Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Mule Deer - .338win question

Because I can. Besides, the 300's been twice. I'm also taking a Safari Grade in 300 WIN.Question is, do I take the Mauser or Sako action? (rhetorical question )

test1328,

Plenty of people follow Craig's advice! When I went to Botswana in 2003 to hunt the Okavango Delta, I asked Craig if he had any advice. He said to buy two pairs of high-top canvas basketball shoes for wading the swamps, so one pair could be drying out while I hunted in the other. I bought two pairs of Chuck Taylor Converse All-Stars at a local sporting goods store, and Craig was exactly right--though in my camp they also washed the "wet" pair I left in front of the tent each day, and even ironed the laces.

There will never be anything to replace the Chuck Taylors!

Only guys with game can get away with ironed laces!

I really like Sakos, but it seems like Mauser actions and Africa just go together!

HA! Love the ironed laces!

Oh yeah, Jorge... you suck!

Agree. But in my view more expansion takes place when the heavier and tougher .338 bullets have more tissue to go through; moose for example. The deeper set of lungs behind the hide offer more resistance than a tiny chest cavity and lungs such as in deer and caribou. I feel that a small and fast-driven .338 bullet that is designed to expand has a greater chance to expand the most for small deer and caribou shot thought the lungs. But in reality it is my theory. All I know is that I have only been able to recover a 230-gran FS, and one 250-grain A-frame from moose, and only because both broke shoulders and got stuck on the hide at the other side. The rest, just have been pass-troughs on lung shots.

Lungs are the least bullet-resistant part of any animal's chest.

I have recovered several bullets from moose, but most were from smaller calibers, a 150-grain .270 Partition from a Shiras bull my wife killed here in Montana, and a couple of 160-grain North Forks from a 7x57 on a bull I got in Alberta. The bigger bullets recovered were a 286-grain Nosler Partition from a 9.3x62 from a northern British Columbia bull, that went through the meat of both shoulders but missed any bone, and a 230-grain Fail Safe from my .338 on an Alaskan bull.

The 230 Fail Safe was interesting. The moose came splashing down the edge of a small salmon river, and I sat down and aimed. The guide said, "He doesn't have enough brow tines to be legal!"

I said, "The hell with the brows tines! Is he over 50 inches wide?"

The guide, kinda startled, looked for a couple seconds and said, "Oh, yeah! But don't shoot him in the damn river!"

The moose evidently heard some of this whispering, and left the river, walking across a narrow gravel bar and then a steep bank maybe 10-12 feet high. The top of the bank was covered with thick alders, so when the bull's front hooves hit the top and he paused, quartering strongly toward me, I quickly shot him just inside his left shoulder, to angle the bullet through his chest. He stood up on his hind legs like a horse, then fell over backward, rolling down the bank and across the narrow gravel bar back into the shallow edge of the river. It looked for a moment like he would die right there, but evidently the cold water revived him, and he rolled once again into deeper water, then started splashing and staggering into even deeper water, trying to cross the river.

"Don't shoot him in the water!" the guide yelled. I hadn't intended to, so we both hoped he'd make it the 30 feet to the other side. But he didn't, sinking into the deepest part of the pool. All that remained above the surface was a few inches of one antler tine.

The guide had a long rope in his jet boat for tying it up, and I grabbed the loose end and started wading toward the moose, while the guide started the boat and followed me up the river. I got a loop around the antler, anbd we used the boat to pull the moose downstream below the pool. where the water was shallower.

About that time the camp's 18-year-old meat-packer returned with a load of caribou meat, and the three of us heaved on the moose until it's nose was in about 6-8 inches of water, and started butchering from the top down. When we'd get a good-sized chunk off, we'd grab his antlers and pull him a little more toward shore. It was early in the season, with mosquitoes chewing on us the entire time, but after five hours we finally got the last of the meat carved off and hung up in a rack we made in the nearby alders.

During the butchering we found the Fail Safe resting against the pelvis near the right hip, on the opposite side from where I'd shot him. It had lost one petal and weighed 221 grains. After getting home I called the bullet guy at Winchester, who'd sent me the bullets before the hunt because they'd just introduced them. Apparently my bullet was the first 230 Fail Safe anybody had recovered from a big game animal, and he was very interested in seeing it. I mailed it to him, and he sent it back with a note saying he was pretty happy with the performance. I was too--but that was one bull moose that made it into the water after being shot with a .338.

I've also had to get another moose out of the water, a cow my wife killed a few miles north of town a few years. It ran maybe 60 yards into a nearby swamp, but the cow was a lot smaller than that Alaska bull, and the water only a foot deep! The bull she shot here was taken with the the recovered 150-grain Partition. It stood quartering away at around 125 yards, and took a step-and-a-half before folding up like a cheap card table. The bullet entered the left ribs and was found in the right shoulder.

So what bullet is rough on animals? I've only shot stuff with ball because it was supposed to be just fine. Hole in, hole out, zero extra damage. Animals ran a long ways before falling over with a hole (big) in the lungs.
I need to buy a press and dies one day and load for the 50. Have one box of barnes X for it, but thats as far as I got. Amax will open? Other choices?
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LOL, I have no experience on four leggers with the big guns Rost ;]

Thanks Jorge and Congrats on the new booking.

You have never done a dam single thing without your hand being held by a guide. What the foock do you actually know. Please explain in detail

Mule Deer,

Not trying to argue with you, but after reading and reading what bullet manufacturers have to say about their individual bullet constructions or designs, most medium to big game hunting bullets are designed to penetrate a few inches before they expand (some of the Berger bullets, for example). These bullets offer great expansion at lower velocities, and are good for long distance shots. But the same bullet at close distance can expand rapidly without the desired penetration. There are numerous written articles about the differences between the degree of expansion versus penetration between several hunting bullets, and one of this articles is the one about the .338WM, link which was posted on this thread. There is another of such articles that was published on the Interned by Burger bullets.

Now, most of the bullets used to shoot varmint are designed for almost explosive expansion and little penetration, so I can understand that such a bullet would expand pretty close to the hide. I mentioned before how I shot a very large marmot for a trapper friend of mine, and used a 230-grain FS, how the animal hardly moved when the bullet hit, and how small the entrance and exit bullet holes were. I am not an expert, but in my view small animals the size of deer and pronghorn shot through the lungs with the heavier bullets-from 150-200 yards and beyond-offer little resistance to the bullet's nose as it passes through, with in turn reduces the likelihood of expansion. in this case a lightweight bullet that is driven fast would be my choice.

Ray,

Most medium to big game hunting bullets are NOT "designed to penetrate a few inches before they expand." Bergers do, but they are far from most bullets, and in fact are an rare exception.

Instead this trait was accidentally discovered when some hunters started using what were then called Berger Match Grade VLD bullets. The reason it happens is the so-called hollow-point is actually closed so tightly you can't even push the tip of a safety pin into the hole. But behind the tip there's an air-space, because the lead core ends well behind the tip, and after the bullet penetrates a couple of inches the thin-jacketed tip collapses, and the bullet expands violently. Some other target-type "hollow-point" bullets also tend act this way when shooting game, for the same reason, but they also were NOT designed that way.

All these bullets can "over-expand" if they hit something very substantial at close range, but it's not nearly as common as many believe. I was among the writers who thoroughly field-tested Berger Match Grade bullets when Berger started thinking about marketing them as hunting bullets over a decade ago.

One of the field tests involved shooting a bunch of feral goats in New Zealand, something that's regularly done over there to reduce their numbers, because there aren't any natural predators in NZ. After killing one particularly big billy goat weighing around 200 pounds, I deliberately shot the big shoulder joint from a few feet away to see if the bullet (a 168-grain .30 at about 2900 fps) would penetrate the bone. It did, and did NOT expand until after it went through the bone. There were several other instances of the same sort of performance.

But Bergers (and other closed hollow-point match bullets) are exceptions. Expanding hunting bullets with actual hollow-points, soft-points or plastic tips do indeed start to expand as soon as they hit skin--and those are vast majority of expanding bullets.

As noted in my earlier post, this has been proven over and over again, in both media and game. The difference between "varmint" and "big game" bullets is not in when they START to expand, but how much of the bullet fragments. Varmint bullets are designed to totally fragment, the reason for their shallow penetration, though a few do have a heavier jacket-base, such as Nosler Varmint Ballistic Tips, that penetrates somewhat deeper, useful on larger varmints.

Lead-cored big game bullets all fragment to some degree as well, the reason "cup-and-core" bullets with relatively thin jackets can totally disintegrate if they encounter enough resistance, say the big shoulder joint of a bull elk, or similar-sized animal.

But other lead-cored bullets only partially disintegrate. Hornady Interlocks and Nosler Hunting Ballistic Tips typically lose about 50% of their weight, due to the front end disintegrating but the rear end holding together, due to Hornady's Interlock ring, the the Ballistic Tip's heavy jacket base. Nosler Partitions usually lose 20-40% of their weight, exactly how much depending on the design of the specific Partition and what it encounters.

But the front end of all three of those bullet will expand violently on small varmints like ground squirrels and prairie dogs that are only 1-2 inches thick, because they do start to expand immediately on hitting skin. I know this from shooting a bunch of those small varmints with such bullets in calibers up to .375, and seeing the results. In fact Nosler Partitions from can explode prairie dogs very much like "varmint" bullets, because their front core is relatively soft lead alloy, to insure expansion.

But even lead-cored bullets designed to retain 90% of their weight also start expanding as soon they hit, as do bullets designed to usually retain all their weight, like Barnes TSX's. The difference between them and varmint bullets is, again, not when they start to expand, but the lack of fragmentation. This is exactly why the marmot you shot with your .338 Fail Safe didn't fly apart, and only had small entrance and exit holes. But I would bet serious money that if you'd opened up the marmot, you'd have found the bullet did considerable interior damage, because it had indeed expanded.

Barnes TSX's, Nosler E-Tips, Hornady GMX's and yes, Fail Safes, will readily expand on lighter big game. They don't do as much interior damage as lead-cored softpoints, or damage as much meat, but they definitely expand, often at extended ranges. In fact I prefer such bullets for hunting pronghorns, because there's only about 40 pounds of meat even on a big buck, and I want to ruin as little as possible. Over the years I've shot a pile of pronghorns with TSX's and similar bullets, with fine expansion out to 400 yards, as far as I've ever shot them with such bullets.

Now, occasionally TSX's don't expand, but it's unusual, and normally occurs only with smaller-caliber, hollow-point bullets from 6mm to .30 in cartridges that recoil somewhat, probably due to the small-hollow-point being battered shut on the front end of the magazine box during recoil, essentially turning them into solids. When it happens, they fail to expand at any range, even very close up, one reason my wife and I switched to Tipped TSX's and the similar Nosler E-Tip years ago.

It doesn't happen, however, with .224-caliber hollow-point monolithics. Or at least I haven't seen it happen, and neither have any friends who've used cartridges like the .223 or .22-250 Remington on pronghorns and deer. Which is another indication that magazine-battering can close the hollow-points: Neither the .223 or .22-250 recoils even as much as a .243 Winchester. I've also never seen or heard of a TSX above .30 caliber fail to open, probably because the hollow-point is much larger, so is impossible to batter closed.

The way I understand cartridge history.

The 308 Norma was a necked down 338 win mag to fit the 30 06 Springfield action.

The 300 win mag was a case expanded neck lengthened 308 Norma so more bullet selection could be used.

The less restriction in the " neck" of the cartridge the easier the transfer of " no I am sorry" kinetic energy is transferred to the projectile.

Some authors claim tissue damage is correlated to meplat diameter.

In my opinion there are not many " repeated " harvest events with necropsy data to muddle through any real conclusions.

Smaller calibers need velocity and are relied on to " expand".

Larger caliber solids are marketed for " dangerous game"

To analyze the minutiae we expound upon, it seems the more " open a cartridge is in relation to powder column versus projectile caliber
The more pleasant to shoot and tolerant of powder charge" they become.

The excellent performance of monolithic and newer bullet technology has made these basic thereoms of cartridge behavior perhaps a historical mute point of Ballistic minutia.

Thank you Mule Deer for the thorough explanation about bullet impact and expansion.