Big Game Calibers - Math vs Experiences?

[blakeyboy]

6.5s are popular because they don't recoil much and there are a gigahillion bullets available in that diameter, many being heavy for caliber. The caliber doesn't make it effective, nor does the SD because SD doesn't factor in bullet construction. A 180gr 30 caliber Partition will lodge under the hide of a moose at 300 yards when launched from a 300 Winchester and has a lower SD than the 6.5 140gr. I'm doubtful that you'd get similar performance out of even a fast 6.5 at half that distance. There's a venn diagram of speed, SD, and construction that needs to be balanced.

Yup a wildly subjective mess. The partition was a great 20th century answer ensuring enough retained SD to penetrate deeply for our bigger game animals. The head stamp means nothing. If you use the same SD partition from a 6.5 and impact at same velocity, it too will be under the hide of that moose at 300 yards. You'd likely burn half the powder to do it though which is more beneficial to you and make it more likely to shoot well for a variety of shooters than the 30 cal option and the moose still dies. To run same SD to a 140gr 6.5 bullet in .30 cal you need to throw 190 gr bullets, not fun for many to shoot well.

It should also go without saying that making the comparisons you'd also compare similar construction types to assume similar SD reduction rate and therefore penetration. Silly to compare a delayed controlled expansion bullet against a rapid controlled expansion bullet. But you can vary things along the scale as you say. As in my preferred formula is higher than adequate SD in rapid controlled expansion bullets and moderate to low velocities...as they are nice and long and behave more like the 20th century answer partition as the front end of bullet gets to open up nicely and do lots of work internally for the shorter recoveries we all love but there's plenty of bullet left on the tail end to ensure adequate penetration. So you can skin the cat as many ways as you like once you have the mental visuals of how all this works. You can be smarter about how much powder you burn to get the sort of bullet performance you enjoy and prefer. The 20th century answer (one of the best answers) was to throw a 180 out of a 30 cal pretty hard and a partition was a top choice but not a top choice for a good bunch of the shooters in terms of shoot ability and hit probability. You can equal that formula now with less than half the recoil of that old combo.

It's hard to give up the institutionalized head stamps and displacements etc. but the right numbers and choices tell the story, we have a far better understanding of terminal ballistics than we did in the 20th. We still have a ways to go to equal our in flight ballistics understandings but we're well on our way now to catching up to that on the terminal end. There are many people on rokslide killing big game including elk to 400 yards with .223's and 77gr tmk's for years now and documents on rokslide forum, they are taking terminal ballistics know how and knowledge to the top of food chain and if you showed up there with the ole throw a 180 out of a 30 argument you'd instantly end up so far behind you'd think you were first. Still wildly subjective but there's lots of ways to get 24" of penetration range over a broad impact velocity spectrum with now than we had before, we no longer need to be pounded with 20+ ft/lbs of recoil energy to do it. Mr. Bell paved the way.

 

[blakeyboy]

i ve been among elephants and trust me we had 460 wea for a reason. the tools used by poachers including bell are different and he never told us how many never recovered ...

derail, thread about energy, ko factor, etc., the energy had nothing to do with any of it, poachers or not, bad shots with the big bores still result in same rodeos as bad shots with the smaller bores, it's well known that more rodeos happen with people shooting too much gun as they shoot it poorly compared to lighter hitters, remember placement trumps displacement, run the math on the 460's, compare to the 375 h&h, then the 6.5x54 and 7x57 options etc. you'll see the pattern emerge, you need to have a certain SD and a certain impact velocity to brain pan elephants, or take on dangerous game, you'll see some of the options a little lower on SD but compensate with higher impact velocity, but others higher on the SD can get away with lower impact velocities...you'll see a trend develop on all of them, aiming for .3 SD or higher, and 2300 fps impact or higher sort of thing, probably lots of 375 h&h bullet options I'd choose over lots of the .400's options but just because it says 460 doesn't mean it will out penetrate a well chosen heavy in the .375, compare the solids for ease of comparing, don't compare the 260 gr accubonds or other expanding bullets meant more for the larger ungulates or predators etc.

sledgehammer vs the spear, you go too far towards the hammer formula and things don't die as reliably

 

[medvedqc]

have you ever been among elephants? and did you use for back up 6.5 and 7mm? just in case ...

 

[LarryG]

More important to me than all those knock down calcs is the recoil level, stock geometry, butt pad and cheek weld/fit of the gun to the shooter.
Call it the flinch factor. Get in the red zone on this one and a shot aimed at the vitals is a shot in the gut/rear end/ground.

If more hunters focussed on their gear and how they shoot it and not on what has more energy etc, perhaps more hunters would be using the 6 or 6.5s and appropriate bullets, because they would be much more effective shooters and likely to not be shooting the super magnums.

Nothing wrong with any choices out there, so no shade from me on the bigger guns. But for my modest deer hunting limitations/expectations, the 30-30, 7-08 and 308 have worked perfectly within 250 yards. I am sure a 243 or 6.5 would be similar, i just haven't used one on deer.

An 8 lb 30-06 with a nice fitting stock and recoil pad is a soft shooting gun in my opinion.

 

[medvedqc]

there is some cases and big game that need more than a 243 ... even with a perfect fitted one ...

 

[blakeyboy]

have you ever been among elephants? and did you use for back up 6.5 and 7mm? just in case ...

at the zoo, the back up in my pants was plenty reassuring

see what you're trying to do here, engage me in some sort of measure, which has nothing to do with this thread topic (energy), so how many did you shoot? same as me? doesn't matter anyway, Bell killed like 1100 so we can go off that, we can choose to understand it or choose to argue the Tim Allen way is best lol, however, most of that is still a derail...as this was about energy, not how many elephants we scared with our guns....'among elephants' lmfao, priceless, do tell us how energy is such an important measure then? pretty tough to do with all the available resources out there but give it your best shot...explain the 700 nitro express with 9000 ft/lbs only knocking elephants out would be a good place to start

 

[Dogleg]

Work cannot be done without the transfer of energy, and unless you think you can ##### slap Sir Isaac Newton into changing his mind that isn't going to change anytime soon. Remember that, write it down. I recommend a process that involves a hammer and chisel and nice flat surface. Granite would be good, but anything close to timeless will do in a pinch.

To transfer energy you first have to have some. More energy has the potential to do more work. That's a hard thing to argue. The energy activator in our case is the trigger; usually located on the bottom side of firearm. Just pull random stuff until you figure it out. When you hear a cool "bang" sound you're in; energy on its way. Comes from the expanding gases of the burning powder I think, but I did have a water pistol that the harder you pulled the trigger the harder the water came out. Anyways; doesn't matter.

Now you have to transfer that energy to something to do some work; perhaps an unhappy and luckless animal if available. It is theoretically possible to not transfer any energy at all. This concept is called a "miss". It's supposed to be relatively common in real life, but practically unheard of on the internet. If you learned to shoot on the internet you might want to look it up.

Assuming there isn't a miss (which may not exist anyway) our process of doing work via the transfer of energy just like ole 'Newt said begins. So you have energy, the transfer of energy which you can't have without energy, and the big bloody hole that is the result or the work if you will. Hopefully its in the right spot.

Then there's bullet construction, which is a great variable but just manipulates the time and space that the energy is transferred in to make it good for something or better for something else. That's it. Velocity? Sure, big fan of velocity but you can't hardly talk about velocity without talking about energy. You can't talk about energy without talking about velocity either. Fast bullets shed more velocity(in fps) in impact media than the same bullet hitting slower. That gives you more..........wait for it..........more energy transfer. More of that thing that you have to have. It also starts out with more, so it's the gift that keeps on giving. Win win. Caliber is another variable. If you had the same weight of the same bullets at the same velocity but one is bigger than the other, the big one meets more resistance and transfers more energy faster.

So long story short, energy isn't nothing. The transfer of energy and the time and space it occurs in is close to being everything.

 

[Ardent]

We’ve come full circle, we always end up at Big Five on CGN in terminal ballistics themed threads. Appreciated your post above blakeyboy about common sense terminal ballistics, and after playing with them myself I found the usefulness of .505+ cartridges dubious. This said I saw no 6.5s or 7s in the PHs hands on big five hunts. Bell is like comparing anything to Adam Ondra or Alex Honnold in the climbing world, there’s what works for guys like that, and what makes the most sense for pragmatic practitioners like the rest of us. .458 Lotts have their place still, I’ve seen enough to convince me of that.

 

[antiqueguy]

We’ve come full circle, we always end up at Big Five on CGN in terminal ballistics themed threads. Appreciated your post above blakeyboy about common sense terminal ballistics, and after playing with them myself I found the usefulness of .505+ cartridges dubious. This said I saw no 6.5s or 7s in the PHs hands on big five hunts. Bell is like comparing anything to Adam Ondra or Alex Honnold in the climbing world, there’s what works for guys like that, and what makes the most sense for pragmatic practitioners like the rest of us. .458 Lotts have their place still, I’ve seen enough to convince me of that.

The biggest thing that people can’t grasp about guys like bell or Allen or Selous is they did what they did for a job and that was getting ivory and or culling. The shots on the animals they took were much different than how we would hunt such big game today and they were taking these animals the cheapest way they could.

How any of what they did or what happens on the dark continent has any application here in North America I don’t know.

The big game here is not the hardest to kill as I said eailer here in Canada the .303 and .30-30 took plenty of big game here. Other calibers that accounted for game that people look down on now are cartridge’s like .44-40(any of these Winchester cartridges really even .25-20) to .577 snider plenty of these rifles have taken everything in canada.

If we’re talking about a good all around cartridge that can be used here and the world over the .458 win mag is a great one has a bad rap bc of the early day of this cartridge but with modern powders and bullets it works for everything from whitetail to elephant.

I never understood the need for the smaller caliber belted magnums here they just cause meat damage and I don’t really call reaching out to 500 plus yards hunting.

More available cartridges/rifles I’d use for big game here .243 Winchester,any of the 6.5’s really,.303 British,.30-30 win,7.62x39,7.62x54r,.308 win,.30-06,9.3x57 and x62,.38-55,.44-40,.444 Marlin,.45-70,.458 win mag.

12 gauge with buck for close in deer or 12ga with slugs for just about everything.

 

[medvedqc]

at the zoo, the back up in my pants was plenty reassuring

see what you're trying to do here, engage me in some sort of measure, which has nothing to do with this thread topic (energy), so how many did you shoot? same as me? doesn't matter anyway, Bell killed like 1100 so we can go off that, we can choose to understand it or choose to argue the Tim Allen way is best lol, however, most of that is still a derail...as this was about energy, not how many elephants we scared with our guns....'among elephants' lmfao, priceless, do tell us how energy is such an important measure then? pretty tough to do with all the available resources out there but give it your best shot...explain the 700 nitro express with 9000 ft/lbs only knocking elephants out would be a good place to start

you can laught at your will a my comments i do not care really ... if im telling that in CAR most of the hunters and phs or people working in the hunting industry used 460 wea it is for one reason and only one: it worked ... bell was a poacher and did not have the same way of doing stuff as now we re talking about ethics and i leave it there ...

 

[blakeyboy]

Work cannot be done without the transfer of energy, and unless you think you can ##### slap Sir Isaac Newton into changing his mind that isn't going to change anytime soon. Remember that, write it down. I recommend a process that involves a hammer and chisel and nice flat surface. Granite would be good, but anything close to timeless will do in a pinch.

To transfer energy you first have to have some. More energy has the potential to do more work. That's a hard thing to argue. The energy activator in our case is the trigger; usually located on the bottom side of firearm. Just pull random stuff until you figure it out. When you hear a cool "bang" sound you're in; energy on its way. Comes from the expanding gases of the burning powder I think, but I did have a water pistol that the harder you pulled the trigger the harder the water came out. Anyways; doesn't matter.

Now you have to transfer that energy to something to do some work; perhaps an unhappy and luckless animal if available. It is theoretically possible to not transfer any energy at all. This concept is called a "miss". It's supposed to be relatively common in real life, but practically unheard of on the internet. If you learned to shoot on the internet you might want to look it up.

Assuming there isn't a miss (which may not exist anyway) our process of doing work via the transfer of energy just like ole 'Newt said begins. So you have energy, the transfer of energy which you can't have without energy, and the big bloody hole that is the result or the work if you will. Hopefully its in the right spot.

Then there's bullet construction, which is a great variable but just manipulates the time and space that the energy is transferred in to make it good for something or better for something else. That's it. Velocity? Sure, big fan of velocity but you can't hardly talk about velocity without talking about energy. You can't talk about energy without talking about velocity either. Fast bullets shed more velocity(in fps) in impact media than the same bullet hitting slower. That gives you more..........wait for it..........more energy transfer. More of that thing that you have to have. It also starts out with more, so it's the gift that keeps on giving. Win win. Caliber is another variable. If you had the same weight of the same bullets at the same velocity but one is bigger than the other, the big one meets more resistance and transfers more energy faster.

So long story short, energy isn't nothing. The transfer of energy and the time and space it occurs in is close to being everything.

No where did I say energy didn't exist, and you are correct if that's how you want to view it, the world understands it now that it is a useless figure in determining what you'd like for terminal ballistics. You can dump a lot more 'energy' inside a deer with a .243 and the right bullet than you can a 30-06 with the wrong bullet. We play a balancing act on a sliding scale of trying to get stuff that works mostly from deer to moose. Guys are happy to have really strong tough bullets for moose and then just poke holes in deer leaving all that energy in the hill side. Not arguing laws of physics but energy as we look at it now is a useless figure. If we could look at it in terms of energy dumped per inch of travel that would be another thing, but it would be looked at the same time with SD dumped per inch of travel, this would help us understand what to expect for damage over x amount of inches of travel. We're a little ways off in getting to these measures (rates) and objectifying terminal ballistics. But if we keep talking about it eventually someone will crack open the budget for gel and start working on it. Currently the best formula to use is appropriate for game intended SD, impact velocity, and construction.

 

[blakeyboy]

The biggest thing that people can’t grasp about guys like bell or Allen or Selous is they did what they did for a job and that was getting ivory and or culling. The shots on the animals they took were much different than how we would hunt such big game today and they were taking these animals the cheapest way they could.

How any of what they did or what happens on the dark continent has any application here in North America I don’t know.

The big game here is not the hardest to kill as I said eailer here in Canada the .303 and .30-30 took plenty of big game here. Other calibers that accounted for game that people look down on now are cartridge’s like .44-40(any of these Winchester cartridges really even .25-20) to .577 snider plenty of these rifles have taken everything in canada.

If we’re talking about a good all around cartridge that can be used here and the world over the .458 win mag is a great one has a bad rap bc of the early day of this cartridge but with modern powders and bullets it works for everything from whitetail to elephant.

I never understood the need for the smaller caliber belted magnums here they just cause meat damage and I don’t really call reaching out to 500 plus yards hunting.

More available cartridges/rifles I’d use for big game here .243 Winchester,any of the 6.5’s really,.303 British,.30-30 win,7.62x39,7.62x54r,.308 win,.30-06,9.3x57 and x62,.38-55,.44-40,.444 Marlin,.45-70,.458 win mag.

12 gauge with buck for close in deer or 12ga with slugs for just about everything.

I won't argue a ton of that as that's not what the subject or what I was pointing out was about. Energy is the topic, explain why 9000 ft/lbs in the 700 nitro express will often only knock elephants out? That's all I'm doing here. Currently, and all this time, it's a useless figure in comparing different bullets for hunting to our game animals. Trying to get people to understand the numbers of what Bell was able to show us, crook or not, the data is valuable, he showed us a solid with .328 sd impacting at 2300 fps with only 2000 ft/lbs can reach the brain pan and turn out the lights, the 700 nitro express with .292 SD impacting slightly below 2000 fps cannot, despite it's 9000 ft/lbs energy. There's a lesson there, valuable info there, don't wander off into the ditch discussing every little weed completely unrelated to the topic. Good thing he was a crook, we wouldn't have this valuable data otherwise lol.

 

[blakeyboy]

you can laught at your will a my comments i do not care really ... if im telling that in CAR most of the hunters and phs or people working in the hunting industry used 460 wea it is for one reason and only one: it worked ... bell was a poacher and did not have the same way of doing stuff as now we re talking about ethics and i leave it there ...

you came into the topic assuming I was suggesting to use 6.5's on elephants? I dunno man but that's not at all what I'm discussing here so you took us off into the ditch discussing the weeds. I'm aware most of Africa minimum for DG is 375 h&h and I certainly wouldn't advocate running much less, we create these rules for the masses so it's tougher to get it wrong, most of the world was a poacher in Bell's days, not a lot of regulation or enforcement, doesn't matter, valuable data from then to now (700 nitro express) is only data, it doesn't require moral standing to be just useful data lol, good for the 460 guys, if I went to Africa I'd study them all and make my choice, the last measure I'd be looking at in all of that is ENERGY, I would however place RECOIL ENERGY quite a bit higher on the list.

 

[blakeyboy]

We’ve come full circle, we always end up at Big Five on CGN in terminal ballistics themed threads. Appreciated your post above blakeyboy about common sense terminal ballistics, and after playing with them myself I found the usefulness of .505+ cartridges dubious. This said I saw no 6.5s or 7s in the PHs hands on big five hunts. Bell is like comparing anything to Adam Ondra or Alex Honnold in the climbing world, there’s what works for guys like that, and what makes the most sense for pragmatic practitioners like the rest of us. .458 Lotts have their place still, I’ve seen enough to convince me of that.

see my response above, not sure how we got to assuming I was suggesting people run to Africa with their 6.5's to take on elephants but here we are, that's on the others, I just collect data, process it, and spit it back out in a more useable format

 

[Ardent]

I enjoyed Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter, I don’t see it as something to emulate or celebrate, rather just a historical account of an Africa that’s been lost and methods and actions that will never be replicated. The ‘resource’ was considered limitless at the time, and indications it was finite weren’t immediately recognized. Bell seemed to think the shrinking abundance of big tuskers would simply rebound, as her pushed further and further seeking them. That’s another subject however.

On rifles, I see what Bell did as exactly akin to a professional deer poacher in the early 20th century on this continent who used only a .22. The .22 penetrates plenty far enough, and placed as accurately and with as much care as Bell did with 6.5s, 7s, and .303s on elephants will reliably take deer, even moose. Others have acutely pointed out Bell was a poacher who was deeply in business, and what he was doing had more in common with putting down livestock than hunting.

A .458 Lott and a shooter who can shoot it, and they are more common than many here seem to assume, is indeed more effective than a 6.5 and penetrates plenty far to get through an elephant skull. It also adds enormous margin on shots other than the ‘Bell shot’, and can put any of the Big Five down from multiple angles, including joints, central nervous system, and vitals hits. Something a 6.5 can’t be asked to do too often with confidence.

 

[antiqueguy]

I won't argue a ton of that as that's not what the subject or what I was pointing out was about. Energy is the topic, explain why 9000 ft/lbs in the 700 nitro express will often only knock elephants out? That's all I'm doing here. Currently, and all this time, it's a useless figure in comparing different bullets for hunting to our game animals. Trying to get people to understand the numbers of what Bell was able to show us, crook or not, the data is valuable, he showed us a solid with .328 sd impacting at 2300 fps with only 2000 ft/lbs can reach the brain pan and turn out the lights, the 700 nitro express with .292 SD impacting slightly below 2000 fps cannot, despite it's 9000 ft/lbs energy. There's a lesson there, valuable info there, don't wander off into the ditch discussing every little weed completely unrelated to the topic. Good thing he was a crook, we wouldn't have this valuable data otherwise lol.

From my understanding most shots with less than ideal calibers on elephant were heart/lung and a lot of tracking. Any of the 6.5, 7mm or .303 is not making it on a frontal brain shot simply too much skull in the way. Theirs story’s of an elephant taken with a .22lr. The top of the heart on a elephant is a pretty deadly shot taking out the aorta and atleast the bottom of one king depending on caliber and bullet construction.

 

[blakeyboy]

From my understanding most shots with less than ideal calibers on elephant were heart/lung and a lot of tracking. Any of the 6.5, 7mm or .303 is not making it on a frontal brain shot simply too much skull in the way. Theirs story’s of an elephant taken with a .22lr. The top of the heart on a elephant is a pretty deadly shot taking out the aorta and atleast the bottom of one king depending on caliber and bullet construction.

my memory on when I researched this has been fairly good, got the first name mixed up a bit but recollection was mr. bell had a spot in the side of the head he aimed for that got him into the brain pan reliably, body shooting wasn't a thing

the rest is subjective, no one can quantify the energy, the rule is 375 h&h or bigger but choose the wrong bullet for the game intended and you're a grease spot, pointing out the more important factors, #1 you must get deep enough to turn the lights out, we know you can do it with a 6.5 and 2000 ft/lbs or bigger rigs with triple the energy, we apply these to our game here just the same, a lot of 6.5 creedmoor kills on bull elk at 400-600 because the formula is used and understood correctly, energy isn't factored at all in it, if you do you waste your time thinking about it or applying it to the choice, you get it done because you chose appropriate sd, impact velocity and construction for game intended, we can drop the Africa thing, apparently having troubles separating the topic out, no one addressed the sledgehammer vs the spear example which is the same example but we didn't have a great actual record and data base of that example lol

 

[jjohnwm]

...my memory on when I researched this has been fairly good, got the first name mixed up a bit but recollection was mr. bell had a spot in the side of the head he aimed for that got him into the brain pan reliably, body shooting wasn't a thing...

I was just pulling your chain about the Mambojambo name thing, didn't mean any offense. Apologies if it seemed that way.

I have the same recollection about Bell's technique. He apparently did a great deal of experimentation on skulls at various angles to determine the (limited) shot presentations which would work with his little rifle, and was surgically precise in taking only those shots. Agreed, he was poaching as a business, plain and simple; but he had essentially unlimited time to hunt and could pick and choose his shots verrrrry carefully and selectively.

That's a far cry from a modern elephant hunter who is spending big bucks for a short period of time in the bush. A guy like that wants to be able to take any reasonable shot that is known to be effective with a reasonable cartridge/gun combo. And, truth to tell, he is likely hoping for that frontal brain shot...the "classic" elephant kill about which he may have dreamt all his life...which his iconic .375 or .458 or whatever will make nicely, just as it would a heart shot from various angles...rather than sneaking around with a protractor to place a tiny bullet at a very specific angle to a very specific but not easily-visualized target spot, knowing that only that shot will work with the gun in his hands.

Hunting of any kind is not just about killing an animal; and, IMHO, an elephant hunt is an extreme example of that statement. If I were on an elephant hunt...and I sadly won't ever be...I would be acutely aware that I was firing a literally once-in-a-lifetime shot at a once-in-a-lifetime animal...and I would want to make it as perfect, and perfectly memorable, as possible.

When Bell fired a shot at an animal...he was just driving nail number 847, and...like a carpenter swinging a hammer...wanted it to be as effective and simple and uneventful as possible, utilizing the experience gained on the previous 846 nails. Totally different scenario, so making direct comparisons is not really valid.

 

[medvedqc]

From my understanding most shots with less than ideal calibers on elephant were heart/lung and a lot of tracking. Any of the 6.5, 7mm or .303 is not making it on a frontal brain shot simply too much skull in the way. Theirs story’s of an elephant taken with a .22lr. The top of the heart on a elephant is a pretty deadly shot taking out the aorta and atleast the bottom of one king depending on caliber and bullet construction.

a lot are killed that way with 7.62x39 and 54r by poachers and not for the meat just for ivory still in those days.

 

[blakeyboy]

a lot are killed that way with 7.62x39 and 54r by poachers and not for the meat just for ivory still in those days.

can't imagine the x39 is actually getting anywhere near deep enough even with solids, they tend to spray and pray and slow them down until they can but the 54, not arguing a lot of what is being brought up here, paying clients etc. etc. the data is what's useful, not a single argument has come to show energy as a useful measure let along a more useful measure, maybe one but wildly subjective one at best, I'll let you guys figure it out lol, hopefully what I did provide stimulated some thoughts on this whole terminal ballistics topic and just really how useful 'energy' is in the equations, but most importantly to figure it out for what y'all do now, and look back at the older stuff you used that did well and check out those numbers etc. then it's easy to see why you can do more for less powder burned now than yesteryear and ft/lbs is a useless number to seeing that, the elephant example is a good one to demonstrate because it was head shots on minimal energy end and head shots on the maximum energy end...and the minimal end killed way more elephants than the 700 nitro ever will...so there's that lol, the sledgehammer/spear is another good example, and we ALL KNOW if you miss the mark the rodeo ensues and nothing short of a bazooka will save the day, the magnums, the big bores, they don't save the day when you shoot poorly, you get the rodeo no matter what, so what did the energy do to save the day? nothing....and as stated before...guides and outfitters can confirm, more rodeos from those over-gunned and hitting poorly than those who show up with lighter stuff they shoot well