Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Asking About Rifle/Bullet Combinations--Why Bother??

The one I love is, "I kill (fill in animal here) with a sharp stick and string so your (fill in cartridge and load) will do fine".

There is often an unstated qualifier strongly implied as such threads develop. The poster might as well say:

"No one who has much real life experience need reply because I won't pay any attention to you anyway. I want speculative replies expressed authoritatively from people with minimal or no experience with the specifics of the question."

Well, you usually get more opinions going one way more than another, and how the heck is one supposed to make a somewhat educated decision if they don't look into it at all? I guess one could try a bunch of different bullets or ammo, but this isn't always preferred or an option for everyone, if a bunch of regular joe hunters recommend a specific bullet or ammo, chances are, it's decent.

I know that posts asking about a certain bullet in a certain gun can and do get stale. I also find the "which gun for black bear,my 30/06 or 300wsm" threads drive me crazy as well.
However I would like to see the newbies and the under educated(as far as guns and bullets that is, not in general)ask seemingly dumb or boring questions here where many can answer and give them many options as well as,hopefully,a definate answer.
Better to get the right answer,or one that is as close to correct, here from us then some nimrod at a box store who has never hunted or even seen or done the things he is giving advise on.

Cheers 257Stew

For a wedding present I gave my son-in-law a .30-06. Later his father gave him a .300WM and explained that a .30-06 just wasn't adequate for elk. All I could do was laugh when I heard that.

My son-in-law will probably use his .300 again this year. In any case, I have a box of Winchester 180g Power Points sitting on the corner of my desk, his the next time I see him. He used them last year and they flattened his first elk at 363 yards. Guess they are "enough bullet".

coyote & 257stew,

Those are both good responses. Yes, I also get tired of the "what's the best black bear rifle ..." questions, but I suppose there are always new hunters that can't figure this out for themselves.

I just grin and bear it.

The "one bad experience and will never will use then again" group always gives me pause. The only logical conclusion is that it has to be the bullets fault.

The NBT haters are classic. Doesn't matter that the 2012 NBT version is not the same as the 1980's offering, they will never forgive the bullet that let a Deer get away in 1983 and it had to be the bullets fault....(Or the story they read about on the internet about the Deer that shrugged off a NBT in 1983)

Then again I think the 1980's version was a fine Deer bullet.

You can put me in the �one bad experience�� category, with caveats.

My first elk ell to a 162g Hornady interlock from my 7mm RM, launched at around 3000fps at a range of about 110-120 yards. The bullet hit a rib dead center, went between the off-side ribs (nicked one very slightly IIRC) and came to rest under the hide. Retained weight was 77.2g or 47.7%. The elk died but I was underwhelmed and decided to try a different bullet the next time. For some reason long forgotten I chose Grand Slams over Partitions, probably on the basis of cost. The Grand Slams served me well for the next 20+ years, dropping most game where it stood. Two elk made it 40 yards but they were the exception by quite a ways. When I finally recovered A Grand Slam at the end of that time, launched at about the same speed and at the same range, it weighed 113.7g for 71.1% retained weight and 1.5x what the Hornady InterLock had weighed. The difference was that the Grand Slam had destroyed both shoulder joints of a 6x6 bull before coming to rest under the offside hide. No wonder penetration hadn�t been an issue.

The only problems I had with Grand Slams were mediocre accuracy and low Ballistic Coefficient, neither of which affected on-game performance. The accuracy issue wasn�t bad but one out of every 3 or 4 would open up the group size. Tearing one apart I found a big void (air pocket) on one side, which probably explained why. The year after recovering the Grand Slam from the 6x6 bull I switched to North Forks which worked great and proved to be very accurate as well. These days I shoot a variety of premiums including North Fork SS and FP, Barnes TTSX and MRX, Nosler AccuBond and Swift Scirocco II. While I still use Hornady InterLock cup and core bullets, they only get used in the leverguns (.44 Mag, .30-30, .375 Win and .45-70) where high velocity impacts aren�t an issue and in target/practice loads in the bolt guns.

Barnes X bullets were another bullet type I wasn�t pleased with based on one bad experience. They proved effective on coyotes, although expansion was a questionable, so I tried them on antelope in preparation for an elk hunt. Two 7mm 160g X bullets through the lungs of a buck antelope at 300 yards put it on the ground but it kept its head high as if sunning itself. Some 20-30 minutes later after I had circled around for a closer shot it struggled to its feet and tried to walk off. Another X through the heart stopped it. The only wound track that showed signs of expansion was the last one. The rest of my X bullets were used on paper and steel but I never took them hunting again. I couldn�t even bring myself to use TSX on game, although I developed loads for several rifles with them. The year I tried X bullets on antelope I went back to Grand Slams and took two elk with them, including the 6x6 mentioned above.

Some people claim you need to shoot a lot of animals (I saw one claim of 100, or maybe it was 100�s) to make a valid judgment as to a bullet�s capability and reliability. I say �Bull�. Most bullets will work fine the vast majority of the time so, while a single success may not tell you much, a single failure can tell you a lot.

I see no reason to change. What I want out of a bullet is reliable and rapid but controlled and limited expansion with good accuracy. All of the premiums I currently use provide this and more often than not drop game in its tracks.

By the way, I�m not an �NBT hater�. Although I�ve never used them on game and don�t see any need to try them, they are my preferred replacements for AccuBonds, TTSX, North Fork and Scirocco II bullets in my practice loads.

Too bad about that stupid sob's mentality....The 30-06 is more than capable enough for elk.....on a side note, glad to hear the PP's work good on elk....I've got a chit load I use for "practice bullets", they pretty much replicate the Nosler partitions for poi and accuracy in my 06's...

One of the funniest posts I've seen in a while. Nicely done.

My NBT failure was from last year not 1983. And I bought the box of .270 130 NBT's new last year and loaded them. My boy shot a buck at over 100 yards and the buck went down but took off. We had blood for 300 yards and then I lost all sign. A kid hunting the neighboring farm killed that buck later that evening. The farmer told me it was previously hit in the shoulder and the wound was shallow.

A .270W, 130NBT, around 100yards, Whitetail and shoulder wound was shallow? Unless the bullet hit something before it hit the Deer, or the farmer was looking at a different Deer, I ain't buying it.

I've seen more than a few Deer that went down due to NBTs-old and new-from .280AI to 7mm-08 to 30-06. I've shot at least 12-15 and a friend twice that many. From inside 30yards to just over 300 yards. The Deer all died and none of the wounds were shallow.

That's what he told me. I didn't have the option of looking the deer over to find out if it was true. I didn't give up on NBT's. The boy will just be using 150's this year instead of 130's.

Why not use a partition, and not worry about it?

MM,

The other thing is sometime shot angles can fool us. I shot a Doe a couple years back that I miss-judged the exact body position. Thought I was shooting square onto the shoulder but in the low light condition I was actually shooting quartering and clipped the front shoulder. The second shot ended it, but if you looked at the front shoulder and thought the shot was square on, I could have thought a 130gr TTSX failed to penetrate, which would have been wrong.

Addition: In this case a Partition or anyother bullet wouldn't have helped. It was shooter error not bullet failure, but like I said, it's always easier to blame the bullet.

Asking About Rifle/Bullet Combinations--Why Bother??

First because we are men and we always want compare and judge each other. This point being often the only reason to ask something or just wanting to ear what we would like to...

Second because some are new in the game and really want to learn from other guy experiences. Problem there, is separate the good from the bad, and learn from people who have enough samples to elaborate statistics to try do define a law.

Problem again: hunting, animal behavior, game resistance and toughness are not exact sciences.
Human interferences are not often take in count...

But we like to talk, exchange our ideas and experience because it's a forum and more than that "a campfire".

In the domain which interest us on this thread, everything written must be taken with a grain of salt.

Except what cmg wrote: once the trigger is pulled we have no more control on the situation. Bullets are no missiles.

With grain of salt: most game lost or wounded is not from the bullets/rifles.scopes fault but from ours. Be them non adapted bullet, bad shot placement, over estimation of our abilities and so on...

But those threads are always interesting and good to read.

Have good week end

Dom

Wader,
I agree and that is why I don't post responses to those type of questions. I also hate the ones asking for loads for somebodies 30-06. For cripe sakes why don't people just buy a loading manual.

Don't see me asking, never understood why all these folks out there keep asking.

It's not that difficult to know what a good bullet is and isn't and there are few bad bullets out there.

Avoid the extremes and most anything will work for most anything.

LOL and that means squat? Not usless you know them and have a feel for how much of what they put in print is BS. But maybe just maybe cup and core bullets haven't really been killing all that game for nearly a century?

Hard to tell, but they sure sold a lot of them. You would think at some point guys would stop buying them if they didn't work.

Even Jack O'Conner said he liked the bullet.

Personally, i've used the partition mostly, but i've also used the corelokt. They did fine.