grew up in Montana when NOBODY used anything except cup-and-core bullets, except a very few handloaders who used Nosler Partitions. (The only factory ammo Partitions appeared in back then was Weatherby, and very few local Montanans used Weatherby rifles back then, and the rifles and their ammo were too damn expensive for most local elk hunters.)

But after I hunted a bunch of these super-tough animals with good bullets, whether elk or plains game, I didn't find them so tough to kill. Some will indeed go a LONG way if hit around the edges of the vitals, but one good example might be gemsbok--which are about the size of sambar. The biggest one I've ever killed and actually had weighed went 550 pounds. Yet on one big cull-safari in 2007 I saw gemsbok killed with a variety of cartridges and bullets--and one of the quickest kills was with a .270 Winchester and a 150-grain Partition, placed through the middle of both lungs. The bull went down in 50 yards, about what I'd expect from a similar-sized elk with the same bullet and placement.

The only real gemsbok rodeo occurred with a hunter using the .375 H&H and 270-grain Barnes TSX bullets. Like many Americans used to shooting animals "behind the shoulder," he put the bullet too far back, just catching the rear edge of the lungs. Now, we often hear how bigger magnum rounds are better killers with marginal hits, but that gemsbok went two miles before we caught up with it, when the hunter managed to put a second bullet farther forward.

Some animals are indeed more prone to travel considerably with a marginal hit, whether due to poor aim or a poor bullet--as are both elk and gemsbok. But have yet to run into a big game animal that survived very long from a good hit with a good bullet, even from some comparatively small cartridges.