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

Yup. Same thinking, I shot one in WV with a 270 and 130 grain bullets at 2650 fps. Perfect.

I am sorta sick of people telling me their favorite cartridge breaks the rules of physics, but overall I try not to let idiots ruin it for me.

Correct.

Does he vet these hunters and see how they can shoot or how bad they get buck fever?

Nope. I can make up my own mind objectively.

Just curious: How do you do that with cartridges you've never used before?

I shot one with a .270 and 130gr ILs loaded to presumeably 2800-2900 and it failed to exit, but actually knocked hair off his ribs on the far side. No blood because I was shooting offhand and hit him right about the centerline, so once I found the hair I followed him and found him lying in a pool of water in a ravine. His lungs were soup; found the bullet sloshing around in the blood once I pulled the mess out. Perfect performance, except for the lack of an exit. If I had failed to find that hair and follow his tracks in the leaves, I might have easily assumed I’d missed, or that a .270 wasn’t enough, IF it’d been my first time using one.

That deer was shot on the second morning of a real frog-strangler, and his winter coat was as soaked as I was. I’ve often wondered if that affected the expansion of that Hornady or if it was just the close range and velocity.

i really dislike just finding hair or a drop of blood. i like swaths of bright red blood on the ground and in the trees and brush. i really, really dislike tracking a fatally wounded deer that left hair or drop of blood.

the 130gr Hornady Interlock bullet did preform exactly as you say, the bullet expanded like a mushroom.

I spent a couple hours beating myself up, convinced I’d muffed a snowbird opportunity. My soggy son came over to pick me up and go back to the house, but I decided to give the ground where the deer stood one more going over. That tuft of hair was a good ways behind that spot. Never seen that before. Anyway, I perked up and started following the path he’d taken. Not one drop of blood, just disturbed leaves and a dead buck in about a foot and a half of rainwater, about 150 yards away. Lots of fun getting him out of that ravine with all the downed trees and pools of water. That was the last one I shot in Mineral
County, 2011. Typical scraggly-ass 8-point for that area.

When I was a teenager I hunted with borrowed guns, mostly a .300 Savage W/O recoil pad and 20 ga. pump shotgun W/O recoil pad.

I had a chance to go deer hunting with my bud and his dad on their family farm and they had m94 30-30s. On the trip his Dad asked what rifle I borrowed and I said 30-06 and he laughed. Then ever once in a while, he would giggle and say something like the smallest guy has to use the biggest gun, etc..
I didn't get what was funny, I had checked the sights at a gun range and remember being surprised it kicked less with a recoil pad than the 20 ga. I was used to. 30-06 Recoil with a pad didn't seem like any big deal at all.

Before I bought my first rifle in 1966 I had studied ballistic charts from the Shooters Bible and determined I wanted a .270 for west Texas semi-open and windy plains, so that's what I bought. Ive mostly shot 25-06, .270, and 7 RM. Then about 5 years ago the Gander Mountain store had a going out of business sale and I stopped by specifically to buy a stainless Tikka in .308 Win. and they were out of those but had one in 30-06 and I bought it. Did notice the factory pad was hard, so replaced it with a screw on "Limbsaver" pad. No recoil problem after that, and was surprised how accurate it is, and I like it a lot!
Since owning it, Ive noticed some 30-06 predjudice, people seem to lose excitement over this caliber. I don't care it makes a good size entry hole and I'm keeping it.

I've never let some knob talk me out of using or buying what I want.

Also never followed the mainstream or popularity crazes.

That's why I own rifles chambered to .222, .22-6mm, 6mm Rem, 257 Robert's, 6.5x57mm Mauser, 280 Rem., 300 Savage, 7.62x54r, 30 Gibbs, 303 British, 8x57mm Mauser, 33 WCF, .358 Win., .358 Norma, 9.3x57, 9.3x64, 9.5x57, .375 Whelen Imp., 38-40, 450 Alaskan, and 470 Nitro Express.

I do own several. 308's, a couple of 30-06's, and wife shoots a .270.

back in early '80s to early '90s, they used to say if you didn't hunt with '06, you didn't hunt period!!! i was hunting with 30-30 at that time. i was around 18yo when i bought the Remington m700 Mountain Rifle in '06. i killed a few deer with it, traded it and bought a Rem m700 BDL in '06. traded it and got a Savage m116 in '06, traded it for a Rem m700 ADL, traded it and got CDL, traded it and two Rem m7 in 7-08. (i killed deer on every '06 and 7-08). i was young and dumb once. i didn't have an '06 for years, but now i got two of them. Remington m760 (dad's gun RIP) and Arisaka Type 99 with a Lyman aperture sight). i know it will still kill deer, but the '06 seems to me, well boring. the 270 Win (which i love), 6.5CM, 30-30, 45-70, 308 Win, 25-06, 243 Win and everything like it to me is boring. i like my calibers to be different. 30-40 Krag, 444 Marlin, 35/30-30, 9.3x57, 500 Linebaugh, 30 Remington, 7.65x53, 7x57, 8x57, 6.5x55, 30 and 357 Herrett and whatever else are different. yes, i handload all of them. i haven't fired a factory round for years. i've been using cast bullets for about 12 years now, but i will break that spell using a 30 Herrett and 30 Remington (130gr Speer HP and 150gr Speer FN).

while i say boring, i am just stating my opinion. you can be different in your opinion. you could say that the '06 is next best thing since sliced bread and i'll believe it.

Nothing is more boring than the 308. Still I have one

i had a Remington m760 in 308, but i didn't get bored, the 760 lost all of its luck when i shot my first and only black bear. i shot a few deer with it before, but nothing after the bear. i go deer hunting with the 760 and see nothing. the next day, i would go spot and shoot deer with something else. i would do that for about 7 or 8 years, but unfortunately, i had a stroke and my right arm/leg are useless. i'm a left handed shooter, so that did't bother me. what bothered me is that i can't do a pump action anymore, so i sold it. i bought (after my stroke) at an auction, a Remington m14 in 30 Rem and no, i can't pump it. i bought it because of its spiral flutes on the magazine tube. i always wanted to buy it and that day i did. then i went ebay and bought a Lyman Tang sight for $40 (about 5 years ago). a tang sight, as i later found out, is around $200 - $300 on ebay.


Lyman R14 tang aperture sight with screws



https://oldarmsofidaho.com/product/vintage-lyman-r14-tang-peep-sight-remington-model-14-141/

Cool gun. Sorry to hear about your health

well, i learned how to sit and wait for the deer to show up .

Thats right, stay in the fight.
Essayons buddy

Over forty years ago I was working in a sawmill in northern BC as a millwright. During a cartridge conversation over lunch in the millwright lunch room, George stated how much more powerful the 308 Norma was compared to the 300 WinMag . George was 15 years my senior, besides being a good millwright , he was considered the best hunter in the area. Years later when a P-17 30-06 canoe rifle had headspace issues, it was rechambered to 308Norma. When offered a 300WM Browning BBR (early A-bolt) for a reasonable price, I passed. I had the much better 308Norma.

Stick to tried and true performers, ignore all the comments of silly people, enjoy your hunts

A lot of great comments in this thread.

Personally, I tend to stick with the classics. There are a few 'newer' cartridges that I am interested in learning more about, though. One, which has not been mentioned in this thread, is the 6.5x47 Lapua. Though designed for competition, I see no reason why it wouldn't be a great choice for hunting as well. For a time, I was also interested in the 7mm SAUM, but that seems to have been just a passing phase - never purchased one. I do keep returning to the 6.5x47, however - that cartridge has held my attention for a while now. I guess the reason I never built one is due to the fact that I already have a 6.5x55 SE in a CZ 550 American that I'm rather fond of - it's superbly accurate, if a bit heavy.

The only cartridge I can say I'm not particularly fond of is the 6.5 Creedmoor. If pressed to answer the question "why," I'd probably be compelled to say that it's due to the extreme gayness of the cartridge - I'm pretty sure this fact has been scientifically proven - or something. Additionally, I already have a .270 WCF and I'm not looking for additional gay. I'm sure y'all can well imagine how pleased I was when the shockingly gay 6.5 CM came out and siphoned much, if not all, the gayness away from my .270. Notwithstanding ballistics, and in IMHO, that fact alone lends a great deal of credence to the cartridge.

Can't say as any one person has ever ruined one. I suppose the opposite is true for me. The main reason my first centerfire purchased with my own money was a .30-06 was because my father, someone whose opinion meant a great deal to me, had one and thought highly of it. He didn't have any compelling reasons for liking it versus something else, he just had one and hunted with it. When I started routinely punching tags with mine it just cemented in my mind that it was a great round.

Probably the same reason why my buddies boys both shoot 270 WSMs

I have drifted away from the .30-06 for years but all of my favorites (6mm-06, .30 Gibbs, .35 Whelen, .400 Whelen) share the same lineage. I guess it is just more satisfying to make something very simple (.30-06) and turn it into a major PITA (.30 Gibbs) only to end up at exactly the same place (dead critters at the same ranges).