LastLemming,

In my experience "similar sized North American or even African Plains game" are not different or tougher. Have killed a bunch of both, and been beside hunting partners who killed quite a few too.

This is not just my opinion. The late Finn Aagaard, an experienced African hunter from his youth and then as a PH for a number of years, wrote that blue wildebeest (basically elk-sized, and considered by many the toughest to kill plains game animal) shot through the lungs with bullets from 6.5mm to .375 in caliber went about the same distance before falling, as long as the bullet penetrated and expanded sufficiently. (Most of Finn's early experience took place when cup-and-core bullets predominated, so the 6.5s tended to use bullets around 160 grains, but many of today's 6.5 bullets weighing much less will penetrate even deeper.)

Can give plenty of specific examples backing up Finn, involving modest-velocity cartridges less than .30 caliber, that I've witnessed on both African and North American big game. But my main point is that many hunters' opinion of "killing power" is based on what they believe a certain caliber and bullet would "should" do, rather than actual results.

One example came from the late Allen Day, who started going on guided hunts for "trophy" big game relatively late in his too-short life. He once posted that he'd killed "almost 10 bull elk," all with either the .30-06 (which he started with) or the .300 Winchester Magnum. He said all the bulls shot with the .30-06 traveled at least 100 yards before falling, while the .300-shot elk never went more than 50 yards.

Aside from this being a small sample (what is "almost 10"?), it is contrary to my experience. I have killed more elk with the .30-06 than any cartridge, and have also killed them not only with the .300 Winchester Magnum but the .300 WSM and Weatherby. None shot with the .30-06 went more than 50 yards before falling--and that includes my biggest bull, both in antlers and weight, which went about 20 yards after being shot at 250 yards with a 180-grain Trophy Bonded Tip. (And come to think of it, none of the elk Eileen and I have killed with various smaller cartridges have gone more than 50 yards either.)

It has always seemed a little odd to me that so many Norwegians and Swedes could kill moose very effectively with the 6.5x55, yet similar cartridges aren't nearly enough for elk. Now, those moose are smaller than some North American moose, more like Shiras than Canadian or Alaska-Yukon in size--and moose also don't tend to go as far as elk when hit "around the edges." But the do tend to die just as quickly as when hit with much larger cartridges, as the famous Swedish study of over 8000 moose kills indicates.


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John Steinbeck