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There is a correlation between mid-winter doldrums and threads concerning some minimum cartridge to kill elk. If you feel confident with a magnum and can master it, great! If you choose to hunt with a mid-level plain jane cartridge - great! Hunt within the limitations each cartridge has.


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I was at a bar in Montana around Christmas and I guy told me a 308 can't kill elk it's a deer gun. U need a 300 mag. But like as was stated before,
At what yardage does a 300 win mag have the same velocity as a 308 out of the muzzel??

Same .308 bullet.


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Originally Posted by Mule Deer
Good to know that YOU know exactly how ".300 Win Mag" recoil feels to everybody else.


Thank YOU. What a joke. It is not hard to manage, maybe for you?


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You know there's always going to be a pissin match when you have threads like this. That's why I just microwave some popcorn and watch the show.... Should we talk about 270 vs. 30-06 again, or is it 6.5 creed vs. 6.5 sweed? Come on guys...


Originally Posted by raybass
I try to stick with the basics, they do so well. Nothing fancy mind you, just plain jane will get it done with style.
Originally Posted by Pharmseller
You want to see an animal drop right now? Shoot him in the ear hole.

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Ask Randy Newberg if 308 (or 7-08) are good elk killers. I believe he has a whole wall of proof. Never killed one myself so I have to rely on others experience. But I never argue with success. Would tend toward the 300 mag or bigger myself should I ever get my one chance.


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peeshooter,

Gee, lemme see. I have not only taken bull elk with the .300 Winchester Magnum, but the two other most popular .300 magnums, the WSM and Weatherby, at ranges from 75 to 400 yards. Have also use used the .300 Winchester to take around a dozen species of big game in four western states and five other countries, including New Zealand, Mexico, Canada and a couple in Africa. My primary "scope test" rifle is a Heym SR-21 in .300 Winchester Magnum, which averages under 1/2" for 3-shot groups at 100 yards, using a load combining H1000 with the 210-grain Berger VLD at around 2950 fps. This provides enough accuracy AND recoil to soon reveal any scope defects.

But I have also observed a lot of other people shooting .300 magnums. Among the most revealing observations was a month-long hunt in South Africa, where I, plus a dozen other hunters (in two "shifts" of two weeks each), took close to 200 animals. Several of the other guys brought .300 magnums as either their "light" or "heavy" rifles, mostly Winchesters but also one WSM. A couple shot them well throughout the hunt, but others ended up started to flinch, mostly because they were taking far more animals than on a typical North American hunt. A couple recognized the problem and switched to their lighter rifle, but one only brought a relatively lightweight .300, and by the second week of his hunt was not shooting well at all.

In fact, the last animal he shot was a kudu bull at 200 yards, which ran off leaving a sparse blood trail, which soon ended, and even a couple of excellent trackers could not find the bull. It was discovered a week later, after the hunter had already flown back to the U.S., by smell. It had been hit through the lower jaw, and died of thirst.

I brought a 7x57 and 9.3x62 as my primary rifles, but also used a .300 Winchester Magnum belonging to one of my hunting partners to test a new bullet, taking animals from springbok to gemsbok out to 400 yards. Also used a .22-250 and another .300 Winchester belonging to one of the PH's to take some more game, partly because he was very intrigued by the performance of the new bullet. He wanted to recover one, and until that point none had stopped inside an animal. So we looked for a blue wildebeest standing in the right position to shoot it in the big shoulder joint as it stood quartering to us. Luckily, wildebeest often end up in that position, and when one did I put the bullet in the middle of the joint, and we found it under the hide at the rear of the ribcage on the opposite side,

But my experience is that the majority of hunters cannot shoot .300s very well, even without going on an extended safari. That is not just my opinion, but that of the late Finn Aagaard, who co-owned a safari company in Kenya before moving to Texas to guide in 1977, after Kenya banned big game hunting. I knew Finn pretty well, and he said only about a third of his clients who brought .300 magnums (most the .300 Winchester) could consistently kill big game cleanly. My rancher friend John Stuver, who is also a long-time Montana outfitter and guide, puts the percentage even lower. He says only about 20% of his clients who bring .300s can shoot well enough to cleanly kill pronghorn and mule deer at 200 yards.

So no, I am not naive or arrogant enough to believe that because I can shoot .300 magnums well, that everybody else can.


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A man has to know his limitations.... 🤣🤣


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Originally Posted by BWalker
Again, that depends. What is a fact, is you dont have a clue.



Tell you what, you jerk. Come to my house and I'll shoot a 350g hardcast at 1097fos and again at 2000fps fps and I'll bet you $100 the lower velocity bullet will penetrate more water jugs than the faster one. I've done it many times.

Last edited by Coyote_Hunter; 02/14/20. Reason: corrected typo

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Shot 2 bull elk with the 300 Win Mag and a cow and a bull with the 35 Whelen they all died, check, Some died quicker than the others from perfect shot placement ,check. All were shot with Nosler Partitions 180 's in the 300's and 225 gr in the 35 , check. Some blood shot meat with the 300 and eat up to the hole with the 35, check. Maybe next elk hunt I'll have some really bad weather days and use my M77 boat paddle stainless in 308 and I'll bet right now if I do my part with a suitable bullet and a good shot opportunity I'll have a dead elk, check. Winter getting long for some of you guys? MB


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Regarding velocity... Pictures for those who don’t read. All 180gn .308 bullets. I’m the messenger, if you question the study contact the author. PRM-out.

“Possibly the most significant study on terminal performance of the last many years, from the perspective of the sportsman (if not that of the defense analyst), was documented in the June 1998 issue of Handloader magazine (Gary Sciuchetti, "The Best Hunting Bullet", No. 193, pp. 40 - 44). The author conducted an exhaustive and apparently well considered analysis of .308 caliber 180 grain bullets. His results are a little startling.”

“Perhaps the most striking observation from this penetration data is that increasing velocity has a detrimental effect on penetration for nearly all bullets over the entire velocity range of interest.”

“Although some scientifically minded individuals may object to the test media used (saturated phonebooks), the author prudently tested a variety of media under different conditions and correlated these to shots made into deer cadavers along several shotlines of interest to the hunter.”

“The second very interesting trend that immediately leaps out in looking at these data is that nearly all of these types of bullets, simple gilding metal designs, bonded bullets and monolithics alike, exhibit highly erratic behavior as impact velocities approach and descend below ~2000 fps. ”

“While for some loads the rapidity of death may be improved by high velocity (from, say 2200 fps to 3000 fps), the practical lethality of modern weapons has not really increased significantly, merely their effective range. We're not speaking of whether or not these loads are lethal, merely how quickly.”

- Commercial brands are the Federal, Remington and Winchester soft point lead-core, gilding-metal jacketed bullets;
- Conventional bullets are a larger set comprised of simple gilding-metal jacketed, lead-core design offered by the reloading suppliers Hornady, Sierra and Speer, as well as the major ammunition makers;
- Premium bullets are the major brand controlled expansion designs without bonded cores, such as the Barnes X, Speer Grand Slam, Nosler Partition and Winchester Fail-Safe;
- Custom bonded bullets are heavy-jacketed, lead-core controlled expansion designs by custom manufacturers that all feature a lead core bonded to the jacket.

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Mule Deer, of sorry I did not know we were talking about cull operations. Also I'm not talking about high volume shooting. I have seen so many kids and women take elk and deer with my friends 7mm RUM he loans to his clients when I get to tag along. It recoils more than my 300 Win mag because it is lightweight. How many shots do you take on an elk? 1, 2, maybe 3? Did you feel the recoil on those shots with any cartridge? I doubt it!


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If you read my post again, I was not talking ONLY about "cull operations." In particular read the part about the percentage of hunters who cannot shoot .300s accurately from a long-time African professional hunter and Montana outfitter.


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Originally Posted by peeshooter
Mule Deer, of sorry I did not know we were talking about cull operations. Also I'm not talking about high volume shooting. I have seen so many kids and women take elk and deer with my friends 7mm RUM he loans to his clients when I get to tag along. It recoils more than my 300 Win mag because it is lightweight. How many shots do you take on an elk? 1, 2, maybe 3? Did you feel the recoil on those shots with any cartridge? I doubt it!

Never hunted Elk and the only magnum I have is a 17 HMR but I have shot many. However I have taken a lot of kids and new hunters out for whitetails. They always get familiar with the firearm they will be using before they go out hunting. I wonder how their accuracy would suffer had they shot those magnums before the hunt. In fact I am surprised the kids/women don't have a scope ring on their eye after shooting the 7mm RUM. I have been married for 34 years and taught my wife to shoot and she is really good with a rifle ( sucks with a shotgun ) she doesn't hunt but really enjoys shooting. Hell, she hates the recoil from a 30-06 with a 150 SGK.


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prm -

Thank you for posting that.The results are counter-intuitive to many and denied by some.

I've tested 460g hardcast @ 1812fps and and 300g hardcast @ 1167fps using my .45-70. The faster 460g bullet penetrated 9 water jugs while the slower 300g passed through 11 water jugs (all I had) and kept going.

Granted, the destruction done to the water jugs was much greater with the faster 460g bullet - but the subject in question was penetration, not destruction.


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CWT,

I also wondered about that.

Five years ago I was one writer tour of the Leupold and Nosler factories in Oregon. One day of the tour was spent at a range about halfway between Beaverton (Leupold) and Bend (Nosler). The range went out to 1000 yards, and we had a bunch of Nosler rifles with Leupold scopes to try.

One was in the then-new 28 Nosler round, and one of the writers was a sub-editor for one of the hunting magazines, who happened to be a young woman of about average size, but also a fitness fan. She was and avid hunter and had shot quite a bit, but somebody asked her if she wanted to try the 28. She said sure, and lay down behind the bipod-equipped rifle. The scope had been set for 400 yards, so she shot at a 400-yard gong.

She hit the gong but also yelped, then stood up and started rubbing her shoulder, right through the strap-on recoil pad she was wearing. The rifle also had a soft recoil pad, and yet it HURT her--which can happen with women because even if they're avid exercisers, they don't tend to build up muscle in their shoulders like men.

After she'd rubbed the should for a few minutes, she looked at me and said, "Why would anybody want to shoot something like that?"

But as I pointed out earlier, a lot of men are relatively recoil sensitive--but don't have as much sense as that young woman. Back in my own guiding days, one of the outfitter's clients was a good-sized guy, over 6 feet and maybe 190-200 pounds. He'd come to Montana to hunt pronghorn, and because the distance were supposedly so much vaster than where he lived "back East," he didn't bring the .308 he hunted whitetails with.

Instead he bought a new 7mm Remington Magnum--and when we were doing the standard check of the scopes on a 100-yard target, could NOT shoot a group smaller than several inches. In fact, we couldn't tell if the rifle was still sighted-in or not.

Somehow I ended up shooting it, partly to see if something was wrong with the scope. The ammo was factory, and resulted in perfectly adequate 3-shot groups, of maybe 1-1/4 inches. Between us we got the rifle sighted in well enough for him to get a nice goat. But he would have had a lot less trouble with his .308.


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I know I am recoil sensitive and it is probably just mental. Friends still bring me rifles to shoot/sight in for them and many are magnums of various ilks and I can tell after shooting them I am not as good as I was ( at least for a short period of time ). We can have very long shots in many if not most parts of NC ( due to farming or pastures ) and other areas of the south that I hunt but I do ok with non-magnum cartridges.


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Mule Deer brings up a great point. While I can indeed give you a great 3 shot group with a .300 mag at the range, if you send me on a 2 week cull hunt with one my shooting is going to degrade rather quickly. There's a difference between "I can do this" and "I can keep on doing this".

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Agreed. Although I’ve never been on a two week cull. I did get to shoot a clients .416 that had a super short length of pull and a problematic scope for too long. Finally had to pull the plug, go back to the shop, and wave the flag for a day or two.

I could be wrong but I still think some bad shooting that is blamed on magnums is just bad shooting.

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Ralphie,

"I could be wrong but I still think some bad shooting that is blamed on magnums is just bad shooting."

Yes, it is. Some people will be mediocre shots no matter what they're shooting, even a .22 rimfire, due to lack of practice or physical coordination, poor eyesight (even with "corrected" vision and a scope), or excitement when shooting game.

Theodore Roosevelt is a good example--well, except for scopes, which he apparently never used. He was an avid shooter, who practiced all the time, but his eyesight wasn't great even with the glasses of the day, and he apparently got excited, so took shots and chances he shouldn't have--even after he'd hunted considerably for decades.

But my major point is that all humans are individuals, with varying characteristics, including pain threshold, eye/hand coordination, etc. And recoil tolerance can change over time. My wife is a good example. She didn't start shooting rifles and hunting seriously until her mid-30s, but turned out to be a natural in both. After working her way up through a pellet rifle (so she could practice on magazine photos of big game in the garage) to a .22 rimfire to centerfires, she got really good, partly because we live where constant practice on small varmints is possible.

She got REALLY good, and fast, when we lived in a country house where her 2nd-story office window overlooked our garden. She kept a .22 next to her desk, and when a Richardson's ground squirrel showed up in the garden, she'd shove her wheeled office chair over to the window, and whop! That also translated to shooting big game, and she eventually shot rifles up to .416 Remington Magnum with no problems. Among other rifles, she shot a 6-1/2 pound .30-06 VERY effectively, with 180-grain handloads at 2800+ fps.

But about 12-15 years ago she started getting recoil headaches. This can happen as we get older, because we're less flexible, and recoil tends to affect some people much like a concussion (though even doctors can disagree about the definition of concussion). She eventually switched to a 6-1/2-pound .308 Winchester as her "big" rifle, and used it very well with 150-grain premium bullets, both in North America and Africa.

The headache problem, however, grew even worse, and eventually we had to add a small muzzle brake to the rifle--and handload 130-grain bullets to 150-grain velocities. This has proven to be a good solution, since her headache problem has apparently stabilized. The last elk she killed was the biggest cow either of us has taken, as large as many mature bulls, taken at around 250 yards quartering toward her. The 130-grain TTSX broke the left leg just above the big shoulder joint, traveling through both lungs--and the cow staggered 20-25 yards, obviously done for, before falling.

This is just another example of how humans are individuals, which people like peeshooter fail to recognize--along with the fact that bullet quality and placement make more difference than the amount of powder or recoil. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that some hunters (usually but not always men) equate recoil with "killing power."

But the assumption that all humans are exactly alike (and especially like "me") is a common human failing.


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It's already been pointed out that the .300 mag is about the same as a .308 Win just a little farther out. I personally don't think people shoot enough. Naturally people react to loud noise and physical impact. Shooting often helps you overcome the natural reaction and you "master" the firearm you choose. Some never do.

A well constructed bullet, even if it is out a a smaller cartridge and of a smaller diameter can still be effective. It's up to us to determine what we will or won't accept. The only reason small calibers with proper bullets are questionable is if a bigger blood trail is needed. Poor shot placement once again comes back to practicing. Poor bullet placement is just that. A bigger bullet may be more forgiving, but it doesn't make up for it much of the time.

I think the current trend of ultra light rifles, smaller faster rounds, and higher quality optics all combine to offer the worst performance for those who don't practice. A heavier rifle tames recoil a bit and can steady a wiggly hold, smaller faster cartridges that are easy to shoot from a bench well can lead to overconfidence in the field, right along with high magnification scopes. I see people who rarely shoot show up once a year, talking about how they shot up a box of ammo "sighting in". They have decent glass, a decent rifle, and decent ammo. What else do they need? I have rifles that I haven't adjusted the scope on in many years.

Most would be better off buying and shooting the same ammo forever, but shooting more of it. Putting a Nightforce on in place of a Bushnell doesn't fix much.


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Samuel Colt.

�Common sense is genius dressed up in work clothes.� - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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