Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Pros & Cons: 7mm-08 vs. .308 Win for plains game

You sold me, Greg. Bought myself an absolutely spectacular Model 700 build in .260 that shoots 120gr TSXs into ridiculously small groups.

Should be a nice solution for the critters in question and a guy with eight bolts and a screw in his shooting shoulder.

You'll love it. I've had lots of folks doubt me over the years, but the ones who bought .260s for their wives or kids for Africa have always been amazed at the results.

When it gets right down to it, it's all shot placement and bullet construction. Last season, a buddy in the industry who was hunting with me and my son in South Africa had to shoot a black wildebeest 9 times with a .300 WBY loaded with the 180-grain TSX. He went on and on at diner about how tough they were and how my son wouldn't be able to kill one, how he should way until he could shoot a bigger gun, etc., etc. The next morning, my son and I made a 600 yard belly crawl to get to 205 yards or so of a huge bull. It was quartering towards us and getting more suspicious by the second, so I told Cole to shoot if he was steady. An instant later, he smacked the wildebeest on the point of the near shoulder. The bull ran hard for about 80 yards and then fell over stone dead. The bullet drove through the shoulder, the chest cavity, and a bunch of stomach before exiting the off side - not bad for a sissy gun.

RR, I owe you an apology. You are correct! Although I find it simpler to use the radius method. Must be the Civil in me...

I love the 7-08.
Since 1980's I had shot a 270 BAR. Used to love it, still like.

I bought my 5'3 120 pound wife a Savage 16SS 7-08 around 1999. Bought my 9 year old son a Remington Youth 7-08 same time. Three years later, got my 8 year old daughter a very nice Ruger Compact 7-08.
Wife has killed probably 15 deer with hers.
Daughter has killed at least that many and once killed 2 in one shot (by mistake).
Son killed quite a few with his.

When Matt turned 16, though, he wanted "a man's gun" (his words). He wanted my BAR. My wife was willing to use his youth model because of weight. So I ended up with my wife's Savage stainless.
Let me tell you, it's the sweetest rifle I've ever shot in my life!! I am much more accurate with it than anything and have the ultimate confidence in it. I've been shooting it for about 5 years now. I've shot 10 whitetail bucks with it and almost all fell immediately. Farthest "run" was 20 yards. A 190 pound 12 point fell in his tracks at 130 yards.

My wife and I plan to travel to Africa in 2012.
I plan to give her 7-08 back to my 21 yr old son, since it is his, and buy her another for her own. She wants a Savage Youth SS in a 7-08. I'll likely never use anything else for whitetails.

Kudos to the 7-08 for whitetails!!

I'll start a different thread to ask some questions about our 2012 Africa hunt and rifle choices.

I'm real late adding comments to this thread. I'm going to RSA on PG in early May for two weeks. I'm taking SAKO A7 stainless in 308 Win and TIKKA 270. The 308 shoots SMOA with Federal 165gr TSX and the 270 with 150gr Horn handloads. Both with Leupold scopes. On the menu is Kudu, blue Wildebeast, zebra, impala, warthog and possibly blesbuck.

Personally I think both are a little small for those plains game that reach weights over 300-lbs. Yes, that's my humble opinion! I have seen Impala run for over 175 yards with both lungs taken out, those African plans game seldom go bang flop.

I favor the .338 calibers or the .358 calibers for such animals. Also the 30-06 with a 200 grain bullety, why even the .444 Marlin makes a good choice in the brushveld area as your average shot is only 60 to 75 yards.

I would also change my tune about hunting any Leopard with a .260 caliber rifle.........plan nuts!

A 260 for a leopard is well more than sufficient for a quick kill on a leopard.

You are mistaken about how to calculate the area of a circle. According to your formula the surface area shrinks as the diameter increases.

The correct formula is A = pi * d * d / 4.

Isn't the 7.62X51 problematic in some African countries because it's a military cartridge?

The area of a circle is: Pi (3.1416) times Radius squared. Radius is Diameter/2.
Radius of a .284 in. circle is: .142. Squared, is .020164. Times pi, = .06334722 square in.
For .308 diameter circle, radius is .154. Squared, is .023716. Times pi, = .07450619 square in.
The area of the .284 circle, divided by the area of the area of the .308 circle, is: 0.85.

Both rifles are adequate for the game chosen.Which of the 2 can you shoot most accurately? Choose it and the heaviest bullet your rifle will shoot accurately. Trophy bonded Bear claws are a very good choice. Keep scopes down to something like 1.5 to 5x Leupold Gold ring. Your shooting distance shouldn't be more than 150m! If your PH suggests longer shots tell him to work harder at getting you closer!

"If your PH suggests longer shots tell him to work harder at getting you closer!"

Who's hunting the visiting sportsman, or the PH? Not saying that 150m is a problem distance, most shots are under that. However it's the visiting hunters skills that are the functional limitation of the event, whether it be stalking or marksmanship.

These cartridges are so close in performance that you would have to kill a considerable amount of game and average out the results to split the hair adequately and present the findings with the determined degree of bias.

The bullet you choose and where you place it will matter far more that the dfference between these two cartridges which are just hulls.

John

I love it when gearheads get together a split hairs over what amounts to ballistic twins. I have a 7-08 and shoot it with a shoulder pad harness that I can slip on or off. (Past Recoil Shield) It is once again a joy to shoot a deer rifle. I have no experience with the .308, but how different can it be?

Plug my formula into a spreadsheet and plug your formula into a spreadsheet, and you will see that you get the same answer. The mathematical order of operations treats multiplication and division as equivalent in order of operation (one doesn't have precedent over the other); thus pi/4*(D*D) = (D*D)*pi/4 = pi*(D*D)/4 = (D*D)/4*pi. If the parentheses encompassed the 4 and both Ds (4*D*D), the formula would be incorrect, but the formula is correct in the form I typed it.

Do I need to know all that to get into Africa??

No, but after I answered someone's question about what the formula was for area of a circle (with the correct formula), two different posters have tried to say there was some error where there wasn't one.

I can't think of any reason to think about the formula for area of a circle on a hunt in Africa as long as the hole at the end of your barrel is large enough for the game hunted.

And the 7mm has been used for years.

And the .308 has been used for years.
But you are correct pi x radius x radius is the same as
pi x diameter/2 x diameter/2 or
pi x dia x dia /4 all of which give the area of the bullet cross section at calibre.

The area changes in sqare proportion to the change of the diameter. Simply put a 50 cal has 4 times the area of a 25 cal.

You are correct in asking so what?
As long as the cartridge selected has the energy and sectional density to penetrate the rest is just loonie discussion after hunting season has passed.

Randy

None.

The hole size or blood trail is proportional to the size of bullet. It's pi * (1/2D) * (1/2D). So its really proportional to the square of the bullet radius. You get a lot bigger holes with a small increase in radius.