Interesting article on Keith and O'Conner in Gray's Sporting Journal.
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<br>"O�Connor vs. Keith: And the Winner Is..."
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<br>In any argument there are two questions: Who was right? And who won?
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<br>by Terry Wieland
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<br>"THE HUNTING world�s longest-running controversy is the battle between velocity and bullet weight. On one side was Jack O�Connor, revered shooting editor of Outdoor Life and godfather of the .270 Winchester. On the other was Elmer Keith�big-game guide, writer and loud proponent of big bores and heavy bullets.
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<br>The arguments went like this:
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<br>O�Connor: �If you can place your bullet right, the 130-grain .270 is all you need on most North American big game.�
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<br>Keith: �Small bullets at high velocities wound more animals than they kill. For clean kills, you need a heavy bullet that will penetrate.�
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<br>It�s impossible to pinpoint exactly when the dispute began, but it dates at least from 1930, when Elmer Keith wrote an article for The American Rifleman. In it, he tells of a sheep hunt in the Rockies in which a hunter, Colonel Harry Snyder, shoots a bighorn ram with a 7x64 and the cartridge fails miserably.
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<br>At that time, the .270 Winchester was only five years old and there were few comparable cartridges around. One of the few was the 7x64, shooting a 139-grain bullet at 3,000 feet per second. Keith�s statements about the inadequacy of the cartridge sparked a response from O�Connor, who knew Snyder personally and asked him about the story. Snyder not only denied it but said Keith was not present when the sheep in question was killed. What�s more, he added, it was a clean, one-shot kill.
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<br>O�Connor and Keith swung into print, other writers chose sides, and soon there was a full-blown controversy over whether light bullets at high velocity were adequate for larger game. The manufacturers got involved, with Roy Weatherby the most vocal proponent of high velocity.
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<br>Most significantly, the debate flared around a thousand campfires. Friendships broke up over it, but it sold literally millions of magazines. Even after Keith and O�Connor died (in 1984 and 1978 respectively), the controversy didn�t end. And hasn�t ended yet.
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<br>A few years ago, on a trip to Zimbabwe, I sat down over a few beers with an expatriate American making his living as a professional hunter. After a couple, he fixed me sternly and demanded, �So who was right? O�Connor or Keith?� Sensing this was a test, I thought for a moment, then said, �They both were.� Ed leapt to his feet, stuck out his hand and shouted, �Right on!�
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<br>If you look at the arguments dispassionately, you quickly realize that there is really no disagreement at all�especially if you read what Keith and O�Connor actually wrote themselves rather than the writings of their legions of imitators, admirers and enemies.
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<br>In later years, Jack O�Connor was always careful to add the proviso, �If you place your shot correctly ...� He even went so far, in a couple of articles, to expound at length on the importance of placing the first shot. And, as he pointed out, a poorly placed bullet is a poorly placed bullet, regardless of caliber.
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<br>For Keith�s part, most of his examples weren�t of a 130-grain bullet that hit the heart or lungs and failed to kill (although he produced such examples in his wilder moments), but bullets that hit bone and expanded too quickly or were too far back, allowing a gut-shot animal to escape.
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<br>On the essential point, the adversaries agree: Place the bullet correctly, and a light, fast bullet will do the job. Place the bullet badly and it won�t.
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<br>Both Jack O�Connor and Elmer Keith were big-game hunters of vast experience. O�Connor, as well, was a tremendous rifle shot, especially in such practical hunting aspects as hitting a running animal at 200 yards. He grew up in Arizona in the years before the First World War, and honed his skills on running jackrabbits and coyotes. His wife, Eleanor, was also an accomplished hunter and marksman, and he often cited her as an example of what a small-bore rifle could do (Eleanor favored the 7x57) in skilled hands.
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<br>All of which proves exactly nothing. Examples abound that support both sides of the argument. In my own experience, severely limited compared to either O�Connor or Keith, I have had spectacular one-shot kills on big animals with a small, fast bullet. I have also had spectacular failures. Last year, I made a six-shot kill on a greater kudu (an African antelope about the size of an elk) with a .450 Ackley, a bona fide elephant rifle, which supports the argument that the first shot must be placed correctly regardless of caliber.
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<br>Unfortunately, bad bullet placement can be due to any number of things: poor shooting, a gust of wind, an animal taking a step just as you pull the trigger. And so Bob Hagel, another guide-turned-gun-writer, came up with this rule: �A hunter should not choose the caliber, cartridge and bullet that will kill an animal when everything is right; rather, he should choose ones that will kill the most efficiently when everything goes wrong.�
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<br>Dick Dietz, longtime public-relations guru for Remington Arms, once opined that as a man gets older he prefers �his meat rarer, his whiskey straighter, and his bullets bigger.� This isn�t because, as a man ages, he grows to enjoy getting pounded by recoil. It�s because, as we become more experienced and witness many of the things that can go wrong hunting big game, we come to realize that one way to minimize problems is to use a bigger caliber and heavier bullets. As Robert Ruark said, �Use enough gun.�
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<br>The argument may not be settled, but a few facts have been amply demonstrated.
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<br>1. Animals are killed by tissue destruction, not by so-called �hydrostatic shock.�
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<br>2. Tissue destruction is accomplished by bullet penetration.
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<br>3. Failure to penetrate is the major complaint about light bullets at high velocity, especially if they hit bone.
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<br>4. A heavy bullet penetrates better than a light bullet, but even a heavy bullet needs to be well-constructed.
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<br>One point O�Connor made repeatedly was that a hard-recoiling
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<br>ifle that causes flinching and bad shooting is more likely to result in a wounded animal than a light-recoiling .270 shot accurately and well. Obviously, if you can�t handle a .375 H&H you should go to something lighter with which you are comfortable. Just because most of us are more comfortable shooting a .22-250 than a .375 H&H, however, doesn�t mean we should hunt grizzly bears with it.
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<br>As you can see, once you go into these arguments in a little detail, so many qualifications pile up it becomes hard to see the original point�which is what made for so many great campfire debates over the years and sold so many millions of magazines.
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<br>To answer the original questions: Who was right? They both were. Who won? Neither one. Will it ever be settled for good? No. Not as long as one campfire is left burning.
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<br>In The Last Book�Confessions of a Gun Editor, Jack O�Connor looked back on his long-running battle with �the big-bore boys,� and suggested there was more to Elmer Keith�s position than met the eye. The �big- bore versus high-velocity� battle was more than just an argument over ballistics and killing power.
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<br>In the late 1930s, O�Connor succeeded Captain Charles Askins as shooting editor of Outdoor Life. Askins, father of the influential gun writer Colonel Charles Askins, wasn�t ready to retire, and Askins the Younger held it against O�Connor until the day he died. He lost no opportunity to slam O�Connor in print, and naturally he took Elmer Keith�s side in the argument.
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<br>Ironically, Jack O�Connor and Elmer Keith never met face to face until many years after the battle had begun, when they attended a writers� seminar hosted by Winchester. There, according to O�Connor, Keith told him that he should have been given the Outdoor Life job instead of O�Connor, and because of it he had been �sucking hind tit� ever since. According to O�Connor, he was then instrumental in Keith moving from Guns to Guns & Ammo, a higher-paying pulpit from which he preached his big-bore gospel for years after.
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<br>By that time, of course, the argument could not be allowed to end. Too many reputations hung on it, and it was selling too many magazines."
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