Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Which calibers have wounded in your camps?

I have seen .30-30, 300 win mag, 7mm, .30-06, .280 ackley, and .300 savage wound deer. Wounded deer, however are not caused by the cartridge or rifle. they are caused by the shooter. I have yet to see a rifle that isn't capable of outshooting the shooter. Honestly, the only accuracy problem with 99.9% of rifles is the Nut on the end of the buttstock.

So it seems we have broad consensus that when we hear statements such as "that rifle is too small for deer around hear" or "You people with belted magnums wound too many deer" that we know they are rooted in fertile B.S.

Do you believe the "it went through too fast to expand" myth?

Try a 7mm Weatherby loaded with a 139 grain Hornady. It'll expand and "shock the animal" as you put it.

I have zero experiance with this but arn't some light for caliber bullets more apt to come apart at short range on heavy bone when being shot from a fast cartridge?

I'm thinking, a 130gr core-lokt at over 3200fps vs a sholder on a big deer at 25yds.

I don't own anything fast than an '06 but seems to me this could be a contributing factor in wounding game.

That wasn't what I was getting at.

I know Mathman, I was posing just a general question more than a direct responce to you.

I don't believe a bullet can be made to go so fast it won't expand. I think some bullets can be pushed so fast they might come apart on a hard target though. Thereby losing much penetration.

Or a 7mm Rem Mag with 140 Ballistic Tips! The 7Mags work fine on deer.

243 is by far the worst in our camp!
Mostly because people do stupid stuff like use 80 gr bullets.
Shooting through brush is a guaranteed problem also.
One of our guests was reported to be a prison guard who was an "expert shot". We never found much of a blood trail and never did find his 10 pt buck.

I had good luck with my 7mm Magnum one year and shot my biggest buck ever 80 yds away in the brush. I waited until I had a clear shot and put a 160 gr Sierra in his heart. It had plenty of time to expand!

The fact is deer can be wounded and lost with any cartridge if the shooter fails to put the bullet in the right spot.

I have killed deer with all of the following cartridges;
17 Rem
222 Rem
220 Swift
243 Win
240 Weatherby
25-06 Rem
257 weatherby
270 Win
7 Rem Mag
30-30
308 Win
30-06
300 Win Mag
50 cal black powder

I have never lost a deer I have shot at and those deer I killed with the 17 Rem fell just as fast and just as dead as those I shot with the 300 Win Mag.

The guys I hunt with who shoot the smaller cartridges don't loose deer either. It's because they shoot a lot and know how to put the bullet in the right spot. The smaller calibers don't make them better marksmen. They can make the smaller calibers work because they are good marksmen.

The few experiences I have had with hunters wounding and loosing deer were guys with little shooting experience. It just happens that each of them were shooting belted magnums. The belted cartridge isn't the reason they lost their deer. They wounded and lost their deer because they were poor marksmen.

You can't blame the cartridge. Even the tiny bullets will kill a deer if the shot placement is right.

The lost or long trailed deer I have been involved with have come almost entirely from hunters who don't understand where to shoot on the animal,shooting poorly [due either to a flinch, lack of practice, failure to sight in after travel, fiddling with their scope and then having to hurry, etc]. Incredible percentage of gut shot deer created by these practices.

Occasionally we have trouble with getting a clean kill on one due to a bullet hitting some brush and tumbling, etc. Usually we find the deer but it is a rotten job trying to blood trail through a clearcut.

I've lost a couple too. About three years ago I shot one with my .30-06, it dropped right there, I had to circle around a brush pile to get a clear look at it and it gets up and takes off broken shoulder and all. I tracked it from 4:30 until dark and came back in and looked until 11:00 the next day. No blood trail within fifteen minutes of the shot due to rain.

Whenever we have a trailing situation come up I wish we could use our trap dogs to fine it. It isn't legal here so we don't but it seems pretty silly not to be able to.

In my elk camp, 30-06 and 338 WM.

Ran into a kid on the mountain with a strip of elk lung in his pocket, .308.

If we were to ask deer hunters what caliber they used most often, the overwelming majority would say 30/06 or 270; certainly true in my neck of the woods. IMHO that is why we so often hear both cals. accused of being ( wounders ). Chances are the rifle in the hands of the cronic wounder is one or the other. If for arguements sake we say good deer cals. run from 243 to 338mag then one who has any understanding of terminal balistics would agree that 270-30/06 is more then enough assuming decent shot placement in the first place.

I have seen several calibers but my vote goes once again to the 2-4-3!

I could assure you it wasn't because of the 80gr bullet. It was where the 80gr bullet hit the deer.

A few years ago, I read an article on a british website titled "cartridges for the brushveld" and it had a lot of scientific data showing optimal penetration and expansion and bullets has a "sweet spot" speed range that they will expand reliably and sometimes fast is too fast. I know several hunters that have switched from 7mm mags because they zip right on through compared to the 30-30's they grew up with that expaneded well. In my opinion, you shoot the hot magnums for longer range and you use bullets that expand well at those longer ranges when they are going SLOWER...
Not everyone reloads with bullets that would turn those 150 yard deer shots into "prairie dog" blow ups, but I am in the school of don't want lead bullets fragmenting or breaking shoulders so I can say "Bang Flop". I don't want all the meat "shot up" or peppered with lead fragments, which has been a huge MN issue lately.
Keep your hot magnums for out west. Sure it will do the job and then some, but I would feel better with people coming onto my place shooting rounds that they comfortably shoot well, that will expand at close range, and also not fly hundreds of yards past the deer. We put stands on our property line and it's comforting to know my non-magnums will not go so far and will not hit the next hunter, the next property owner, or next cow, or next building...

I think you're missing my point. I'm not advocating hot magnum cartridges. In fact my main hunting rifle is a 308 that I typically load somewhat below max., and my second stringer is a 300 Savage. Hardly prairie dog blow up territory.

What I am addressing is the idea of a given bullet expanding less at close range than it does farther out.

This



isn't going to be because the 7mm was going too fast. If the bullet construction was too stout for the resistance met you may have them "zip on through", but slowing the same bullet down wouldn't help things. The part about bullets having optimal speed ranges for best results is true, and fast can be too fast I agree as well, but taking a bullet that does well at 7mm-08 speeds and using it in a 7mm magnum isn't going to make it expand less.

Mathman,
My apoligies and I see your point.

I'm in a foul mood... we lost 8 people here at work this week and one was my origional boss that hired me.

H

No need to apologize, I didn't take your mood as foul and we can hash stuff out without getting in a twist.

Sorry about your work conditions, that stuff is no fun.

humdinger,
Those issues that you raised are very real, and I commend you for having the foresight to prevent potential problems. I will say, though, that those issues are not caused by the cartridge, but rather, by the bullet selected. I can shoot a 110gr Speer TNT in my 7mm Mag at a deer and the bullet probably won't "zip through," nor will it go hundreds of yards past the deer. I've shot gophers at 10 yards with a 162gr Hornady IL, and launched them 10 feet into the air. I can assure you that the heavy bullet is expanding plenty for deer, especially at close range.

Again, the bullet fragmenting, as well as the bullet zipping through, are both problems that can happen with ANY adequately powered cartridge, and the solution lies in bullet selection, not cartridge selection.

I've seen em killed just fine with a 22lr. Shot placement is it as long as bullet choice is correct as to the projectile so it can penetrate enough.

Beyond that its the shooter.