Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Great Quote from Mule Deer

Amen.

Good comments by many in this thread, some funny. I will end with this, I killed a variety of critters with my old ADL 7 Mag, that came OEM with a Stainless Steel barrel, that was blacked by the factory, I believe using iron oxide? 145 Speer on my largest and first buck....that bullet blew up btw at 30 yds, it was the BTSP......deer did not go far, but it destroyed the front shoulders. 115's at 3375 mv, later throttled back to around 3-3,100 on coyotes, etc. My then father in law enjoyed it with either 162 Hornady SP or 160 Sierra SP, whichever loaded at the time, around 2860 mv.....

No doubt, the 7 RM is a fine round....but I guess 270s are more popular due to less recoil. An accurate 7 RM, using good loads, used by shooters who can shoot them well in the field, they do a great job like many rounds.

Since then, I killed critters, including deer and coyotes with various 6mm BR's....just as dead as the 7 mag, including my longest deer kill. 400 yds that was ranged at the far end of a field, with a 105 amax at 2850.

Whatever you use folks, just make sure you use a bullet that does 3 things.

1) HITS Vitals
2) Penetrates vitals
3) Expands so it destroys vitals

Most here know that.......but practice makes perfect. Tolerable blast, recoil and flinch-free shooting allows the best chance for proper placement. LESS Recoil allows more said practice in a session. I can shoot way more rounds of 6BRs, 243, 6.5 CM, Swede, 260, etc. in a day at the range than any 7 mag, and I am not a fan of muzzle brakes giving ear splitting blast with big rounds. Just me. YMMV.

Good hunting, be safe.

I find myself using my magnums less and less. But, they're in the safe, ready to go if needed.

If the 7RM hadn't scratched an itch, had something solid to offer at the time it was rolled out, it would have never caught on like it did, belted round notwithstanding.

The market chooses, the market culls. Sales and numbers don't lie.

The 7RM was a home run at the time, out of the park. Still a good round.

Rem had enough strike outs, was about time for a victory.

Even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then; broke clock is right twice a day, etc. etc.....

DF

I dunno MD. I've shot deer right through the heart, as later established by checking that organ, and as you'd know typically they do run off. Usually not very far, but they can take a bit of finding if they fetch up in the thick stuff. FWIW I once shot a fox fair through the heart with a .308" bullet, and he took some finding too - all under the eyes of so-called mates ragging me that I'd missed him. He probably made it the better part of 100 yards, and ended up in cover.

Of course it doesn't mean that the .308 is a bad round for deer (or foxes). There are better places to put the bullet though, IMHO.

Dan,

Yes, I have seen that as well.

But he was not an experienced hunter, and also not a great shot, as I noticed when witnessing him shoot. The only evidence that he shot the deer in the heart is his claim to have shot it in the heart. There was zero evidence that he'd even hit the deer.

Also, he'd only hunted deer in Pennsylvania, where the average success rate is 10%. Just from talking to him I could tell his success rate was no better than average--the reason he was so upset.

But my main point is that he firmly believed the fault lay in the .308 Winchester, which was ridiculous.

Well yeah, if you miss it doesn't really matter what you are using....

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Well yeah, if you miss it doesn't really matter what you are using....
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Now THAT is a great quote.

I have a totally irrational despise for the 30-06. My dad took me hunting well before I was able to carry a gun myself. Hunting "parties" were reasonably large (to me) in those days. Groups of 8-12. All of our hunting was "deer drives" flushing them from tree-rows, cattails, later on out of CRP.

Most of the male adults shot 270's or 30-06, kids and wives shot 243's, 22-250's, or the odd 223. None of the people who owned 30-06's were proficient with them. Misses, gut-shots, shooting off legs, etc. I know in my head it's got nothing to do with the 30-06. Given that I hand-load the 30-06 is like the "Leatherman" of rifle chamberings in that it'll do almost anything. That said, I hate it, I still hate it, I just can't get past the past I guess.

I have an immense fondness for the 270Win which IMO only adds to the lunacy of my disdain for the 30-06 given how close they truly are.

I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other regarding the 7Rem. I have 2 myself, one is a push-feed Winlight that I bought to rob the McMillan stock off of and the other is a SS Classic M70 that I bought as a "builder" as someone cut it off to 23" and it looks like they used an angle-grinder to crown the bbl. The 2 guys I can think of that use the 7Rem Mag as their primary big game rifle are both proficient with them. One has been shooting blue-box Federal 150's since the 1970's, the other shoots Federal premium 160 Partitions. Lots of clean kills on deer, a few elk, a couple of moose, and the guy who shoots partitions is also quite deadly on coyotes, even on the run.

The 6.5 Creedmoor is perhaps the best executed product launch in the history of the shooting sports. They saw where projectile R&D was headed so they twisted it and throated it properly out of the gate. Then they developed excellent factory ammo in both hunting and target applications. The intangible IMO was/is the reasonable recoil that makes a person want to shoot up every round they bring to the range, every day they go to the range.

Here's a funny thought:

The 7 RM can do everything the 6.5 CM can do with more recoil and less accuracy.

But in it's day, it was the long range solution.

In the real world time of flight matters. In other words this notion that a rangefinder and turrets has negated the need for velocity is a bit misguided. Flattened trajectory to 400 yards is many times a nice to have.

I own a couple of 7mm RM’s. I hadn’t paid them much attention lately until MD’s thread and later article on the round. So I’ve been wringing them out at the range the last few weeks. I’ve been playing mostly with “obsolete” rounds before this.
There’s not much to dislike about the cartridge. On my first elk hunt, near the Selway River. I was given quite a bit of grieve because three of the partners were carrying 7mm RM’s the fourth was carrying a 300 Win Mag. I was carrying the lowly 308 Winchester 600 Remington.
I was thinking “hiking up and down mountains“, they were thinking “across the canyon shooting“.
Those 7mm’s I own shoot 140 and 150 grain Partitions at 3,000 FPS. I read where people can almost get the same velocity with smaller cases as those 7mm’s do. Some how that makes them superior.
I have not taken either hunting for quite a while, too busy with classic cartridges. Maybe I’ll see if a 150 grain Partition will kill a white tail doe this year. Or maybe I’ll try a 30 Remington 141 pump.
Having said that, I’m more than a little tired of hearing about a comparatively new cartridge that mimics a cartridge that the Swedes chambered In their 1896 Mauser.

When thousandths of a second matter, your game animal is hundreds of yards away?

I don't think the difference in TOF out to 400 yds matters if the difference in velocity at muzzle is a few hundred feet per second. If that was the case, then people would be arguing for the highest BC bullet possible for bullet weight, as they lose velocity slower over all distances. But that isn't the case. Most people imagine vast MV matters more than high BC. That is true out to a few hundred yards. Bullets that lose velocity slower rapidly catch up to ping pong balls started at mach 3. Think "Tortoise and the Hare".

Huntnshoot. I think pathfinder was talking about bullet placement rather than the time the bullet is in flight and such things as how far the game traveled.
I don’t twist knobs on my scopes. I try to learn what the bucket drop might be. Higher velocity means more forgiveness in judging distance.
People don’t all hunt in the same manner. As far as that goes, game don’t always appear in the same manner. Sometimes a game animal will be present for minutes or more. Sometimes it’s seconds - little time to get the range finder out and adjust the elevation knob.
So while I like to take out a cast bullet shooter sometimes, other times I’ll get as flat a shooting rifle I own - pronghorn hunting fits in this last category for me.