Big Game Calibers - Math vs Experiences?

Went from really nodding at your initial post to really scratching my chin at the latest. :) Lots of elephants die to nothing but 7.62x39 FMJs, doesn’t mean it’s a great choice for big five.

I can say for sure kinetic energy is highly useful, velocity in particular as a way of transmitting it far more so than bullet weight. It wasn’t penetration, SD, or bore diameter that dropped the grizzlies I guided most reliably. It was high impact speeds and a good bullet, SD was inconsequential in those encounters, even a 140gr 7mm ended up under the far skin. Said it many times, for big coastal grizz there was nothing I was happier to see a client carry than a 7 mag or a .300. I’d take a .270 armed client before a .45-70, or 6.5x54 or 7x57 for that matter. I did see the effect 7x57 and 175gr, it worked but the bear strolled over 100 yards in a strange stupor before dieing under a tree. A 7 Mag grizz that belongs to a member’s son stood up and looked at the sky, then fell over dead. The multiple .300 taken bears generally just plain fell over dead, 150 to 190gr it was rather inconsequential. The lighter (faster) bullets generally meant they didn’t travel as far.

Mountain goats are surprisingly tough creatures as well. There too, speed and energy killed, dozens of times. Slower rounds (including slower 6.5s) did the job reliably, but not as impressively. Never got to guide a 6.5PRC they came after the era but I am sure it pushes 6.5 into 7 mag and .270 territory.
 
blakeyboy said:
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
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I have had a similar argument not long ago about the .577-450 being a dangerous game round someone said it was a elephant gun it wasn’t his reasoning was bc it was used by one of the big name hunters that it made it great for dangerous game. His eyes really opened up when I mentioned the old .577 BPE was not even truly elephant worthy thinner skinned dangerous game sure suck as tiger.

When talking about North America or European big game it more or less comes down to shot placement bullet construction. A .22 hornet loaded with a tsx or other bullet that will hold together will take deer sized game no problem. A .303 .30-30 or .308 will take everything on this continent with a cup and core bullet.
 
This is a caliber nobody would think is deer capable. Shot placement and knowing a cartridges limits are huge factors. I never seen a point in trying to play American sniper and shooting 300 plus yards at game.

 
Ardent said:
I assure you there can be a point out west and in the mountains. :d 300 looks close in BC when above the tree line.
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What’s a mountain �� where I’m from I can see across the county from the front porch ok that’s an exaggeration but most of the “hills” are man made around here.
 
antiqueguy said:
This is a caliber nobody would think is deer capable. Shot placement and knowing a cartridges limits are huge factors. I never seen a point in trying to play American sniper and shooting 300 plus yards at game....
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Interesting, I think your post is a perfect illustration of how different people seek different types of challenge in hunting. Personally, I'm looking to put the animal down as quickly and easily as possible, and I don't go looking to make it any harder than it needs to be. But I'm not going to tell anyone else how they should hunt.

From my perspective, the idea long range hunting is not very different from using less-capable cartridges at shorter range. Both demand more from the hunter (in different ways) in order to be both ethical and successful. Neither are my thing, but I won't take anything away from people who want to find a way to do it ethically.



Ardent said:
... 300 looks close in BC when above the tree line.
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True, it's always: "Relative to what?"
 
Ardent said:
Went from really nodding at your initial post to really scratching my chin at the latest. :) Lots of elephants die to nothing but 7.62x39 FMJs, doesn’t mean it’s a great choice for big five.

I can say for sure kinetic energy is highly useful, velocity in particular as a way of transmitting it far more so than bullet weight. It wasn’t penetration, SD, or bore diameter that dropped the grizzlies I guided most reliably. It was high impact speeds and a good bullet, SD was inconsequential in those encounters, even a 140gr 7mm ended up under the far skin. Said it many times, for big coastal grizz there was nothing I was happier to see a client carry than a 7 mag or a .300. I’d take a .270 armed client before a .45-70, or 6.5x54 or 7x57 for that matter. I did see the effect 7x57 and 175gr, it worked but the bear strolled over 100 yards in a strange stupor before dieing under a tree. A 7 Mag grizz that belongs to a member’s son stood up and looked at the sky, then fell over dead. The multiple .300 taken bears generally just plain fell over dead, 150 to 190gr it was rather inconsequential. The lighter (faster) bullets generally meant they didn’t travel as far.

Mountain goats are surprisingly tough creatures as well. There too, speed and energy killed, dozens of times. Slower rounds (including slower 6.5s) did the job reliably, but not as impressively. Never got to guide a 6.5PRC they came after the era but I am sure it pushes 6.5 into 7 mag and .270 territory.
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if you studied your experiences, created a chart, that showed everything including head stamp, impact velocity, starting SD, and bullet construction...and even impact energy...you'd find a pattern emerge that showed the quickest deaths most likely formulas and the last numbers on that list would be the caliber/headstamp/ft/lbs....the first numbers would be SD/impact velocity/construction

I'm not arguing your experiences or that those rounds didn't perform better as in 'faster dead' but I will argue your conclusion that it was the difference in energy across them all. That's not the formula that gave you 'faster dead'.

If you can match the first 3 parameters I talk about to game intended first then it just means you're more likely to dump more of whatever energy you have (and that part doesn't matter) over that internal travel. But get one of those things wrong, like too solid and too slow...like the 7x57 you get the slower death although it wasn't wrong was it? Because the grizzly died, the grizz knew it was dead on it's feet, that slow 175 would have done it to a lot of things and likely even bigger than that grizz as Bell showed us. If you need super fast dead then you saw the formula for that, and you're equating that to energy, but reality is ensure more rapid expansion or dump over shorter penetration requirements...so you can do this many ways, speed things up with same construction and lower sd bullets (ie; 7rm and 300wm) or you can keep moderate velocities and use higher sd rapid expansion bullets and get really consistent short recoveries also. Dead is dead, you're trying to quantify subjectively between how quickly dead is dead, by discussing head stamps etc. so how can you objectify your experience? Chart it, recollect every combo, dig up all the details about the bullets, velocities, construction types etc. The .223 thread on rokslide confirms what my experience has been in this also. The damage you will see over 19" of penetration with that little combo means it dumped all it's energy over 19" and at 400 yards what's that maybe 50 ft/lbs per inch? Yet the damage you see when animal opened up and the 'faster dead' short recovery would defy logic when you look at the little cartridge in your hand. So that's the point I'm trying to drive home here....energy couldn't be any lower, the formula couldn't be any more clear. Most of us want more than 19" penetration though, we want a little more reassurance we can take more quartering shot angles, so we tend to shoot bullets and sd's that will offer us a bit more flexibility. The data is the important part though.

More example. I shot a moose and a whitetail same day with 6.5 Grendel 123's. Moose quartering towards, took lung, all of liver, and carried on into paunch, estimated 24" travel. Whitetail buck broadside, through lungs, baseball size cone of damage. Both went 15 yards, both shot at 125 yards. Opened up the whitetail, typical 3/4-1" in, 1.5" out and baseball damage cone through lungs...you couldn't name the cartridge that does that, almost all of them will do the same. Young buck, maybe 10" through and through? Anyway, the moose however, opened it up and the entire liver took all that you'd see in a slow mo gel test on YouTube, a football size cone of damage, liver looked like it had been hit by both barrels of a 12 at point blank, and you hold that little cartridge in your hand left with more questions than answers if you haven't been paying attention. No one would guess that damage wasn't done by a 30-06 or bigger. What did I dump, maybe 70-80 ft/lbs per inch? Anyway, chicken scratch compared to the majority of standards yet the results every bit as impressive. So do tell how important is energy? There's so much info out there now. A lot of it condensed right here. A lot of it condensed your memory banks, you just have to get it on paper and compared all the objective numbers best you can and you'll see exactly what this discussion is pointing out. The same pattern will emerge from your data if you look at it objectively.
 
In gentlemanly debate, much as the internet allows anyhow I’m concerned you have a hypothesis that you can’t bend on, and are unwilling to move from the set of rules you believe apply universally. :) From what I saw over the years here, Africa and elsewhere in outfitting and culling SD would rank as the least important factor aside from diameter with modern bullets. I believe it was more important with past overly soft, non-bonded bullets with soft lead cores, or where FMJs / solids were relied on for penetration alone.

In the proportion of the game shot that came from outfitting, distance travelled after the hit was paid great heed as you don’t want a mountain goat moving lest it become unrecoverable, or a grizzly hiding wounded. For a time I attempted some measure of scientific method of paces taken after the shot, but that really doesn’t work with mountain goats and was abandoned. The patterns became very clear to even a casual observer in the end, and my head guide preferred .270 WSM for everything. He’d seen a lot of hits in his career.

With grizz your headspace was often elsewhere if they were out of sight. In the end, it became extremely apparent the least important factor was SD, the most important was a good bullet arriving fast. SD did have a corollary effect that only really surfaced after 300-400 yards in that higher SD relates very closely to higher ballistic coefficients, and meant more retained velocity (energy).

In the end a .30 cal premium 130gr outperformed a 175gr 7x57 routinely which was my main client loaner. Early on I loaded 175s, later I switched to 140gr premiums with significantly improved effect on game. This was inconvenient for my beliefs as I’ve said before here, I went in believing in heavy for caliber and moderate speeds, and left having to accept speed (energy) kills best, long as the bullet construction is up to job. And so many are these days.

I used to wax about SDs of .300 and speeds around 2300-2500 for years ten to fifteen years ago, in the end that was utterly trumped in experience and now I only advocate for a premium bullet arriving at the animals at 2200fps minimum, and ideally 2400fps or better. Cartridges capable of 3000fps at the muzzle make that far easier, and were more effective in the field in BC where ranges stretch long and animals to move after the hit become highly problematic. My favourite guns to guide, the .300s, I much preferred seeing a lighter, faster premium in that an 180 or 200gr range.

The least impressive .300 effect I witnessed on grizz were on longer shots with stiff 190gr bullets on a pair of grizz, one happening to be my own. It got in a river and died swimming in a stiff current, and made for a bit of a rodeo retrieval. When I worked it back, those bullets arrived around 2000fps, when I saw similar bullets land closer and faster on the same game, the effect was significantly more immediate. Consistently, low SD bullets of modern construction penetrated completely, and no more could be asked of them in that measure.
 
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Enjoyed the read Ardent, thanks. Light for caliber bullets are starting to get more play. It will be interesting to see how far things will swing that way. I was reading a thread on the Hammer forum where they were talking about driving the 137 Hammer Hunter out of a 30 Nosler at 36-3700fps with good success. A fast 7 with a 140'sh bullet would be a good one!
 
Years ago I wrote a blog piece about mountain rifles, and advocated 110s in .270s, 120s etc in 7s, and 130 to 150s in .30s. It came from what we were seeing in volume, and could no longer deny. I figured then bullets would swing to premium lightweights from the extreme heavy for caliber, and definitely starting to see it these days take hold. I said then and still believe now .257 will be the next big thing in mountain rifles, again. It straddles the perfect middle ground for most mountain game, and is better suited to the lighter bullets, 130 and under, than 6.5, and gives a handy margin over 6mm. It’s the goldilocks bore for North American mountain and open country game. And it’s generally fast.
 
I use heavy for caliber in most of my rifles due to the type of hunting i do. Sometimes your only presented with awkward quartering shots and in most of these situations the heavy for cal gets the job done. A few years back i shot a medium sized black bear in the rear end and the 200gr bullet at 2550 fps came out through the front chest. Couldn't believe the amount of penetration I got. I'm still in the camp of heavy for cal bullets but i have been open to trying lighter and faster TSX and TTSX bullets. Last year i dropped 20 grain with the TSX and gained about 250 fps and so far from what I'm seeing things look good, I plan on dropping anther 20 grains with the 160gr ttsx and see how it preforms.

I've also seen light and fast lack penetration where the heavy would have been a better option. My hunting partner switched to 6.5 with 120gr GMX at 2850 fps, and shot a moose broad side, the moose also took shots from another hunter to put it down. The 6.5 bullet was recovered, bullet expanded well but lacked the penetration that we were used to. Up until then his main gun was a Ruger #1 in 7x57 shooting 175gr at 2600 fps. That rifle and load took everything for 30+ years from deer, bear, moose, to elk with ease. Never had a hiccup with that combination until the switch.
 
dgradinaru said:
I use heavy for caliber in most of my rifles due to the type of hunting i do. Sometimes your only presented with awkward quartering shots and in most of these situations the heavy for cal gets the job done. A few years back i shot a medium sized black bear in the rear end and the 200gr bullet at 2550 fps came out through the front chest. Couldn't believe the amount of penetration I got. I'm still in the camp of heavy for cal bullets but i have been open to trying lighter and faster TSX and TTSX bullets. Last year i dropped 20 grain with the TSX and gained about 250 fps and so far from what I'm seeing things look good, I plan on dropping anther 20 grains with the 160gr ttsx and see how it preforms.

I've also seen light and fast lack penetration where the heavy would have been a better option. My hunting partner switched to 6.5 with 120gr GMX at 2850 fps, and shot a moose broad side, the moose also took shots from another hunter to put it down. The 6.5 bullet was recovered, bullet expanded well but lacked the penetration that we were used to. Up until then his main gun was a Ruger #1 in 7x57 shooting 175gr at 2600 fps. That rifle and load took everything for 30+ years from deer, bear, moose, to elk with ease. Never had a hiccup with that combination until the switch.
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I like heavy for caliber myself heck I like heavy in general. Even the slow guns like .577 snider hit like a fright train and keep going with the right bullet and almost no meat damage. For .303 I’d love to have 215gr softs woodligh seemed to make a good one but haven’t seen thoughts around in a few years.
 
Can’t say I don’t appreciate less recoil these days, and see the lighter recoil as a benefit to many and I include myself for sure. :)

I’ve seen my own shooting fall apart when I crossed my limit, which landed at fast .458s in volume on transitioning targets, and has almost certainly declined since then as I’m out of practice. Many hit a limit around .300 I found, with .30-06 being the last ‘safe space’ for many to take it 2023. Admittedly fewer of the avid hunters fell into that group, though a good many of the more casual hunters did, who shot well with the 7x57 or .308. This is discussing lightweight goat rifles, but it has broader applications.
 
:)
Ardent said:
Can’t say I don’t appreciate less recoil these days, and see the lighter recoil as a benefit to many and I include myself for sure. :)

I’ve seen my own shooting fall apart when I crossed my limit, which landed at fast .458s in volume on transitioning targets, and has almost certainly declined since then as I’m out of practice. Many hit a limit around .300 I found, with .30-06 being the last ‘safe space’ for many to take it 2023. Admittedly fewer of the avid hunters fell into that group, though a good many of the more casual hunters did, who shot well with the 7x57 or .308. This is discussing lightweight goat rifles, but it has broader applications.
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Maybe I should have tempered that with a “within reason” :)

Remember that coastal grizzly we got together? 300 RUM and 180 Accubonds crushed it like a coyote.
 
If I handed you a gun and you didn’t know the chambering would you shoot it better if it was a 7mm?

Is the .2 mm difference between the 257 and the 6.5 what makes the 257 the incipient king of mountain cartridges?
 
Dogleg said:
:)

Maybe I should have tempered that with a “within reason” :)

Remember that coastal grizzly we got together? 300 RUM and 180 Accubonds crushed it like a coyote.
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In the spirit of this thread... do you think you would have flattened it the same with a 7mm RM with a 160AB?
And, how would you have felt, confidence wise, at the time?
R.
 
Curiously, it wasn’t raining for that bit,

cOsnW6u.jpg
 
I've enjoyed the last pages of this thread. I talked to the people at Cutting Edge about a bullet for my 338 Win Mag. I was surprised when she told me lots of people like the 175 grain in that cartridge. I ended up going with a 205 Hammer Hunter and like it a lot. First bullet I am going to try in my new 300 PRC, carry rifle, will be a 181 Hammer Hunter. If it was a target rifle I would shoot the heavier Berger or Hornady bullets. I am making the move to lighter and faster for my hunting rifles.

Great picture Ardent!
 
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