JB, your last two posts were outstanding. Well shared.
Thanks!
As I've mentioned before in my writings, one of the advantages of being a gun writer is getting to see a LOT of game killed by other people, and not just primarily relying on the animals I've personally taken. I've been able to observe a lot of hunters using a wide variety of cartridges bullets over the decades, at first due to guiding for some years in Montana, along with accompanying Eileen on most of her hunts.
But around 2000 more bullet/ammo companies decided to start actually "field-testing' new bullets and cartridges extensively, partly by inviting gun writers to do considerable hunting/culling in different places. This was about when some South African landowners (and some in Europe, and other countries) realized that instead of paying "cullers" to shoot excess animals, American hunters would actually pay to do the same thing. Consequently I got to go on a LOT of hunts where a LOT of animals were taken--and tried to accompany as many other hunters as possible, and also spent considerable after-hunt time in the skinning shack, where the animals were processed. The biggest was a month-long hunt on RSA where almost 200 animals were taken, from springbok to Cape buffalo. I only personally shot around a dozen animals, but got to personally observe a bunch of other taken--or the results. But went on a bunch of others, such as the 30-nilgai hunt just described.
Also as a result of those hunts, I was able to fiddle with a number of different kinds of "test media," to determine which kinds resulted in similat results to actual hunting of big game. Eventually settled on a couple of kinds of media, one for testing for "softer" broadside chest shots, and one for testing that simulated hitting heavy bone.
But my main point is that a LOT of bullets/cartridges/etc. work on big game, though in different ways--often due to the limits of certain types of bullets. Recently wrote an upcoming article on typical cup-and-core bullets, and realized while looking through my hunting notes that while I've taken a bunch of "deer-sized" game from Montana to South Africa with the 7x57 and the 160-grain Sierra GameKing handloaded to around 2675 fps, ALL have exited. This is because plain old "cup-and-core" bullets have always worked well when started at moderate muzzle velocities, though sometimes not when pushed to 3000+ fps.
There's always something to learn....
