Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles If you could hunt every NA big game animal...........

You are 'mighty' right.

I don't know and don't care - IF it was staged somebody did a danged good job!

Jerry

m m -

IF, IF I had to choose only 1 rifle it would be either 30-06 or 300 WM.


Jerry

If all I had was a 270 Winchester and 150 or 160gr. partitions, you are damn right I'd still go out hunting.

My choice would be a .350 mag with 225 partitions. Kinda the same difference.

The lower 48, Tikka 30-06 with 168 ttsx
Up north On dangerous game 375 ruger.
Yes I know that's 2

Savage 99F .308 Win with 180 partitions.

Hosea Sarber wasn't killed by a bear. His boat was found floating in a bay and his body was never found. Theories were that he either fell over board or was killed by a poacher since he was a game warden.

And Sarber killed a lot of Brownies with that .270. To clarify, I would only hunt the large bears with a .270 if I had a guide backing me up.

Using a rifle and load combination I already have, it would be one of these:

Marlin 1895 .45-70 with a 350g North Fork FP @ 2181fps

Ruger MKII .338WM with a 22" barrel and a 225g AccuBond @ 2742fps


The .45-70 is not a long range weapon but it shoots well out to 300 yards. At 7500feet altitude it has a drop of only 19" at 300 yards and retains just short of 1500fps with over 1700fpe.

Klikitarik took a grizzly with one of my .45-70 North Fork handloads. Probably as close to taking one myself as I'll ever get. Maybe he will see this, post a pick and provide details as to the range, how far the bear traveled after bullet impact, etc.

The only thing they knew for sure was Sarber's boat was found but he never was.. I don't think they ruled out a bear..
Somewhere in my stuff, I have old articles either by him or about him.. He had all kinds of rifles.. If I remember right he mostly used the .30-06, but he killed some bear, maybe only one with the .270 and a heavy bullet..

He also did a lot of predator control.. He shot a .220 Swift Improved.. I am not sure if he was a warden or and ADC man.
He did shoot seals to use in making a special wolf poison..
He wrote the best bear hunting story I ever read.. It was republished in FUR-Fish-Game some years ago.. He hunted down a mankilling bear.. To say it was a thriller isn't enough..
He shot it in the neck with a .30-06, mentioned the bullet broke up.. He was also a custom stock maker at least for his own rifles.. Very interesting man..

I find myself wondering the same thing. I've OFTEN thought about selling most every rifle I have and just using one that covers it all. My pard in ID has two big game rifles and one shotgun. One in 300WSM that he uses and a 30-06 that he doesn't. He still uses the 870 12ga he got when he was 12. He kills a lot of stuff and doesn't really give two hoots or worries about gack.

Thoughts to consider....

1) You can never have too big a truck
2) you can never build too big a pole shed
3) and you can never have too much rifle...


FWIW..

For me, the "one and done" theory only works when the reloading press gets packed away. Damn if I'm monkeying with one set of dies. It'll be a "one load" as well.

.358 Winchester in a 99 F lightweight for me.

There can only be one! In the end it is and will always be, for me, the 375H&H in a Winchester Mod.70. Using Sierra 250gr or the 260gr Noslers it is wonderful on deer, elk & moose. For the big fury guys with teeth & claws the 300gr bullets have there place. Ammo can be found on the selves of even the smallest hardware country stores. Plus there are many other folks that have greater means than I that share their thoughts in script that agree. Although they include "the World" & not just NA, if the 375H&H is used in Africa for everything from the smallest gazelle to the largest land mammal I'm sure it will handle everything in NA.

To quote just a few:

"[I]f I could have two cartridges to hunt the world, I'd be quite happy with the .30-06 and the .375 H&H. And if I could have just one cartridge to hunt the world over, my only answer is the .375." -- Craig Boddington, "Classic Hunting Cartridges: .375 Holland & Holland Magnum," Petersen's HUNTING, June 1995, p. 43 (emphasis in original).

"The .375 is one of my real enthusiasms in big-game cartridges. If I were going to hunt all over the world and could use only one rifle, it would be the .375. If I could have only two, one would be a .375 and the other would be a .270." "And there isn't any doubt that a good big gun is better than a good little gun - if it's properly handled." -- Jack O'Connor, The Complete Book of Rifles and Shotguns, Outdoor Life (1961).

"It (the .375) handles anything from small deer to the heaviest bear or moose. I have used the .375 Holland and
Holland Magnum on a great deal of game with good results." -- Elmer Keith, Hunting Big Game, Peterson Publishing Company (1965), Chapter Three, "Stalking Rifles," p. 53.

As I recall, when O'Connor went to Admiralty Island to hunt brown bears, he didn't use a 270...............

Just sayin'..........for those that think a 270 is enough gun for big bears.

Jack wasn't stupid nor did his ego over-ride his sensibilities.

MM

Living where I do there is something to hunt year round. A 30-06 with a 200gr Accubond or Partition run at 2650-2700 ft/sec with a fixed 6X and elevation turret in S/S.
Ya, boring but reliable and easy to become 'one' with, my go to for everything.

I would imagine it could be done with smaller calibers, but why risk it. For 99% of it a 223 or 243 would get it done. The big stuff would likely warrant a much larger caliber, or risk serious injury to the hunter. Why shoot a polar bear with a 243 when you could take a 375

Harry Selby said there was just "something" about a 375H&H and they did it all.

I almost picked the Mashburn as well, but bigger stuff warrants the P64 Alaskan 338 Win Mag with 210 PT's..