Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Can a person ruin a cartridge for you?

Another classic example of missing the point. Individual preferences. Perhaps you are too dumb to grasp that concept?

Yes, a person can ruin a cartridge for me.

Way back in the early 1980's we were hunting deer on a property and another hunter was there at the same time.

He scoffed at our 270's and 6.5-06. Of course he was carrying a 7mm Rem Mag. the best thing ever! Our group filled our tags with no muss, no fuss. Guess which cartridge wounded a deer we spent most of the day unsuccessfully tracking.

I know it was the shooter, but to this day bring up 7mm Rem Mag and I cringe.

I have been a looney for a long time, but am slowly getting over it. Have owned rifles in almost every caliber, but have settled on five calibers (seven cartridges) with no interest in expanding.

X2 ..... While I do not own a 6.5CM and prefer the older classic cartridges, I fully concede that the 6.5CM it probably the best cartridge out there right now for Joe Avg. deer hunter esp if he is not a handloader. It really does not have much to offer in ballistic terms but does offer much in the way of practical advantage over some other similar cartridges.

- Large selection of modern rifles (new & used) with proper twist bbls for longer bullets.
- Plenty of good accurate factory ammo available everywhere.
- Plenty of available brass and bullets.
- Fits well in a short action with room to spare for longer bullets out to the lands.
- Accurate
- Easy on the recoiling end.

Some of the above can be applied to other cartridges but not all of them. I do own a 6CM and the only reason for that choice is the bbl twist (custom bbl) and it fits better in a 700SA than the 243.

As much as we hate to admit it, all of us here could live very well with a 30-06, 6.5CM and a 223.

Growing up my father was, and still is, a big fan of short action cartridges. He hates recoil. His favorites are 22-250 Rem, 243 win, and his big bore 308 win with which he killed three elk. I have never been interested in a 22-250 partially because it was always Dad's round. Had a bad hunting experience with the 243 Win failing to anchor two well hit coyotes, so that soured me on the 243.

My tastes run different and I gravitated towards standard action length chamberings such as 30-06, 35 Whelen and 280 Rem. Though lately I've come to appreciate the older European equivalents. 6.5x54 M-S, 8x57mm and 9.3x57mm. Long range hunting has seldom been necessary. I can only think of two game animals I've taken at "long range". I'm not into all the long range hype and don't really have much need for high B.C. heavy for caliber bullets. From 0 to 300 yds even a cast lead bullet will do just fine.

LMBO!!

For years, I shunned the .30-06 Spgfld. Not because there was anything wrong with the cartridge, but because EVERYBODY had one. Everybody in our camp had either a .30-30 or a .30-06.
One guy had a Rem 742 in '06 and a Win M70* in .270.
He killed deer with both.

I wanted to be "different".....so I bought a .270 Win! LOL!

* - it had a Kohlmorgen(sp?) scope on it!

Actually, I'm not sure who turned me ON to the .45-70 when I was in my forties... But ole Elmer was involved. Where I was doing 90+% of hunting was in forested-brush country, and I wanted to do my first ever bear hunt. While I owned a .338 Win Mag in a Sako FS Carbine at the time (and a few other conventional rifles), I thought this was a job (and excuse) to own my first 1895 Marlin in .45-70 - and I was an experienced handloader by then. Long story short: I not only got my first bear with that rifle (and a handloaded 400gr Speer bullet) but have owned a total of ten .45-70s, including 4 Marlins, 3 Ruger No.1s and three other single-shots. It became my favorite cartridge (handloads) in those rifles. My last, a new Ruger No.1 was given a longer throat to accomodate the long monos, and that made it into a short-'n-handy .458 Win in ballistics. It was my favorite rifle for game hunting for 20 years when it got traded on a Ruger No.1 in .458 Win Mag. Not that I wanted more power, but more weight for the same ballistics because at age 80 I wanted some relief from the recoil. Today, that 10 lb Ruger No.1 in .458 WM is my favorite rifle at age 87. Why? Just because in my forties, the .45-70 introduced me to "stoppers", in their tracks! And I needed that where I hunted then... and now!

My 2nd son recently purchased a 6.5CM. A couple weeks ago I was shooting some test loads from my .375 H&H for an up-coming bear hunt, and he was shooting some initial handloads from his new Winchester Low Wall single-shot, asking if I'd chronograph some... Of course, I'd done that many times in the past - but not for that rifle. Anyway, I did. The very crooked lever on that rifle injured my index finger in recoil, and I felt sharp recoil from the narrow, hard butt pad! In all, it was more brutal to shoot than my 9.75 lb, .375 H&H firing 250gr TTSX's at 2900 fps!

Why do we choose what we like? Because of who we are... not because of someone else. My son hates "recoil", so he says.

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

It occurs to me that there are too many cartridges available, but being as how we're all loonies, ain't it fun to see how many we can own and argue about.

Some guys think they are super-cool based on the cartridges they choose to hunt with. And it definitely goes both ways.

Yup .... That be true and I'm guilty of that vanity.

Shooting a 257Roberts, 275Rigby, 222Remington, 6CM, 300H&H and other near obsolete cases along with a few wildcats put me in the top of cool in my own eyes. <eye roll>

For me it's usually the rifle I'm after. Whatever it happens to be chambered in can be a plus, but not really a deal breaker either way. If I have to tool up for a new cartridge then here we go again.

I'm assuming that's the 160gr Hornady Interlock? Can you share more details on your experience with that bullet?

Pointless.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation did a survey a few years ago and found that 90% of hunters don't handload....

Most of my cartridge 'history' has run toward the conventional.... BUT, there's just something about the 'odd' er stuff for me, certainly less conventional....

7x57 AI

7x61 Sharpe/Hart

7x65 Brenneke

40-40 Maynard, Paper Patched

Paper Patch 45-70

One that was definitely influenced by another was the 243 Win. Truth be known, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with the cartridge..... but I helped trail, hunt down, track, whatever, and NOT recover, several of his deer that were shot with the 243.... Florida Whitetails, not exactly the biggest or toughest Cervidae on the planet......

So I have avoided it..............

Not fair perhaps,

YMMV

8mmx57JS,


Yes. Have seen it fail to reach the ribs on the far side with a shot behind the shoulders on an average whitetail--while on another occasion it broke both shoulders and exited on a similar sized deer. Decided it was too inconsistent....

Phil Shoemaker had similar experiences.

Interesting to hear. Do you believe it was bad batches of bullets?

I've had poor results with the 140gr Sierra gamekings. Had that bullet disintegrate at modest velocity of 2650 fps on a couple of shoulder shots on deer a decade ago. On both occasions two different bucks one at 50 yards the other around 240 yards didn't reach the vitals, needed follow ups to put them down.

Interesting intel - thanks JB!

Hmm, I thought it was just me...160 gr erratic results with 6.5 MS velocities...guess not. I have not done any credible testing, but just because they were cheap I bought a few bags of 156 PPU, tried them in my unfamous 'snowbox' test media, and they performed almost exactly like the very old 156 Norma factory loads used as a control for bullet testing in the MS 1903 and Norwegian Krag. But, admittedly the snowbox is not an animal.

In elk camp about 3 years ago I discovered everyone except a guy who traveled from Illinois was shooting a 6.5mm something. Cartridges included CM, PRC, and RPM. A total of 6, 6.5mm rifles.

Mine was the only one using handloads.

[/quote]Interesting to hear. Do you believe it was bad batches of bullets?

I've had poor results with the 140gr Sierra gamekings. Had that bullet disintegrate at modest velocity of 2650 fps on a couple of shoulder shots on deer a decade ago. On both occasions two different bucks one at 50 yards the other around 240 yards didn't reach the vitals, needed follow ups to put them down.[/quote]

Dunno if was bad batches, but Phil and I were hunting in widely separated parts of the country. Do know that Lapua's Mega 156-grain 6.5 bullet has a jacket with much heavier "sidewalls" that performs very consistently.