Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game What's the BEST Brush-Busting cartridge for elk & moose you would you use ?

Well, that moose wouldn't be a problem if you know what you're doing. Simply break the pelvic bone and he's down for good! Or shoot him in the hump. If you couldn't hit the hump from that close you'd better not be in the woods in the first place! I know a lot of moose hunters and I don't know one who'd pass on a shot like that!

As to shooting through brush... I've never shot through brush but I have clipped off a couple of unseen hardwood saplings at last light (one a 250 lb buck during the last 2 minutes of legal hunting light and really the last day)and both animals were hit, but not fatally and were not retrieved though a maximum effort was made to insure they were healthy enough to survive. Which they did. At least the 400 lb bruin did until the next season when he got shot again... that time he didn't survive. Some animals never learn... something like people

As to damaging a trophy? Again, that's the last consideration of 99.9% of the 100,000 moose hunters of Ontario.

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

I remember reading about this keyholed 338/250 in something you wrote, and wondering the same thing then. I can't imagine that it didn't do alot of damage...probably not a perfect mushroom, though!

There isn't any such thing as a brush busting cartridge. You may be able to get through to your target now and then with any given projectile flinging centerfire cartridge, but the odds are not in your favor. All bullets no matter how big and slow or sleek and fast will disrupt, deviate, partially expand or just plain disintegrate when they hit something in their path. Its what they are designed to do.

For the best performance regarding brush deflection, avoid using bullets that use the secant ogive. The ogive is the most important part in keeping a longer bullet stabilized, so if any brush contacts the ogive your in for trouble. So definitely stick to bullets that use the tangent ogive, a round nose bullet will give you optimum "brush busting" performance due to its short ogive.

Braxton

Best to not shoot any game - the risk of "contamination" is just too great with any bullet. Best case scenario would be to use a wooden club that would be composted immediatly after use. Neither of those shot presentations is desirable - give em' a second or two and you would have some ribcage to shoot at... IF you must shoot them however, make sure you use a Barnes bullet because the environmentalists have shown that any other bullet is a harmful pollutant.

My mega dittos to go with other voices who speak from experience. Herewith a few of my experiences busting brush with bullets:

-- Miss with 165 Hor. IB from 30-06. White tail buck standing broadside at 18 yards, bullet hit a two inch diameter pole 10 feet from the muzzle. Clean miss, aimed at front of buck's shoulder/base of neck.

--Miss with 165 Hor. IB. Looked like a hole through ragged brush and limbs at 30 yards at a large bodied whitetail buck standing broadside, aimed at center or ribs. No idea where that bullet went, and I'm not THAT bad of a shot to miss the whole deer.

--95 grain NP from 6mm Rem. deflected about 45 degrees when it hit soft green fir needles at the tip of a small branch 18-24 inches from a deer behind it. Aimed between eye and ear at a range of 30 feet or less, it hit at the back of a forkhorn whitetail buck's shoulder as it stood broadside.

-- Keyholed 180 gr. NP from 30-06. It hit brush within inches of an elk and hit the elk within 8 inches of point of aim.

--Keyholed 165 Hornady IB, 20 inches from point of aim at 130 yards from a steady hold with a rest. Not sure what made the bullet tip & deflect but most likely was fine diameter brush or grass within 3 feet of the caribou as he fed in willows. I say fine diameter because I looked for such brush and didn't see any before the shot.

--165 Horn. IB miss. Bullet hit the tip top of a fir Christmas tree 6 feet from muzzle. Missed a mule deer doe so far at 230 yards that she did not get up from her bed nor look toward the sound of any bullet passing.

-- Miss with 150 Sirrocco from 7mm magnum. Apparently hit a fine spray of almost invisible brush tips 40-50 yards from a cougar at 80 yards. Zero reaction of any kind from the cougar, which makes me think the bullet did not pass close enough for him to detect. (Cougar killed with second shot. Brush not detected till we were re-enacting the first shot to figure out what happened.)

--Black bear killed with 180 NP at 30 feet with a shot THROUGH leaves/twigs that were touching the side of the bear at the point of aim.

Brush busting bullets are a nine-lived myth that refuses to die.

Lucky shots through brush are anecdotes of the exceptions. Good luck!

'Tis true. But I will answer 45-70 anyway.

BMT

Bulletbutt,

I was curious about the damage done by the sideways 250 .338 Partition too. The skinners at the ranch never did find the bullet (I would have liked that too) but I did get to examine the lungs. Apparently the bullet only penetrated the near lung, the reason the bull was sick but not down when we came up on him the second time. It was hard to tell, though, since I shot him the second time through the lungs too--and with a Partition that went in the way it was supposed to!

Thanks for the reply. I couldn't imagine a 338/250 hitting any animal sideways and still not doing alot of damage. I am really surprized it tumbled that much from the size of the twig you described, but live and learn.

In preemptive defensiveness, my post above may give the impression that I routinely fling bullets through brush at game. It lists the results of 8 such shots. Those experiences were accumulated over many years. I was the shooter in 7 of the 8 mentioned, and could add a few more. All eight animals were killed, so I know whether and where bullets hit them.

--4 of the shots were first shots at an animal in a situation where the hunter did not see the brush.
--2 were in situations where I saw the brush and did not think it would influence the bullet enough to matter. (I was right on 50% of those.)
--2 were follow up shots, less than ideal due to brush but taken anyway in attempt to put down an animal already hit.

If you think a bullet will bust brush run a .308 FMJ tracer through a willow swamp at night. If you can't get a FMJ round through how can an expanding bullet do it? The tracer round is so unpredictable that you wonder is it going to come back and shoot you.

for brush busting it's hard to beat a good old claymore.

It will clear your brush and any critters that are hiding inside of it.

Hmmmm, that story sounds familiar...


And do you remember what happened to the first .338 fired at this guy? Hit a twig close to the gun...

You always liked those odd-horned buggers...second boolit didn't hit any twigs!
Ingwe

Ah, yes, I had forgotten about the springbok!

Ingwe was with me when I shot both of those animals. Hmm. Maybe there's some connection....

Now JB...you know things never go wrong when I'm around!
Ingwe

A few deer seasons ago, my best friend and hunting partner took a shot at doe in a thicket with his 338-06 and we were confident he had a good hit on this deer. We spent a while looking around for any sign of blood and then we found a big hole in a 3" sapling...

Trees have a funny way of jumping in front of your bullets sometimes. Subsequently, I always smile when another hunter tells me they bought this or that so they can "shoot through brush" and I wish them good luck.

CLB

The year was 1988, using my new M700 Classic 35 Whelen with factory 200 gr PSPCL bullets. I shot a big 11 pt WT deer at about 50 yds at the base of the neck as we walked away in the tag alders.
Upon recovery, I noticed a Poplar tree about 1 1/2" in diameter that I had hit. The buck was about 15 feet past that tree, dead from a shot to the base of the neck.

All I can say is that the Big Guy Upstairs wanted me to have that buck!

JD338

Whelen nut you could whistle Dixie at one of our Idaho elk in the black timber and he would not stop and turn around and give you a broadside shot! He is on his way to Montana the minute he comes out of his bed and won't stop until he gets there! I have been hunting there for 25 years and only had one broad side shot and someone else spooked him and he almost ran over me.

Sometimes I think some of us live on a different planet!

That's funny, because it rings true. To say the least, it's pretty brushy around here and I'd killed ten or so elk before I knew they could walk or stand still. I thought all they did was come out of their bed at full bore --- going the other way. A couple of times all I saw was part of a horn and an eyeball (big, scared-looking eyeball --- they have alot of white around their eyes when you're that close), heading for parts unknown, so you hit them in the eyeball. If they manage to hit the ground before you pull the trigger, that's a good time to shoot because they seem to hang there for a few hundredths of a second before they launch again. Usually after that second launch they're what we call "gone".

I've never whistled at one, but I've yelled things in the direction they went.

atkinson,
I was at a gun show and saw a guy sitting at a table with a picture of an elk he said he had shot at six hundred yards with his 338 magnum. I looked closer at the picture and noticed it was a cow with about half a dozen bullet wounds. Some in the guts, some in the back legs, etc.
I guess I am from a different planet because it failed to impress me at all. I would never have taken that picture, nor would I brag about piss poor shooting like that.
whelennut