Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Interesting comment from Charlie Sisk

The Grizz & the Moose on the left were taken with my Revolver both were one shot kills and the Bear was absolutely flattened




This mature Bull Bison (70 1/4 SCI) was taken with one shot from my revolver




No high velocity, flat point hard cast bullets and dead animals

Yep put a well constructed bullet in the correct location and critter dies, Steelheads got it right

Yeah, I realized after re-reading my post that I had neglected to mention what I had used personally. I didn't stop to think that "I saw" would rub a lot of folks the wrong way.



Not at all. What I said was that they are in the minds of certain guys who use them. In my experience, those are usually a good portion of the ones who can't shoot them worth a darn as well. I know a guy here who touts his .300 Win as the end-all cartridge, but he shoots less than a box of factory ammo a year through it.



I won't presume to tell an African PH anything, as I've never been to Africa.

Magnums have their place, which is in the hands of anyone who can shoot them well and feels more confident in doing so.

Another discrepancy between one viewpoint or the other might well be style of hunting. I've killed only a dozen or so elk. Only two of those were big bulls. The rest were cows and spikes. I'm not really a big trophy hunter, usually lived in the unit I hunted, and had all year to scout and know the terrain. Now that I live in WI, that has changed as far as elk are concerned. Hence my hankering for a .35. More money and less time to get my elk. Plus I'll most likely end up in whichever state offers the best deal to non-residents. I'm choosing the WSM case and Sako 75 SM action. It should match my .308 pretty well as far as handling characteristics go. With a 250 gr load it should also match a .308 165 gr load for trajectory, which I am intimately familiar with.

I never claimed the .308 was the .300 Roy's equal in every way and I don't think Charlie did either. But I have used it on a lot of game with excellent results. As far as those kills go, I don't feel a magnum would have done any better. But I too see the wisdom in hedging one's bets when expensive out-of-state hunts are on the menu.

Besides, heated debates like this one give loonies the warm fuzzies, which is a good thing.

Having said that, I propose that the combination of the .223 AI and the TSX have made all other cartridges obsolete!

You know, I'm never going to get that image out of my head. I can see it perfectly, complete with a cloud of snow drifting slowly back to earth, a comical look on your face, and a very angry -- though somewhat puzzled -- bear watching you sail through the air.

when i read this thread i noticed that the amount of rifle/calibre related info in this thread is more than an ph will know in ten life times. i guess this is why when i show hunting forums to my african hunting friends they just smile, and take no interest. i own a 308 and it has taken more game than i can remember. from a hare to a eland. as i see this thread the ultimate calibre would be the 300 mag that has the gentle recoil of the 30-06 and the acuracy of the 308. such a rifle is common found in africa. for some reason it is ignored by gun manufacturers in the usa. low and behold i a loyal 308 owner also owns this calibre.

My buddy Earl Fleming had an experience, with brownies one night, that still gives me the same imagined image.

He stayed out afield (photographing SE Alaska brownies) longer than he intended and was trotting back to his trawler in the dark, along a bear trail through the willows, with only a view of a strip of dark gray sky to show him where the trail was.

He trotted right off a high bank �

� and landed in a bear wallow �

� in the middle of a sow brownie and two or three cubs or yearlings.

The smell and the pile of wet hair told him where he'd landed, but the bears, startled by being awakened so suddenly, woofed and fled. Earl got flung around a bit but immediately had the wallow all to himself.

I doubled-up laughing as he told about it � but he didn't yet see anything funny about it.

It's just dang hard to prove his statement wrong.I have seen Elk boom flop to the 30-30 with K-Mart specials in the right spot and angle.The .300 Savage dumps 'em just as well as does the .308 and 30-06.I own a .300 Win Mag and it is hard to tell "because" like humans,each Elk is an individual..Some go down easy and others just won't go down...Spine/head shots puts anything down right now but those shots are few and far between.

Live and learn..What happened last year does not mean the same thing will happen this year,even if all things are equal.

Jayco

It is all a matter of perspective.

That definitely sounds like one of those I-hate-it-when-that-happens moments. Still laughin' here. I'm reminded of the time the Javelina fell on me.

Our next-door neighbor Jack didn't laugh when he told me, wide-eyed, of his all-day experience with a mysterious, unrecognizable low, black critter that kept running across his field as he was plowing.

Jack couldn't afford a tractor, so he had to walk through miles of mule exhaust. In that humidity (southern Alabama), he couldn't wear his glasses (sweat wouldn't evaporate off 'em, so they were soon covered with thick, damp dust).

All day, two things kept happening (and I don't know whether they were connected) � Jack's mule kept trying to look sideways around the blinders, and that low, black thing kept running across his field.

Jack was a hunter and canny outdoorsman, well familiar with all the flora and fauna thereabouts, but he couldn't think of a critter that was that low and that long � or that long and that low. And of course he couldn't see it clearly.

That afternoon, Jack's mule kept straining to look backward, and Jack had a dickens of a time plowing straight furrows. He looked back over his shoulder to see what was bothering the mule.

The low, black thing was coming down the furrow, straight for him.

"I just had time," he told me, "to holler and stomp it. You know what it was? �

" � a buzzard's shadow!"

I agree with Charlie on this one - good bullets and proper placement is the key as well as the .308 being easier to shoot than the .300 Weatherby.

Many of the same people who say, "Look, the .308 kills just as well as the .300 Weatherby," are the same people who say, "The .300 Weatherby destroys too much meat."

You can't have it both ways.

The way you kill something is to destroy tissue--organs, bones, meat, or whatever.

It should be self evident: The .300 Weatherby kills a lot better, if you can hit in the same place, than does the .308.

This thread seems to boil down to two camps.

Camp #1. Those that have shot big game with both the 308 and 300 magnums.

The majority of this camp (including me) have not noted any significant differences between the two in -killing game within 300 yards-, given similar shot placement; so they tend to agree with Sisk's statement. No big deal.

Camp #2. Those that generally haven't shot big game with both the 308 Win. and 300 magnums.

Most of the people that insist there's a big difference fall in this camp. Since they generally do not have first hand experience they raise all sorts of spurious arguments such as:

I know some guys who know a lot about hunting and they use 300 magnums...

or

This authority said they're better (Ignoring the 'authorities' that disagree with their view)

or

This (not a 300 magnum)cartridge has higer velocity than this other (not a 308) cartridge and the higher velocity one kills better, so there, that proves my point...

or

This round damages more meat so it obviously kills better too...

Repeating: "I've tried both and I haven't been able to see a significant difference in killing game, so as far as it goes, Sisk's statement appears to be more or less correct." seems to fall on deaf ears. Thus the "religous fanatic" statement I made in my first post.

Hit them right with a good bullet and it'll work; energy just helps get the job done.

I'll take all the help I can get.

Dang, this thread is still going??

Yeah. Call it the Energizer funny.

I agree. Not that you need any corroboration. You hunt with a 308 and you know its capabilities. I have yet to determine the difference in Texas between the Axis bucks I shoot with my 280 Remington or with my 300 Weatherby. In fact, once I bought the 280 the 300 Wby has not gone afield since. That was nearly 5 years ago.

I have often wished I had chosen a 308 Winchester over the 280 but what's done is done.

This thread seems to have become another buzzard's shadow.

In my (very) limited experience the average Eastern whitetail hunter was better served fifty years ago with a handy light weight open sighted 30-30 than he is today with a much more powerful bolt gun with the typical 3-9x scope.

Tastes great.