Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting New Rifle 260 Remington or 358 Winchester which one would you choose?

[quote=Coyote_Hunter][quote=GeorgiaBoy]...

Like you, I am a meat hunter more than a horn hunter.

That (�destroyed the ham�) is a pretty good explanation of why I choose not to use such bullets. While I work very hard for broadsides, I�ll take frontal or quartering shots if that is all I can get. Over the years I�ve turned down more extreme angles from the rear than I can count, often going home empty-handed as a result. In 2007 I had an �easy� quartering away shot turn into a hit low in the right ham when the buck stepped forward and turned just as the trigger broke.

I took a lot of petty abuse on the Deer Hunting forum for my choice of bullet � based on nothing but cost � from a well known individual (MD/JB) who insisted that cost should not be a factor in determining which bullet to use. (Like that logic?)

The bullet hit low in the right ham and penetrated to the sternum. Meat loss was minimal and the buck dropped so quickly I thought it had stepped over a ledge.

The bullet used was a 140g North Fork, launched from my 7mm RM at 3214fps, range ~150 yards.

Since I started using these bullets in 2003, shots have ranged from 10 feet to 260 yards and the results have been consistent � minimal meat loss, game on the ground quickly regardless of angle. (One cow went about 25 yards on a double lung hit at 260 yards, the only animal to make it over 5 yards.)

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You make the point that situations are different.

Depending on how many times I hunt, I will have multiple oppertunites on any given day for a shot on a deer. I've been fortunante to hunt a large plantation simply because I don't mind shooting does--and have no problems letting bucks walk. Here in GA we can legally kill 10 deer a year. I have familes that want the meat. I usually put two in my freezer and give the rest to whom ever wants it. The plantation wants to manage the herd by thinning does, and I am happy to ablige them.

It does not bother me to pass up a shot--I'm not worried about going home empty handed. I can wait. That 1.75 x 5/243 combination has accounted for many lung shot deer, and it works.

On rare occasions I have been allowed to take a buck--and not just any buck--it has to be "quality". Do I take the 243? No. I don't have confidence in it. Would I use it if that is all I had? Dang skippy I would!!!

Everyone has to access his situation, and do what ever he needs to feel justified in his decision.

I just have never bought into the idea that one's choice in firearms should center around the possibilty of a bad shot. But, to each his own.

GB

I'd like to see a picture of how you dressed out your 6.5-06AI. In terms of cool factor--the 6.5-06AI is wicked cool!!

Neat thread. Glad we pulled it back from the precipice <grin>.

Yeah, it's different here. One tag a year, for most guys most years. I'm lucky in that I have access to a unit (Central Melrose) where I can always draw a doe/spike tag because it's all private so there's more tags than applicants. I believe it may be the ONLY such unit in western Oregon!

I won't shoot at "any part" of a deer; that's unethical. But I'll take any path to the vitals available other than a THS. Hopefully, that's behind the shoulder broadside but I bet half my deer have been otherwise (like that buck above).

CH: The one deer I shot through the... uh.... "ham" was with an Accubond from my .325. That's WAY more gun than I usually hunt deer with but I was about to hunt elk with it in Colorado and wanted some field time. The bullet did go the length of the deer; not sure a North Fork or TSX is really necessary to do that. But, hopefully I'll never know for sure because I never intend on pulling THAT particular bonehead move again!

One thing we haven't mentioned- bears. They are around in the areas I hunt though not commonly like Alaska or somewhere similar where guys are tripping over them every other step.... Anyway a .358 is a comfort when still-hunting an area with fresh bear sign.

When I lived in NH, we always fenced the orchards and the bee supers to keep the bears out. I like to watch bears in the wild, but have never had any interest in shooting them, since they aren't any threat to an armed man.

Jeff

I buy a tag, but have so far passed on the ones I've seen. It's simply that they are supposed to be hit-or-miss in terms of food value and I'd be eating it, either way.

I never ate wild meat as a kid, my Parents traded pasture access and allowed a dairy farmer to cut hay in exchange for a side of beef and a hog each year. We eat 3 or 4 deer each year and I give the rest away.

Jeff

I didn't either; but It's huge for my family... my kids have only eaten wild red meat, very little beef or pork. The last couple years we've been eating those two elk I got in '08, but it's down to the last 8-10 packs now. Bummer. I have about half a deer in the freezer left. I'll get two deer, knock on wood, and my daughter says she wants to whack a forkie that been hanging out on our property a lot. She camps in a tent in our woods in the summer (all summer, since she was 12!) and knows this deer well... grin... I'm not going to burn my only buck tag on him but if she wants him, I'm psyched about that! One more deer in the freezer. My kids are teens and eat a LOT.

Here in Colorado I usually get one deer tag per year, two in a good year, like last year. This year I put in for a 1st choice Preference Point, 2nd choice buck, 3rd choice doe. Thought sure I�d get the doe tag and be able to pick up a leftover like I did last year. Instead I got nada and there are no leftovers in the area and time frame I�ll be hunting. (Grumble...)

Fortunately I can at least get a bull elk get tag every year. This year I have a �Ranching For Wildlife� cow tag on a ranch with a high success rate, plus a leftover cow tag for public land. Thank goodness our elk are more plentiful than in Georgia.




Same here. It�s almost embarrassing how many times I�ve decided not to ruin a good hunt by not squeezing the trigger. Sometimes its enough just to have had the opportunity to make the choice.




Some years ago I had a perfectly good shot on a buck antelope. I was testing Barnes 160g XLC�s in my 7mm RM prior to going elk hunting. The first shot was a double-lunger on a nearly broadside presentation. The buck planted its feet, lowered its head, and started coughing up blood. After several minutes I put a second one through the lungs and it went down, but kept its head up as if sunning itself. I circled around the hill and as I got into a sitting position the buck struggled to its feet and started to walk away. A third XLC clipped the heart and put it down for good. That buck suffered needlessly for a good 20-30 minutes and I still feel bad about it.

Needless to say, I was not very happy with the performance of the bullet. That fall I went back to the 160g Grand Slams that had served me well for two decades and took a cow and a bull. Some people will say it was my fault because the XLC is too �hard� for antelope. In hindsight, I would agree with them � although that was the point of the testing. In fact, that experience relegated my XLC loads to paper and kept me from using TSX bullets on game when they came out, even though I developed a number of loads for them. It wasn�t until the MRX and TTSX came out that I gave Barnes bullets another chance. Three antelope and two deer later I can say I�ve been very pleased with the MRX/TTSX results on both antelope and deer and suspect they will work fine on elk � from any angle.

Over the years I�ve come across a number of deer and elk that succumbed to gunshot wounds but were never recovered by the shooter and I�ve watched several escape after being shot. Fortunately I�ve not been one of those shooters and I hope never to be one, either. Because I hunt deer and elk in the same season, I load for elk and use those loads on deer. (Even my .30-30 has traditionally been loaded with 170g bullets, although I�ve been loading Hornady 165g FTX lately and will give them a try.) The previously mentioned deer I shot in 2007, from ham to sternum, showed me just how quickly an �easy� shot can go awry. Fortunately the rifle and load I was using were up to the task.

I guess what I�m saying is that while a person�s choice of firearm shouldn�t necessarily �center� around the possibility of a bad shot, one should not ignore such possibilities completely. My smallest � and favorite � bolt rifle is my .257 Roberts. When hunting during combined elk and deer season it gets a 120g A-Frame but I still don�t consider it the equal to my .30-06�s or magnums. What that means is I carry it during elk/deer season but am willing to turn down shots I would take with a different rifle and load � a concession to Murphy�s Law being right at least some of the time.

I rarely see animals after the shot; it's thick enough here that whether they fall down or run, they vanish. I use my ears more than my eyes after the shot to try and suss out what is happening with the animal (running, thrashing, etc).

My .358 really is a purpose-built rifle and the purpose is to do as I've already described. Personally, I think it's one of my better gun decisions; it pretty much does exactly what I'd hoped for in my wildest dreams!

It�s not a very good photo, but here it is:



New InterArms Mark X action, Timney trigger, Boyd stock. Action was Level 1 trued and bedded by Krieger.
Krieger barrel: 24� length, 8 twist, 4 grooves, 6 flutes, bead blasted, .75� at the muzzle.
Burris 4.5-14x AO with Ballistic Plex reticle, Leupold rings and bases.

As a concession to vanity, I had Krieger engrave �Coyote Hunter� on the right side of the barrel.

This rifle was meant to be a 600-yard clay pigeon shooter and when the wind isn�t blowing it does quite well � even with the fire-form loads.

For brass I use Winchester .25-06 cases. The primary reason I went with the 6.5-06 Ackley version was I wanted to preclude the possibility of a 6.5-06 load getting jammed into a .25-06. The Ackley cases do that. Not having a .25-06 also helps, but that could change...

260Remguy "I don't know anybody that eats deer ribs."

We do. Take em and cut to fit in crock pot. Cook till meat is tender enough to fall of the bone, then coat in BBQ sauce and eat. GOOD EATIN!

I also do sorta the same thing with a deer neck. Cook it on low in the crock pot until the meat falls off the bone. Drain it, completely de-bone it, then mix it up good with BBQ sauce to make sandwiches. Or, forget the BBQ and make whatever you like...gumbo, stew, Jambalaya, etc., etc.

Also, I've shot alot of whitetails with my .300WSM. If you use the right bullets, you won't lose much meat, if any at all. I used 180 grain Norma ORYX last year. Every deer fell in it's tracks and there wasn't hardly any meat ruined. Except for the one doe shot through both front shoulders. But, the deer behind her hit the ground too, so what does that say for bullet performance?

On top of being a great gun for whitetail, my rifle is also plenty big for elk, bear, moose, and prolly a whole lot more.

I think that instead of going to the trouble of saving a few ounces of rib meat, I'd be more likely to just fill another whitetail doe tag if gathering meat was the objective. Since I can buy the NE Seasons Choice doe tags on line and print them at home, I can decide to buy a tag, print it, and go hunting pretty quickly if the mood moves me.

Jeff

i'm with Jeff! i'll salvage what i can for burger but i'm not worried about a little meat loss on the ribs considering i just got an entire deer made out of Meat! YMMV

Man. That is SWEET! Lucky bastid <g>.

Our deer/elk tags have to be bought by the day before the hunt, pretty much period. And we just get the one. Heck, the mule deer hunters in Oregon (eastern Oregon) might only pull a deer tag every third year if they are putting in for a decent area!

It does, I believe, tend to color how one looks at these things. You don't meet many Oregon deer or elk hunters who are halfway serious, who go into a season thinking they'll just pass on a legal buck if it isn't standing broadside, and wait for the next one. There's not likely to be a next one. The statewide success rate for an OTC blacktail buck tag is in the neighborhood of 15% last time I looked... obviously there's a number of tags that get bought and not hunted very hard, but, I bet among the tags that do get hunted significantly, the success rate is under 30%. That's with the ONE TAG that most guys get.

Anyway... I'm thinking that it does potentially change how one looks at things like cartridge choice, shot angles, etc.

exactly... if I was in that situation I would get the .260 rem and shoot 100 grain TSX bullets at over 3000...naturally I would shoot them in the front end...

Nice set-up! Thanks for the particulars--and the photo.

This is sort of like comparing apples and oranges. For deer sized game, I'd go with the .260. If elk, moose or bear are on the menu, the .358 is probably a better choice. The .358 is substantially more potent than the .35 Remington and if you go into the various Marlin 336 forums, you'll see that the slow-poke .35 kills'em very dead without complaint.

Reading this thread, I am having flashbacks from a historical thread of 7mm-08 vs 308..Gee thanks Jeff. All we need now is Stick to come back and this could make 100 pages easy.

I do like that logic. cost shouldn't be a factor when picking the hunting bullet. pick the best one that shoots well out of your rifle. doesn't mean you have to practice with them as well, like I use the nosler BT as a sub for accubonds for practice. they are essentially the same, BC and POI from my rifle.

Same here; there's a real synergy between the NAB and NBT in that regard. This does create a significant price difference between a Barnes product vs. the abovementioned; in the rifles I've tried them in, TSX's print groups "somewhere else" relative to jacketed bullets. Makes it hard or impossible to find a practice bullet that doesn't require re-zeroing. And if you shoot much (I do) you have to factor that in. Practice with $42/box bullets, or $19/box bullets? Hmmm.... tough call!