Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Eland caliber=260 Rem?

My favorite African table fare without a doubt.

Please Jeff do not let my small oversight make you think you are not welcome! On the contrary I will gladly hand you my 375 when we see an eland

Some hunters just have the ability to shoot extremely well in which case using a 260 will suffice, like it has been pointed out by others previously. I have only ever had the privelige of hunting with two snipers (USMC and SWAT) who could shoot anything at any distance. Barry loved the Free State plains because soon as I said shoot that one he would say, ok now lets move back a couple hundred yards. If at 200 yards I told him to shoot an eland right below the left ear he would and there will be only one result.

If you could do the same I would have no worries about allowing you to do so but I'm not going to advise it be done by one and all.

I had a 375 with me, but can't see why you wouldn't to shoot a lighter rifle that kills them just as dead and doesn't kick nearly as hard.

Allow me to shoot?

My nickel, my choice.

Jeff

My point and my experience is that a good bullet well placed always works, and I mean always. A bigger faster good bullet also works. However, I have never been able to observe any difference in the outcome. So feel free to shoot the bigger faster outfit but don't tell me the "lesser" outfit does not work for then I will be forced to gently but firmly advise you that you are full of prunes. In contrast, put that big fast bullet in the wrong place and I promise that you will have a rodeo of the unhappy sort.

If I were full of prunes I would not have a lot of the other stuff in me

So many rules so many exceptions to the rules. I cannot agree with you more, but there have been more large bodied animals lost with smaller calibers than with larger calibers. I think it was RAC earlier in the thread that said you can kill just about any animal with just about any caliber, but it's not what we want to do all the time. My dad shot beef cows with a 22 but then we were some feet from it and he could brain it.

It still is your nickel and your choice and again, if you have the ability of killing it with a single shot you will kill it. I have spent too many countless days tracking wounded animals and that's why I do not want hunters to shoot large animals with smaller caliber rifles. I once spent 2 1/2 days tracking a wounded eland that was shot with a 270 on a 2X1 hunt. The result is 2 1/2 days wasted hunting time of both the hunter and the hunting companion. I have never lost an eland that was shot with a 375.

Moral relativism! Moral relativism!

I gotta ask but, on the eland that led you on the less than merry chase for 2.5 days how was the shot placement of the first round?

Thx
Dober

Side note, while I realize that from time to time crap happens and people yip a shot.

I'd like to say that it's been my experience over the years that if people have a tough time making good shots with a light to moderate recoiling rifle. Then sticking a heavier recoiling round in their paws won't be for doing them and or the critters any favors...

Dober

Mr Kriel,
I was not thinking to you. I regret that you thought I was. I am truly sorry for offending you. I wish you well.

RinB I took no offense at all. Thanks for the thought though.

Dober it was a quartering away shot placed just above the elbow and slightly too far back. It hit a rib/bone and deflected up towards the shoulder. If there was a deflection prior to the projectile hitting the target I am unsure of it.

I am willing to wager that the next question will be if a larger caliber would have done better? All things being equal I believe a larger caliber would have done better.

The same old 24hourcampfire argument that every cartridge (no matter how small) kills every animal (no matter how big) just as well as everything else. I pity the sport who has never hunted and gets his knowleadge from this site as he will wonder why he needs anything beyond a .22 Hornet for all around big game hunting. I'm use to the reasoning here though so I just dismiss it. I mean if the .243 is as good as the .25-06 is as good as the .270 is as good as the .30-06 is as good as the .35 Whelen then the .243 is as good as the .35 Whelen for all game in all situations. Thankfully I'm not dumb enough to buy in.

When I was young I hunted everything with a 6.5x55 Swede. It is arguably a ballistic equivalent of the 260. Moose, deer, big bear, rabbits and upland birds. No problems as it and I were both good shooters. I made earnings hunting down wounded bear that outfitters either could not or did not want to recover. Head or rather CNS shots were the order of the day.

And then one day I met the exception. A big boar came out of the tag alders at 30 meters. My round hit him 1" above and between the eyes. He kept coming and my second shot went over his head and through his c7 spine he was so close to me. His momentum carried him through knocking me on my back. Gentlemen the sticky brown stuff happens from time to time in spite of our best preparation. The first bullet deflected off the skull slowing down but not stopping the boar.

The next week there was a gun show in Vermillion Bay and I put out the sheckles for a 338 win mag Ruger tang safety. Actually it was my wife who bought it as I was manning a booth.

I still have my 6.5x55 and it is a fine cartridge as I am sure the 260 is. It keeps the safe warm when I am hunting for bear though, and it sulked when I did not take it to Africa. They do that you know.

Randy

Well said, and I am of this opinion as well. The newer (Read BARNES) bullets DO allow each cartridge one full step up in power such as a 243 now acts like a 270 etc. Ross Seyfreid stated when he used the first prototype X bullets in a 30/06 back in the mid 1980's that it "Made his 30/06 think it was a 375" and reported that it was hitting and killing big feral animals in Austrailia on the maiden voyage hunt with these bullets just like he would expect a 375 to do but that is a modest jump up in power and capability. A .224 TSX, as great as they are, does not make one's 223 a 375. It makes it about like what we used to think of as 243 performance and nothing more.

For big stuff, we still want and need deep, straight line penetration and a BIG hole for blood to leak out of, and TWO holes with one going in and one going out of the animal.

Well lets not be silly. Of course you can go too small. I think that 6.5 is at the edge, but will get the job done if the shooter shoots well. It has good bullets of acceptable weight. I will be the first to agree that bigger is just fine if and only if the shooter can deliver the goods as well as with a 6.5 or something similar. The long range game shooters think a 6.5-284 or 264 is just great on elk at over 700 yards. Run the numbers and compare them to a 260 or 6.5x55 at 300 yards.

Lastly, a single instance or a few is pretty scant info upon which to base an opinion.

It still begs the question, assuming shot placement of course, would one be comfortable shooting a Kodiak Bear or a lion with a 260 or is the 375 more suited for the task at hand?

The cost of the hunt breaks any tie when I am deciding on what caliber to choose over another.

Why go to either extreme? You might ask Phil Shoemaker what he thinks is an adequate or good cartridge for large bears. I'm sure the same round would work well for lions, which are considerably smaller than the large bears.

This topic has been beaten to death. If I was rich I would buy a bunch of 260 Remingtons and pay for everybody here to go on an Eland hunt with Pieter as PH. Unlimited time for hunting and everybody would wait for that perfect broadside shot and would probably come back with a nice eland. The trouble is, you have limited time and that opportunity may not be presented as the "perfect shot" Personally, I would rather have a larger, heavier bullet for that less than perfect shot. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

I will restate what I said earlier with a difference. Given unlimited time, I could take a cape buffalo with a .22 Magnum. But you can bet I would pass on a lot of opportunities before that "absolute perfect shot" presented itself.

The reason the topic has been beaten to death here on the Campfire is that enough people have personally experienced or seen success on numerous occasions with smaller (much smaller in some cases) cartridges than the cartridges some people are adamant in saying are the minimum. Some of those same people with a lot of experience have seen the mis-application of larger than required cartridges with very negative results.

Yes, everyone should "use enough gun." However, there is some common sense (or not-so-common good sense) needed in deciding what is enough, and some people tend to go to one extreme and others tend to go to the other extreme. It is useful to know what is the range of cartridges that would be expected to work every time a hunter took what most people would consider a reasonable shot (a shot into the chest from the front or side, not through the back end). That is why the topic gets discussed endlessly.

Adequate? probably a 3006. Ideal? a 375 H&H and I've never even hunted one of them. For lion? My uncle took his in Mozambique in the 60s with a 270. I also remember a story in a magazine called Argosy, where somebody took a big brown bear with a 22. There's a difference between "adequate" and sensible and that's my point.