Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters In lieu of 1 cal. 1 bullet all NA hunting

No

And to do the same, then shoot 'em both in the [bleep] guts, or through nothing but muscle, there still won't be a dick's worth of difference between the two. You're in for a good ol' [bleep]' rodeo.

Thanks Bob good logical post.

That's true, too.

No. Buuuut, you would have to shoot at least as many as Turdcutter has claimed to tell the difference.

Or are we talking about shooting animals in the guts or brisket to ass?....grin

I'd take the 140 6.5 for caribou (or 125), the 180 30 cal for moose. The 6.5 (or 7) has proven itself so ideal for caribou, while the 30 (and larger) have worked so well on animals the size of large moose that I don't see why I'd want to do differently at this point.

Does the 140 work on moose?



Yes, I had no trouble driving 560 grains of them (2 Partitions, 2 A-Frames) into one bull before my partner finall let the air out of him with a 180 from his '06. Is that definitive proof? No, but I have seen more work better enough times to believe that less isn't always equal.

I like:

Reality trumps 'theory'------every time.

Well said.

Most certainly does!!!!!!! Paper stats are nothing but paper stats! Dead animals are real stats!

Paper stats can give you a little inkling of what may happen.
However the real paper stats I like to read is written on butcher paper - "Elk Roast 2013"

The 260 or 6.5x55 with 140 grainers shoots a smaller bullet of higher SD at lower speed than a 30-06 with 180 grainers. This is a recipe for greater penetration. IME both kill game effectively, but the 30-06 makes a bigger hole and animals tend to die quicker and cover less ground after the shot on average. Pick your poison. If 30-06 recoil is an issue definitely go with the smaller round. As I age I shoot better with the smaller guns, not that a 30-06 is intolerable in a rifle with a decent stock. My favorite, the 7x57, strikes a happy medium.

I'll take the 200-grain .30 Nosler Partition because I've shot a bunch of game from pronghorn to bull elk with it over the past 35 years, at ranges from 50 to 400 yards, at every angle, and it worked every time. It also didn't matter if the cartridge was the .30-06 or the .300 Weatherby Magnum.

Fixed it for you.

I could never understand the contention that a wider bullet kills better than one of narrower diameter, within reason. After all, the difference between .308 and .264 is only a shade over 1/32of an inch.

As I type this, I'm looking at a greater kudu shoulder mount about ten feet away. I don't think I could even see a 1/32 of an inch mark on it. The depth of the chest looks to be about two feet. The difference between .308 and .264 is something like 0.2% of the chest diameter. How could that matter? If anyone knows, enlighten me.

BTW: A kudu is a little smaller than a bull elk. Then there's the oft-quoted Swedish study about shooting moose which concluded that there was no difference in effectiveness between the 6.5x55 and heavier calibers, if I am remembering the study right.

Indy the way I see it is it isn't simply the differences in diameter between the two calibers you cited;it's cross sectional area as well.I can't do the math but a 30 cal just has a larger surface area,and more bullet material to go to work for you.

And a lot of it has to do with bullet action as well in the form of expanded frontal area,which just destroys more vital tissue on its passage through the animal.The reason animals end up "dead" from either one is they both create "enough" tissue damage in vital areas to be lethal,but there can be a difference in how much damage each one does.

Take a look back in some threads on here....rcamuglia had good pictures of the lungs of his bull elk shot this year at about 250-300 yards(IIRC)with a 264WM and 140 Berger.....my knee jerk reaction looking at the pictures was that the wound channel looked rather small,and I have seen more damage done by certain 270 bullets,(and far more damage to the lungs of elk hit with 30 caliber 165 and 180 gr bullets I've used on them)yet the elk did not go far and died rather quickly.It doesn't take a very big hole in the lungs to kill any ungulate, but this does not mean there is no difference in the size wound channel they are capable of creating,or the amount of heavy bone they can pulp in the process as we go up in caliber,bullet weight,and velocity.

Compare that to some of the photos of other animals hit with 210 30 caliber Bergers and note the size of some of those exits...or as one simple example,(if you could have been there with me)a large whitetail I killed at about 350 yards in Sask with a 165 Bitterroot from a 300 Win Mag...the combination of high velocity and expanded frontal area(likely around .65 caliber,maybe more and Bitterroots do not fragment)blew a fist sized hole in his offside and threw blood and internals all over the snow beyond him.It looked like a trainwreck,and I have opened elk up and seen the same things.

I have never used a 6.5 of any type but have used 25's and 277 calibers on plenty of animals(both close enough);I have never seen bullet paths through animals with those that rivaled anything in 30 caliber fired from a 300 magnum....big enough to do the job and kill efficiently,yes,but across the board,they have never been as destructive in animal flesh.

You're right that these differences can sometimes seem small..when it comes to magnum capacity cases, I'm a 7mm fan myself but that is mostly a recoil related issue,plus the fact that the heaviest 7mm bullets stick you in the middle range of 30 caliber bullets(160-180 gr); but there are a lot of experienced hunters on here who advocate 30 caliber and I can see where they are coming from.....IMO bullet design,construction,and expansion characteristics can close some of these gaps(the reason I've always felt that the only thing that sets the 7mm magnums a notch above anything smaller is with the heaviest 7mm bullets),but I never kid myself over which is more potent and the 30 simply trumps in that regard.

And yet, I have 7mm Bitterroots here recovered from game that are expanded to .60 caliber,some a bit more,and they exceed the frontal area of some 30 caliber Partitions I've also recovered....the lines can get fuzzy sometimes.

Here's another way to look at the question: I was checking the sighting on a couple of rifles a few days ago. One of those rifles was a 30-06 with 180 bullets, the other a 250 Savage with 100 grainers. I didn't check speeds, but I would imagine they were close. I was shooting into a three foot chunk of punky frozen log stood on end. Neither bullet type exited any of several times the log was hit, nor was the log moved from where it stood on it's end. Obviously the momentum of the bullets was expended.

What happened to the energy of the bullets? I think it is reasonable to assume that each bullet must have 'absorbed' some of its own energy as it was transformed in shape. More importantly, the shape change caused much of the energy to be transferred to the log - in many directions. Obviously the heavier bullet struck with more energy. Therefore it undoubtedly dissipated more of it's energy into the target as well.

The other 'gack' thing to consider: remember, even a 375 H&H is shooting a little bit of metal weighing a fraction of an ounce, and, perhaps I'm alone in this, but I think it's pretty amazing that such a small bit of metal can be moved so fast by so little fuel, and that it can be lethal as far as it is. But, if you want to look at numbers - instead of differences in fractions or thousandths of an inch of diameter, consider overall front area. The .264 bullet has less than 75% of the frontal area of the .308. Bullets of similar construction in each diameter tend to carry that difference with them in their expanded form as well. Does it matter? Perhaps not if 'dead' is the only criteria. However, many times it is less inconvenient to be able to have added control over the timing and placement of making the critter dead. Of course YMMV.

If I had to consider the big stuff for North America, then I'd probably go with an 06 and a 220 grain RN or 220 SMP Partition...

take big bears off the list, anything in 26 caliber would work just fine...

my favorite cartridge is the 6.5 x 57, but that one is kinda rare.. but not for we handloaders when we want one...any bullet from 120 grains and up...