Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Bullet diameter for big game?

Yes, and I refuse to use something that ONLY works when everything is right !!

Jerry

Which is NOT important where WT are concerned (context is SHOOTING). I could use up a lot of space here giving examples of WHEN hunting either I shot or someone else did and I SAW the NO effect upon 'other' WT from a shot.


Several times in 40+ yrs I have seen WT come along shortly behind a shot and EVEN a dead WT laying on the ground and the most the WT did was to SMELL the dead one and go on its way. I SAW that in 2017 right here.

Quiet certainly could be important when hunting in close proximity businesses or dwellings.

Jerry

Like the marginal 270! Or the 7mm hit em again! The 300 win mag is where non marginal starts according to most who believe it really matters.

For someone who uses such small calibers in the scheme of things your philosophy goes very much against your choice of cartridges


Trystan

Seems it’s been said, it’s the boolet, not the headstamp.

DF

Maybe its just important to me? Maybe we all do things differently. Maybe some of us don't need to kill every deer we see, or just kind of relax out in the peace and quiet and if we see a big one and kill it fine, if we see nothing, fine. Different strokes you know.

When I was younger I ran the take any shot you get mantra, and had a few calibers that covered that. These days, I'm not so mad at em anymore.

And FWIW, I've seen more than a few examples of where even a quiet shot ran off deer 400-600 yards away. And when a shot with a loud rifle up close tended not to bother any deer. And all kinds of examples in between.

Those that like loud are good with me too. I've had enough loud in my years. Try Camp Perry in NTIT or rapid fire stages with couple hundred folks firing all at the same time.

Heck I honestly prefer to take small groups fishing these days to secluded places where we dont' see others or hear others but often times we only have fish in areas that will have others around either eventually or when we arrive.

Its life, but I don't have to ad to it. As noted, if 22 rimfire were legal at home..... I've killed so many pigs up to about 250 or so, that it can be done easily and quietly. Of course maybe thats why I used to prefer to hunt with a bow over a gun but our current leased ranch does not allow archery for some idiotic reason

A man's is limited to about 10 pounds that can be comfortably carried.
Find the cartridge that projects the most power and accuracy at reasonable recoil.

Now work backwards and justify that cartridge for your big game.

An example of this rationalizing would be, if a 10 pound 150 gr 300 Win Mag is good for a 700 pound elk, then a 55 gr 223 should be adequate for a 250 pound mule buck.
What is wrong with that analogy is the 223 could weigh as little as 4 pounds and still keep accuracy and recoil under control. That would waste many pounds of rifle carrying capability.

Therefore some larger cartridge must be rationalized.

haha Tittystan, You are in the minority on that one.

And FWIW, your opinion of my philosophy ain't worth skwat !

Jerry

rost said above ^^^

"And FWIW, I've seen more than a few examples of where even a quiet shot ran off deer 400-600 yards away. And when a shot with a loud rifle up close tended not to bother any deer. And all kinds of examples in between."


I have had SO MANY different observations from yours that 'yours' is/are hard to believe.

Whatever.


Jerry

My thoughts exactly.Make the first shot count with the right caliber and bullet and I never expect to have to shoot more than once.

yup.....and for me that's the grand old .30-06.....it just finds a way to work any time I use it

To be cute, yes, you can fail to take an elk with a .243.

I have been around several folks who used .243 Winchesters and 6mm Remingtons successfuly on elk. The rifles have barrels in the 18.5-20" range.All four of them were/are women. All four were raised in the country and were involved with hound hunting and trapping as well. three of the four started using a .30 carbine on deer and moved up to the 6mm's.I suppose this says somethingabout the guns men use and the guns women use. The good bullets these gals use are Core-Lokts and Power points FWIW.

At around 40 yrs of age the youngest one moved on to a .270 Winchester.She is in Alaska at this point and uses it for moose and so forth.

Lol, I was simply pointing out that your recommending "quit" cartridges and at the same time your recommending to stay away from "marginal" cartridges! Seems a little conflicting doesn't it?



Trystan

It's always interesting what a particular hunter defines as a "powerful" cartridge. A local (and good) friend of mine, who's killed bull elk with everything from recurve bows to the .338 Winchester Magnum, says he doesn't like the 6.5 Creedmoor because he believes in "plenty of horsepower." Yet most of his rifle-killed elk have been taken with the .270 Winchester, which ain't all that different than the 6.5 Creedmoor in downrange impact. But like a lot of older hunters (he's 65) he judges big game cartridges by muzzle velocity, not the speed the bullet's traveling when it hits an elk.

Classic 'Fire thread....

Lots of Field and Stream readers rather than lung punchers mixed in with gunwriter quotes from 30 years ago with folks still living their youth moments....

Does it get any more classic? I think not...

Well, T....stan you MISread or Miscomprehended the previous postS.



It was not I who recommended 'quiet' cartridges...... it was 'rost'.


Jerry

I started to go out with my dad hunting when I was 5 or 6 and was doing some of the shooting when I was 8. I have well over 1/2 a century of killing and seeing game killed (from doe antelope to bull buffalo in the USA and up to Elephant in otehr countries)
with a whole lot of different guns and loads.
So I am going to chime in one more time to add something that I personally find interesting but it's also something I can't really explain.

Big game is a very broad term. But for the sake of the discussion I am going to tell you all a fact about my kills on elk.

I have used a lot of different guns to kill them, and I have used various bullets in some of those guns.

The 2 cartridges that I have seen the most "bang flops" are on the 2 extremes of what I have killed elk with. The low end is the 270 Winchester and the one I have used most successfully on the high end of power is the 375H&H. These two cartridges have shown me more "bang-flops' then any others and in many cases they have done a LOT better. The 375 may not surprise anyone.

But why the 270? I don't really know. But the number of elk I have killed with a 270 that moved at all after my shot was probably about 4 and NO elk has gotten more then about 30 years and one 1 ever got shot 2 times. By far the largest majority of elk I have killed or seen killed with 270s have dropped instantly or within about 1-2 seconds.

Considering the number I have shot and seen shot with the following: 7MM mags, 7X57, 280s 300 Savage, 30-06s 308 Wins 8x57 300 Mags(about 5 different one including the 30-378 Weatherby) 325 Win Short Mag, 338 Mags, 340 Weatherby, 35 Whelen 45-70, 416s 458 Winchester 460 G&A, .............and the 270 was as good as any at putting them down fast and actually on average better then many of them.

I have several thought in my head as to why this is, but not scientific way. But the facts are exactly that.......facts.
I have seen the 270s and the 375H&Hs drop most of the elk shot faster than than most other cartridges. Not that the others were bad. They were not, But if I look at the kills with the 270s and think about the duration of time from the shots to the elk falling, the 270 is as good as any and better then about 90% of the others.

Why?
I don't really know for sure. It just has.

40 years ago I would have thought it was luck or sheer happenstance.
Now with over a 1/2 century behind me, and also seeing many elk killed in most of those years by other hunters too (some individual years I would see many elk killed, and be responsible for gutting and field quartering up to 2 dozen in one season) I can't give you a reason, but I reject the idea it was just odd-ball incidents. It's been too consistent. That's not to say it's 100% because it's not, but the overall performance of the 270s have been WAY better then I would expect.

The facts have proven to me that most times it works a lot better then I think it should.

Most elk killed with them by hunters were killed with 150 grain bullets of tough construction. (Myself I have always used 150 and 160 grain bullets, and one with an old Speer 170 grain) Some with Barnes X in the 140 grain weight, but I remember 4 in Idaho that were killed with Winchester White Box 130 grain Power Point factory ammo, and every one of them fell fast, 3 right at the shots and one within about 2 seconds.

I don't really have an explanation, but those are the facts and the general way things happened with the 270s.

I personally have never killed any elk with a smaller bore then a 270 but many with bigger bores. Yet MOST of those I have killed with bigger and more powerful rifles have not actually put the elk down as fast as my 270s------- let alone faster.

Weird but true.

I've seen a 62 TSX out of a vanilla .223 Rem penetrate further, and kill quicker than a 200 accubond or 225 spire point out of a .340 WBY, at roughly the same distance and animal size, all at normal speeds for their respective cartridges. Monos have generally killed slower than C&Cs for me at similar velocity, and I had some poor TSX experiences at first, but some bullets within certain impact velocity ranges just seem to work better than bigger and more powerful stuff. A physicist I am not, but I do try to observe things as best I can.

I'm getting to be more and more of a .223 Rem fan for deer sized critters, if that's considered "big" game to the OP.

Yes, it could be more classic. It could be "bullet diameter for elk."

I worked at a place for years and spoke to many Alaskan Natives and over half of them used a Mini 14, AR or bolt gun in .223/5.56 for caribou and moose and several also used them on bears. I also believe many critters had the crap shotout of them and ran off wounded. One of the not so realistic Alaskan realty TV shows had a guy shooting a grizzly with an AR. A friend of mine shot many of our little island deer and black bear with a .223.

The highly regarded guide Phil Shoemaker wrote about the use of the .223 for caribou and our long gone family friend used the .222 Remington on seals when there was a bounty on them and also used the same gun on our tough goats, Dall sheep, and black bear. I don't know the bullets used and I tip my hat to them, but I don't consider it a big game load. I also believe at under 100 yards I could kill about any critter with a .223 and a Barnes X bullet, but I am not going to try to do it.

As I have stated before I only hunt Alaska and have a mediocre hunting career. I personally use a 30-06 or my favorite, a custom .338 Winny. Both are CRF Mod. 70's tossing Barnes TTSX bullets. If some thing goes south on a hunt it will be because of my poor shot placement and not because I was not using a time proven rifle and load. Both of my daughters married good guys and when they left my house they took the 30-06 they started hunting with, and a .22 and a hand gun I bought them.

I bought a couple of Tikka 6.5 Creedmoor's for the grandkids to shoot and told them they should have a 30-06 later in life if they get serious about hunting.

For sure the super premium bullets have been some what of a game changer for some calibers. The .223 is not one of them in my opinion and I believe any serious big game caliber starts with a 6.5 or larger bullet diameter and a case that holds as much powder as .308 Winchester. But, others feel differently and drawing a line in the sand is like trying to tell some one how far they should shoot.

So, if you don’t have experience with it, how would you know the 223 isn’t a big game cartridge?

I guarantee you that if you load a 77gr Sierra Tipped Matchking in the 223 and put it into the front half of a game animal you are not going to say “too small”. Probably you’ll say “too fuggin much”.



I just can not understand someone having a position on something not working when they don’t hav experience with it.