"As Craig Boddington likes to say bullet weight covers sins in bullet construction so if using a heavy for game bullet probably ok"
Isn't that essentially what Elmer was doing with those 300 grain .338 bullets?
Except Elmer used .333 caliber Jeffreys bullets. If he had a .338 caliber cartridge, he could have used Nosler Partitions on those safaris back in the late 50's.
Elmer used 300-grain steel-jacketed .333 Kynoch bullets on his first safari in 1958, both "solids" and "softs," in his .333 OKH. The softs blew up so badly (one didn't even exit a Thompson's gazelle about the size of a big coyote) that he used the solids for the rest of the safari. They were the typical round-nosed solids of the era, which didn't kill very well either, even though they penetrated. I know this from reading his book
Safari numerous times, which was pretty rare due to being a private printing.
J
I have enormous respect for Elmer in most ways, the reason I re-read
Hell, I Was There every 2-3 years--and also own or have owned all his other books. For one thing, he often mentioned how little meat damage heavier, slower bullets caused, something many "gun writers" never mention--perhaps because the meat isn't important to them.
For another Lorraine always seemed to be very happy, which counts for a lot in my world.
Also corresponded briefly with him toward the end of his life, and have one of his letters on the wall of my office--which deals with the .338-06 and the best bullets and loads. But he was also more "resistant" to how changes in bullet construction affected consistent performance, whether penetration or expansion or whatever. One example is how he wrote at least once that the 250-grain .338 Nosler Partition should have weighed 300 grains. I have killed a bunch of big game weighing up to 1500 pounds with the 250 .338 and have yet to recover one....
