Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 7mm Remington Magnum?

A lot of handoading hunters believe 3000 fps is magic--and anything less ain't. (As my late friend Stuart Carty in Idaho once said, "There's something about all those zeros!")

My experience is there ain't anything magic about all those zeroes.... :-)

My uncle who is a wise man and a great hunter used to say that a young guy who is in good shape and has great speed and endurance generally will do very well in a street fight. It is that cruiserweight champ. The 7 Remington is the cruiserweight champion. I have three 7 Remingtons but I have only used two of them to hunt with recently. I am 51 years old.
I know some great hunting guides like Kirk and Cole Ellis out of Devil's Mountain Lodge that use the 7 Remington magnum exclusively. They have never had a problem.

I have used the 7 Rem Magnum to great effect and only had one issue that was due to operator error and a freak September snow storm. When I was 19 years old, I shot a 55 inch bull moose at less than 20 yards with 175 grain partitions and did what I always thought was priority when I was growing up of busting down the shoulder of the moose. The upper should shot had been dynamite on four moose that I had shot earlier. The moose was covered with about 2 inches of frozen ice armor-we were being pounded by freezing rain- and the bullets weren't opening and the weather conditions were so miserable that the shock didn't seem to work as well. I shot the moose four times through the shoulder and then when the moose figured out that I was the cause of the pain and squared up to charge me, I shot him right between the eyes. I was out of ammo and while I was butchering up the moose by myself, I saw a sow grizzly and two grown 2 year old cubs at about 350 yards reading the smells of the wind that was blowing in their direction. I was 1/2 mile from the camp on Tyone Creek and had no more rifle ammo and had left my trusty 44 Rem Mag blackhawk at camp. I thought how I might be stranded in and have to walk the 45 miles out to Eureka and I figured that I better scare off those grizzlies. One of my mentors, Al Taylor, told me that bears don't have the best eyesight and upon occasion will run from what they think is a bigger bear. I saw an 8ft dead spruce tree with a root structure that was near the moose. The bears came closer and closer. Finally, the big straw colored sow was only 45 yards away from the killsite. It was about 3:30PM but the snow squall and freezing rain was continuing to blast everything. I picked up the tree with the roots up in the air about 10ft up and carried it directly at the big sow. I yelled bloody murder and the sow thinking she had ran into a true 10ft monster, popped her jaws once, turned a 180 and started running flat out away from me. She swatted her two cubs who got out ahead of her and I watched them disappear into the snow/sleet covered hills 500 yards away. They never came back.

We ended up trading that 7 Rem Mag for another Ruger blackhawk to Al Taylor who shot a 9 foot brown bear that was trying to kill the chickens in his daughter's chicken coop. Al who had used 30/30s most of his life, commented,"It blew some of the lungs out of that durty booger." He used it to dispatch four more problem bears before Al passed on to his homestead in the sky.

One of the best moose hunters and a genuinely Alaskan sized character used a 7 Remington Mag in a Sako Finnbear to kill probably over 100 moose. Pat Madros Sr., was a giant of a man who took me under his wing when I moved out and taught in Nulato. I will never forget how he could carry a full barrel of gas on his shoulder from his truck to his boat. Pat was a Koyukon Athabaskan was about 6ft 1 and 280lbs and had hands the size of those Costco rotisserie chickens. He was a Navy vet and a big supporter of the local school. Pat kept the village in order. Pat knew every channel on the Yukon, the Koyukuk, the Kaiyuh and most other rivers in the region. He could run those rivers in the dark at night and I went with him. He would use that Sako to take down moose for his entire clan and for folks who might not be good enough to "harvest" moose cleanly. He was dead nuts good with that rifle. He could call them in and he always had so many honey holes that you would see 10-20 big moose per day. You could get very picky hunting with him because he knew the country so well. He would hunt in many different areas of the river. I saw him personally take 7 different bulls with it. His rifle was accurate from 50 yards to 400 yards and would put the moose down right there. Pat often would allow the people he was hunting with to take the shot and then like a guide would provide a quick followup that was finish the moose. Pat knew all of the stories of the river and would talk about hunters, strange creatures, spirits, and legendary stories of the past. I left Nulato and moved into Fairbanks because my son decided that he liked computers and technology and my father and the rest of my family had moved there. Sometimes, when I am alone in the woods. I hear him. He had a big booming voice when in town but would speak softly in the woods showing his great respect to the land.

I've never been to deer camp. Mostly just shoot them a few yards off the jeep trail and load them in the back. Maybe have to try it someday and tell them boys "I don't always shoot a 7 mag but when I do..."

Some gun writer once compared assuming the worst with ANY rifle that quits shooting is something like assuming a pickup that won't start needs a new battery or starter motor--when the problem might very well be the cable connections to the battery need cleaning....

Of course, he made that comparison because he sometimes assumed the worst, instead of checking the simple stuff first.