Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game practical caliber and cartridge differences

Here is an interesting scenerio that actually happend and I'm afraid to say in the various locations I find myself in from time to time is not that unusual.

I was visiting the XYZ paper company in Cowlitz co. Wa. (one of the big dogs) during my visit there for business I was sitting in the maintaince break room with the 10-12 fellas who manage the care of the mill. Now I have been going to this place for many years now for my business and several of the guys and I have spoken at length about hunting. These core of maintaince guys are in some kind of 7mm magnum cult, but it's not a cult about how good the cartridge is or how well it works. It's a twisted bizzaro cult. Let me expain.

During many past visits the conversations about various guns would come up with the typical magazine hype and misguided quotes about ballistics and other facts. I'm way outnumbered here because I'm not a member of this "7mm mag cult" quite the opposite if they knew my feelings about the cartridge I would be thier anti-christ.

So having set this up for you, you can see they find no fault in their favorite cartridge. Which when you include the "bubba factor" involved makes this sooooo much fun for me. During one of the conversations about 2 weeks into the elk season one fella says that his elk was shot at an honest 500 yards paced off across a clearcut. I said he must have a hell of a good stride to keep that line straight when the clearcut dropped down about 100 feet and then back up the other side. He said yeah well it was 500 yards paced maybe it was only 475 straight line. Hmmmm (bubba factor) so I let it go and he keeps talking about just how tough this elk was. He shot the first time and kicked up crap under it's feet so holding high he shoots and this time sees crap fly up behind the elk. No to his credit he still knew it was too low and not shooting over(surpised the heck out of me) So he claims to have held three feet over the back and then "sho nuff" (his words) he plugged that thing. The elk jumped in the air and took off at which time they shot and hit it two more times(?). Now to get over there somehow with the pickup truck. When they get to to opposite road they see the tracks in the snow and one tiny spot of blood so now they are sure it's been hit at least one time. Following the tracks in the snow he sees an elk ahead(must be the right one) and he shoots again hitting it quartering away. Man these elk are tough(his words) so they continue to follow but it's gone a long way. One guy heads back for the truck to move it ahead to the next road. The other keeps following and sees the elk yet again and shoot straight up the tail end. Now that elk is wobbly and headed for the next county. Then he hears a shot and another shot and then a third shot, and silent. When he arrives at the road his buddy is there claiming to have shot it three times less then 50 yards away.

So they find this dead bull about 75-100 yards from the road. They claim it was one tough old bull that took 7 shots to bring down and it was so tough that the meat was completely blown to bits and all shot up through both shoulders and the hind quarter. Yet it still lived and was able to run all that way. The bizzaro part is that they adore the 7mm mag so much and find no fault with it. Even though at least 7 rounds put into the bull and it still lived and ran all that way. They never once considered that the bullets used were the wrong choice or the cartridge used at such close range for the followup shots was too fast for the construction of said bullets.

The pride in their faces was like nothing I have seen before and the great performance of these 7mm mags was the only reason they were able to bring the beast down. In one guys words, I'm glad I bought this instead of a 30/06 that 30/06 would have been worthless on a bull like this that took 7 shots to kill. I aksed about the recovered bullets and they laughed! They cackeled out of control! YOU CANNOT RECOVER A 7MAG BULLET! In his words " the bullets are so fast that when they hit an elk they explode like litte hand grenades blowing huge killing wounds into them. That's why these 7mags are the best elk rifle ever! Nothing else has the explosive bullets like the 7mag does. My silly reply are you sure that's good? What........he says! Without that kind of power how do you think we would have ever killed that bull and found it? All the other guys use 300 mags or 338's and those bullets just zip right though without any damage. .............( wow what a concept)

Not to be outdone one of the other fellas in the 7mm mag cult starts with Oh yeah we shot that one up at Hansen creek two years ago and it took five shots for a young cow, that story went on much the same way! Yet they must have a shrine someplace in the mill with a small carpet in front that they can kneel on it and pray to the lord of 7mm magdom. I'm simply dumbstruck at the lack of skill and knowledge infront of me, .........Yet they are bold and confident in there beliefs that what they are doing is somehow way ahead of the expert level of PNW elk hunters.

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So lets put a few things into perspective here. Any young guy coming to work at this place will learn his ballistics and his gun choice from these guys and will be sucked into the hype and non-sense surrounding these kinds of guns and skills. This is where many of the people get their information and form their beliefs and undrstanding of rifles.

The great majority of people choose a cartridge based on "feeling and Emotion" learned from a father or other older mentor. In some cases from a cult of co-workers as described above. Darn few have ever sat down and worked out the differences between cartridges or been able to spend time with a guy who has a lot of experience. There are a number of folks on this site who I have a lot of respect for. But we may not agree 100% on the details. We certainly agree on the majority of the issues. These guys would be a huge and powerful resource to help set the mind straight for people with limited experience.

I have had a number of Emails from guys with limited experience in the last couple years who have lots of questions. Certainly I'm biased towards some things and for sure these feelings carry a lot of weight in my responses. But they hopefully don't carry the "bubba factor" of credibility!