Most Popular for Deer and Elk

I've moved away from the idea of a minimum energy threshold to kill game. I prefer to focus on impact velocity and bullet performance, my experience has shown that a high impact velocity and "appropriate" bullet performance (mix of expansion and penetration) with good placement tend to have the most dramatic effect. "Appropriate" is game-dependent, I don't need 30" of penetration for a whitetail and would trade for greater upset on impact. On an elk, I think I'd go a bit bigger on the frontal area and use something intended for deep penetration.

I've got some 95gr Hammers on the way for my .257 Weatherby, should be cruising along in the 3600 fps range. Should be an interesting test on whitetails.
 
dan belisle said:
Every once in a while you get one that surprises you though. My brother shot one with his 270 when we were hunting in northern mb some time back, damn thing ran about 5 miles up a creek and expired on the side of a Beaver damn. Most just lay down and bleed out in my experience. - dan
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It happened to me on a moose one year, 5 shots all well placed and that moose just didn’t wanna die!
As for 270, my only experience was my buddy first moose two well placed shots inside 100m and the moose didn’t even flinch lol I finished it with a well placed shot of 30-06 and he went down instantly!
I don’t think they are hard to kill, but once in a while you get one that is not ready to die and you get surprised 😳!
I’m a big fan of 30-06! Even if I used lots of other calibers for moose, I seem to always come back to the old boring outdated 30-06!
 
Joel said:
My "big gun" is as mainstream as it gets. 308 win. What isn't mainstream is its loaded with 110gr TTSX. Guess if I had to shoot something really big, could load a 130 or a 150.

Besides that its 223 rem, 300 blk and 7.62x39. Having fun making 7.62x39 small rifle primer brass with 6.5 Grendel.

Lots of great cartridges out there, most just don't interest me. A rifle like a Win 70 Classic/Ruger 77 Hawkeye in 6.5x54 MS would be neat.
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Same.
Well, almost.
I mostly shoot 130’s.
Gonna be favouring the grendel this fall I think. 115 Tac-TX.
 
I could likely do all my NA hunting with the big 7’s and big 30s and not feel like I was giving up anything. There’s a nearly infinite amount of bullet and impact velocity combinations but in a general sort of way the 7s do better in the air and the 300s a tiny bit better on bigger animals when they hit.
I guess these safes full of everything else were fun though.
 
Deer
6.5 Swede, 130gr Sierra Gamechangers
30-06, 165gr Nosler BTs

Elk
9.3x62, 285 gr PPU SPs (will try them out this year)
 
Accuracy matters more than power. A heart/double lung will take out any animal.
Don't overgun. A wounded animal from a cannon is unethical. Heavy recoil ammo is hard to be accurate with.
You don't need it.
6.5 Creedmoor or 308 works great for both with the right bullet and distance considerations.
I use a Soft point cup and core or a copper bullet.
 
I live in B.C. so most Elk and a lot of deer hunting is also grizzly country so likely carrying slightly more gun than in the east. Guess I’m opposite to a lotta guys on here. Use as much gun as you can accurately handle. Anything will work for Deer but for Elk more is better.
 
WhelanLad said:
Really does boil down to the Tip of all things.

I find these convos interesting because here in Aus we have Minimum calbres for deers... Smaller species 243 w 80gr.. an the larger species like red sambar rusa are 270 w 130 gr ....
It's a silly line in the sand- but we often over gun ourselves....
An often use the wrong tip...
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In Canada the cartridge allowed is provincial registration rather than federal. Firearms laws are federal here, but not the hunting regulations. We have the same debacle of arbitrary laws on things here as you describe.
 
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