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“The .270 Winchester is probably the finest small caliber commercial load made today. It is a fine killer of our lighter big game to 350 yards.” Who wrote that? It was dean of the big bores,Elmer Keith, writing on page 230 of Elmer Keith’s Big Game Hunting.

“It is not uncommon to see .30/06 bullets break up on the shoulder bones of an elk, but the .375 bullets will plow through both shoulders and pile him up.” Those are the words of “Mr. .270,” Jack O’Connor writing in The Hunting Rifle, page 170.
I have most of the works of both these men; and what has struck me in reading them is their opinions were much closer together than even they preferred to admit. The Keith vs. O’Connor war may have been entertaining and good for selling magazines; but they really weren’t all that far apart.

Then along came creedmore…..

Lol!

They couldn’t have been too far apart. They both shot a bunch of animals and knew what worked. I could see them varying a bit but there was only so much great stuff back in their time.

Controversy sells copy. Charles Askins, Jr used it to his advantage for many years.

He sold a lot of articles, as did JOC and Elmer.

And, here we are, years after all of them are gone, still talking about them...

DF

They weren't that far apart at all.

What a crock of sheit, who actually believes that bullets just blow up on an elk?

My recently deceased buddy, Bob, used to know Elmer Keith from the various shows and conventions. Bob was an outdoor writer and editor.

This was late in Elmer's career. He was drinking quite a bit by then. So was Bob. One day Elmer pulled out some typewritten pages and thrust them at Bob.

"Read this." said Elmer. "Tell me what you think."

Bob read it. It was supposed to be copy for a magazine article. It was absolutely incomprehensible. Bob told Elmer as much.

"I was afraid of that," Elmer replied. He took it back and shoved it in his pocket and that was that.

Bob was probably holding one of the last pieces Elmer ever wrote or tried to write. I met Bob shortly after this.

Hell I have seen plenty of bullets come apart on deer. Especially 150 grain 30-06.

Once again, just because YOU haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It used to be more common, back when all hunting bullets were cup-and-cores, especially after high-velocity "magnums" became popular in the 1960s--but it still happens today, partly because some hunters still don't grasp differences in bullet construction-- or refuse to pay more for ammo, or don't understand how much heavier elk shoulder bones are than deer bones.

Well, for my part, and I'm no ballistician or whatever you call him, but basic bullet performance to me is more dependent on bullet construction, not caliber. Yeah, a .375 has got more ass to it so it can penetrate farther, but that could also depend on all else being equal.

+1 to Mister Mule Deer

It used to be, at least up until the mid-50's or so that most everyone was shooting crappy bullets, at least from the way the stories indicate. Core-lokt came out in 1939, but a lot of guys were shooting stuff that either penciled or blew up. One way to compensate for this was to use heavier bullets and the other way was to use larger calibers. I'm sure Keith had his reasons.

In the middle of all this, from the mid-50's to about the mid-70's, you had a lot of chamberings come out, and folks experimented. I'd say it took until the mid-80's for bullet technology to fully catch up. In the meanwhile, a fellow had to be careful not to pick a combination of rifle/ammo/game that didn't cause him grief. Nowadays, it's much, much easier to make those choices.

i capped a big bull elk out for a friend in Montana up high in the snow area ,his first shot was on the shoulder at 30 yards this bull elk ran 40 yards looked back at him and he then shot again and put one thru his lungs bull went another 50 yards fell over dead. he said to me that bull never needed a second shot but when i got it capped out i notice the first bullet blew up on the outside of the shoulder bone just under the hide and he really never hurt that old bull elk much. bullet was a Remington Core -Lokt 180 gr. out of a 7mm Remington Mag. cartridge this happened about 10 years ago bull scored 349 B.C.,yes sometimes bullets blow up so don`t be cheap when you buy ammo to hunt with. when i load ammo for a few friends and family hunters i always wanna here how that bullet preformed and if they can show me the bullet. > i also worked at a wild game processing plant and the first 10 days we got in 250 animals deer, antelope,elk , moose. let me say this i got a real education on bullets those first 10 days for around 10-12 years out there in the fall, we had Hornady people,Nosler and some Federal people bring their game here at Gillete ,Wyoming to Owen Heins wild game processing.

I've had a 350 grain Interlock from a .450 Marlin come apart on a Bull Moose. I still have the fragments in a bag. There must be a hundred fragments from this one bullet. So I have no problem believing bullets can come apart on Elk shoulders.

shaman,

Yes, Keith did have his reasons for recommending larger, heavier bullets at moderate muzzle velocities--but even some of them weren't very good. On his first African safari he took a big double for buffalo, etc.--and for plains game a .333 OKH (basically the .338-06) with handloaded Kynoch 300-grain bullets, both softnoses and solids. Even at the modest velocities of the .333, the Kynochs came apart, and sometimes didn't even exir Thompson gazelles weighing around 50 pounds. They were a disaster on bigger game, and eventually he started using the solids--which of course did not kill very quickly. Keith came to the conclusion that African plains game was incredibly tough and hard to kill--which may be one reason so many still believe that today.

That was in 1958, when Keith could have used a .30-06 with handloaded 180-grain Nosler Partitions, which would have worked fine. He evidently never did fully grasp how differently Partitions worked than cup-and-cores.

Core-Lokts were among the best cup-and-cores early on, because their jackets featured heavy "sidewalls," which tended to prevent bullets from coming apart. But the only heavy side-wall CL's still made today are the roundnose models, evidently because not many hunters buy them any more, and the forming dies don't wear out very fast.

The Pointed Soft-Point Core-Lokts were "redesigned" around 1990 with thinner jackets, probably because they're easier to make. In fact, around that time some of the PSP "Core-Lokts" I sectioned had Interlock rings! Dunno is that's still true, but Hornady Interlock Spire Points are definitely one of the best cup-and-cores made. Which is why some hunters call them "the poor man's premium."

I'm a huge fan of Hornady Interlock SP's.

In general, I'll start off looking for a solution that comes in a red box before trying something else. My reason is that, for the most part, I'm not trying to do anything to outside the norm and I figure the standard IL's are going to perform well inside a normal envelope. Lobbing IL's at whitetails inside 200 yards is not exactly rocket science.

So far, the only disappointments I've had are their older 30-30 offerings and the .257 117 grain SP fired out of 25-06. I have switched to the RN version of the latter. After trying Hornady 150 and 170 grain 30-30 bullets I switched to Winchester 150 grain Powerpoints.


Keith was writing for his time as was O'Connor. If Keith had been able to go online and order bullets from the Internet, I'm sure things would have been much different.

We have better bullets, overall, than those guys had.

As JB noted, Elmer could have been using a Partition, which was available, wouldn't have seen bullets breaking up. Elmer's answer was to go with bigger, heavier bullets, which in that scenario, made sense, at least to him.

Even today, matching bullet design parameters with velocity is important for optimal terminal performance.

Loony stuff.

DF

Same here Shaman I'm an even bigger fan of Hornady rejects when they were available,just couldn't beat them with a stick. MB

Older gun-guys today probably look back at making do with those old cup/core bullet designs the same way that older car-guys look back at making do with the old bias-ply tire designs. Things have changed.

"Good ole days" may not have been that stellar...

Maybe the memories, not necessarily the technology...

DF