Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Hunting Deer With Smaller Calibers

The more of 'em I shoot, the more I believe in "boolits, not head stamps."

Shout-out 30-06 will probably become a 6mm Rem or AI.

I agree. If I hunted open country, an accurate 6mm of some sort would likely be great. Even if there was little blood trail or not even an exit, you are likely still okay. Where I hunt, a briar thicket or swamp could be 10 feet away, and you may just have to take the shot angle you get. In those instances, I do like something that exits more often than not and will usually leave some kind of decent blood trail. Of course, a DRT hit is preferable, but not always going to happen. If I'm going out to a field to shoot a doe or just rambling around with a rifle that might see some hog action, I don't mind toting a smaller caliber rifle, as things are either going to be easy shots or shots taken at a varmint of opportunity.

Its better to have a bit more gun than you need, than not enough gun. If you shoot a .270, .280,.30-06 even on the sub-200lb game, then if you hunt the larger game, you are not going to be afraid of the recoil and you're going to be used to the bigger gun, and be able to shoot it more accurately than if you nearly always shoot a tiny caliber. The exception to this would be if you are shooting a very high volume of the sub-200 lb game with your small caliber and occasionally also shoot your medium size gun.

Shootem, you really need to stop living in a pretend world. Use gold, not gold-plated, shoot at game rather than bowling pins, and seek reassurance for you views from experienced people, not your 7 year old son (or his recollection of experiences when he was a 7 year old).

I always love that the "big chamberings" crowd always assume that those of us who use smaller chamberings do so because we are somehow "afraid of recoil". I can guarantee that I handle the recoil of any commercially available chambering and do so with accuracy, which is something I rarely see with guys hunting whitetails with their .338 or .300 mags.
I own many big bore rifles. I can shoot them more accurately than most. I just choose not to because I don't need to. I can get what I need to get done with what I am shooting them with. Just like I own a 20lb sledge hammer and it will drive the hell out of a nail, but I chose to use my carpenters hammer because it just the better tool for the job.

The actions too big. Get yourself a Winchester Model 70 controlled round feed short action for 6mm Rem size and keep the 06 in 06

You must never have hunted whitetails in northern New England, where the majority of shots presented are on moving deer under 100 yards in thick cover, probably the reason that pumps and semi-autos are popular among still-hunters and snow tracker.

I don't let my friends from NH carry their rifles on the first day of hunting season when they come to Nebraska, 'cause almost all of them want to shoot the first legal deer that they see. They aren't used to seeing a couple dozen deer nearly every day that they go afield, so they have to learn to be a little selective. I remember the day that I took a high school buddy out to an alfalfa field at dusk during the late antlerless season and there were at least 100 deer in the 80 acre field. My friend said that he'd never seen that many deer in all the time that he'd hunted in NH and VT, much less that many deer at one time and in one field.

Different situations dictate the use of different methods.


i grew up hunting/fishing northeastern new york state adirondacks/along with its lakes ponds rivers and streams and vermonts green mountains and all over maine {,which we still hunt ny & maine every year ] so I'm extremely familiar with hunting/ fishing the east coast and what where when and how its done there .
ill stick with my bolt action browning x bolts from heavy timber in maine to wide open prairie here in montana my 280 ai & 6.5cm have killed animals just as fast and effectively at 10 feet in heavyy cover in maine as they have at 500 yards[which is my maximum distance i will shoot ] here in montana
seen to many biggame animals lost or need multiple follow up shots due to trying to shoot it on the run in heavy cover or shooting at ranges they miscalculated distance /angles on {thankfully I've never in 40 + yrs of hunting needed a second shot or lost an animal NEVER] ,
and i atribute that to the fact i won't shoot at a running animal no matter how big it's rack is [ i dont get all crazyy and weak kneed over the size of an animals head gear ]
i won't pull the trigger unless i have a perfect broad side shot .
if i don't feel comfortable shooting i don't pull the trigger i either pass or i wait it out to see if it will give me a broadside shot
i won't hunt with anyone or allow anyone on our ranch who insist on trying to hit big game on the run or claims they can accurately kill big game @ 700+ yards
like you said different strokes for different folks

I'm picky, but I'm not that picky.

Quartering angles don't bother me at all.

Yep. I wish it were true - but alas…nope.

I’m not even sure how many broadside shots I’ve been fortunate to enjoy - not many. A decently directed lead-dart has a funny way of penetrating from many angles thereby boosting my confidence & patience with almost every shot. I like the last rib up thru the brisket personally. I can move into position while they are moving away.

Btw - full disclosure no experience to note shooting deer below .24 cal - I’ve got a great load for my .222 & a 55g Horn SP & 50gr tsx but haven’t tried them. Other than the problem between my ears, they should work great.

FINALLY! An honest well thought out post!

Could you elaborate, please?

Well my son’s not 7 anymore. Quite a bit older than that. But we both have memories of hunting together through the years. He’s a good shot, a good hunter and a good son. And he’s almost as good at recognizing a ssholes as I am. Almost, but he’d have picked up on you quickly. Don’t speak of my son again.

Well, your results are different to mine. I've had an all copper bullet travel the full length of a large buck and the bullet exit out the ham without expanding...a second shot was required. I've had a bonded bullet blow up on the shoulder of a doe!! she dropped on the spot, lay down as if dead and when I went to get the pick-up, she got up and started to run off. A different time with a quartering away shot, the bullet skimmed along the ribs...it died but the wound was not what I intended. A quartering towards me shot, the bullet deflected off the shoulder and exited out the lower body...no second shot required but I was lucky. A buck shot behind the shoulder...I followed the blood trail for 200 yards and then the blood trail stopped. Spent the rest of the day and the next day looking for it...didn't find it and don't know why. A different buck with a picture perfect broadside shot, the buck moved as I squeezed the trigger...only one shot but I was lucky. Any then there are all the one shot kills which worked perfectly.

If you didn't reply to my posts in such a dogmatic manner, and were a little more courteous, then I wouldn't reply to you in a manner you dislike.

Thanks. I agree with your assessment that a Barnes, whether 50, 55, or 62 TTSX would likely have produced more desirable results.

I've read this entire thread, and one thing many hunters apparently don't realize (and perhaps wouldn't accept if they did) is that a 6mm bullet's diameter is just about the same as a .224 bullet's diameter when wrapped in an average (not deluxe) business card. In other words, there's no magical difference in diameter--or the hole made in animals, which is what kills 'em, not some magic amount of bullet diameter, weight or foot-pounds.

The difference, if any, between ".22" caliber bullets and 6mm bullets is basically in construction these days, since many modern .224 bullets overlap the weight of 6mm bullets. The big deal USED to be the difference in weight between typical .224s and 6mms, since there were very few .224s weighing as more than 55 grains, due to typical rifling twists of 1-12 or even slower. 6mm twists were generally at the very slowest 1-12 (as in the original .244 Remington) but more often 1-10 or 1-9. This made a difference in the weight of bullets that could be used, and that generally meant meant 6mm bullets were also started slower.

This was the typical solution to bullet penetration 100 years ago, when cup-and-core expanding bullets were the only ones available. But that started to change considerably in the 1930s when RWS developed their H-Mantle bullets, and changed even more in the late 1940s when the Nosler Partition appeared. But apparently some hunters are still operating under the "rules" of a century ago--which were extended in many U.S, game departments in the years after WWII due to old farts running the game departments, many of whom hated the very idea of using a ".22" on deer, or any other sort of big game, even javelina or pronghorns.

This has changed in recent years. I did some research a few years ago on U.S. "caliber regulations," and over 2/3 of the states now allow .22 centerfires on big game. Some states never had any restrictions, including my native of state of Montana--where even when I started hunting many years ago you could legally use a .22 rimfire. Apparently the Montana game department believed hunters were capable of choosing something that would work, while other states tended to micro-manage--including not only limitations on caliber, but bullet weight and even cartridge length.

Personally, I've not only killed quite a few big game animals with .224 bullets, but seen a lot more used successfully. Also know several guys who've killed elk neatly with .223s and .22-250s and didn't even use "premium" bullets! One was a U.S. Army sniper who did more than one tour in Afghanistan, who's been hunting and guiding since he was a teenager. He killed a mature cow elk with a 77-grain Hornady ELD-M (one of those horrible "target" bullets) at 450 yards, using a fast-twist .223. He put the bullet in the ribs behind the shoulder, and the elk went less than 50 yards before going down. He found the expanded bullet poking partly through the skin on the far side of the chest.

Could provide far more examples, but anybody who categorically denies that smaller-than-6mm cartridges aren't enough for big game doesn't know what they're talking about. It does NOT depend on a tiny amount of extra bullet diameter, but a bullet that penetrates and expands sufficiently, put in the right place.

In a way, these threads tend to remind me about those discussing the best brown bear cartridges. Generally, 90% of the answers are from hunters who've never seen a brown bear--and who tend to ignore the answers from guides who've seen dozens or even hundreds taken.

FWIW, I lump 224s and 6mm in the same group: I know they kill stuff. I’ve killed stuff with them. I just don’t like them in or near thick cover, in case there’s a tracking job involved. Bigger stuff makes that easier, IME. If I hunted the plains or other more open parts of the country where trailing isn’t in stuff you might have to crawl through, or there wasn’t a swamp, creek, or river a stone’s throw away, I couldn’t care less. You get the shot into whatever vitals aren’t behind something most days in the woods around here…..cns or not. You don’t always get to pick, and sometimes you get to watch them walk because they’re wearing oak vests and helmets the whole time. I don’t use my 223s or 6s in that….though I’ve culled plenty of field and crop land with them.

The earliest Nosler reloading manual I own is their second one, copyrighted 1981. It lists the 95 and 100 grain 6mm partitions. So there's been at least 41 year of more than adequate .243 penetration on ELK, much less deer, which are very thin skinned. The partitions might have been around even longer. (I'd be curious to know what year the first 6mm Nosler partition hit the market.) Bullets, powders, scopes and rangefinders have all improved dramatically since, but a lot of people still believe what their fathers and grandfather told them in the 60's and 70's.

Everyone who ranches around us killed their first elk with a 243 - except for those who used a 6 mm Remington. And I'd bet most if not all of those were with plain jane cup and core bullets.

TexasPhotog,

The earliest reference I can find to Nosler Partition 6mm bullets is in the 1964 (second edition) of HANDLOADER'S DIGEST, which lists 85 and 100-grainers. But I suspect the 6mm Partitions appeared not long after the .243 Winchester, which was introduced in 1955.