When is 'enough gun' 'too much gun'?

I hate wasting meat so I think you can have too much gun in some cases but in a perfect world we put the bullet through the ribs and no meat is wasted.

I don't think you need anything over 180gr pills out of a 308 or 30-06 to kill anything on this side of the big pond.
 
Those that brag about how small their bullet is or how light it is are the in the same boat. Brag being the key word, not the item being spoken of.
 
My friend ,who shot a lot of coastal Blacktails with a 30/30 decided to upgrade and bought a 7MM with premium bullets and much to his surprise when he shot a mule deer found it ran about 100 yards....the bullet went right though and never expanded...the old 30/30 with a much lower velocity and soft nosed bullets was much more efficient at putting deer down( I think the 7mm would be better as an elk or moose rifle )
 
Hunting can be a mixed bag proposition. My .416's for example certainly have way more power than what's needed for Deer or Bighorn Sheep. Less so for Elk and Moose. Even less so for 'Ol Ephraim. Not to be under-gunned.

For hunting in an area where there's only Deer my lovely fullstock 7x57 would suffice quite nicely.
 
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ratherbefishin said:
My friend ,who shot a lot of coastal Blacktails with a 30/30 decided to upgrade and bought a 7MM with premium bullets and much to his surprise when he shot a mule deer found it ran about 100 yards....the bullet went right though and never expanded...the old 30/30 with a much lower velocity and soft nosed bullets was much more efficient at putting deer down( I think the 7mm would be better as an elk or moose rifle )
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Sounds like he tried to fix what wasn't broken.;)
 
A 7x57 (or my choice the 6.5 x55 swede )seems to be about as perfect a choice for a deer rifle as you can ge for the average guy. And since 'shot placement' is critical, most people tend to shoot moderate recoil rifles more accurately than high recoil rifles ,negating much of the presumed advantages of higher velocity rifles.Doesn't much matter what rifle you shoot if you miss,or worse, wound an animal
 
Slamfire said:
When is 'enough gun' 'too much gun'?

How about when the cartridge grossly exceeds the power needed for the game class being hunted? A .375 H&H Magnum for gophers instead of a .338 Win .Mag.? :p

https://1source.basspro.com/index.php/component/k2/239-hunting-info/2495-use-this-rifle-caliber-chart-to-pick-the-ammo-for-hunting
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I love that black bears appear twice on this chart. The way I read it; 30-30 or .300 savage. They are good for black bears and everything in between.

It's true too, until someone gets scared. Scared they will have to pass up a shot at 200yd. Scared they may run into an apex predator. Scared we may have to track our intended target across a creek to retrieve it.

Fear is a powerful motivator, and it drives a lot of purchasing decisions (not just firearms). When those fears are based in reality, they can be very helpful. When they are based on the hypothetical, well, they can really get a fellow out of 'the zone'.

Keep it real,

HS
 
I'm quite happy hunting with my caliber of choice, 300 win mag. Quite useful at longer distances and where I hunt we have a lot of open fields.
 
HChammer said:
I hate wasting meat so I think you can have too much gun in some cases but in a perfect world we put the bullet through the ribs and no meat is wasted.

I don't think you need anything over 180gr pills out of a 308 or 30-06 to kill anything on this side of the big pond.
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The problem isn't the gun, or more properly the cartridge, the problem lies with the bullet sent to do the job. A bullet with too thin a jacket for the velocity of the cartridge and/or the density of the target results in a massive, shallow, wound. A bullet with a jacket that's too heavy, prevents sufficient upset. This is a lessor crime since greater penetration might well make up for the lack of bullet upset. If we can fine tune our bullet choice to velocity and target density, then the advantage of velocity is to flatten trajectory rather than increase lethality. Long range game shooting proves this to be true, in that bullets must be made to expand at transonic velocities, even to the extent that bullet jackets are annealed.
 
ratherbefishin said:
Where once the moderate velocity/ caliber rifles were the weapon of choice for deer hunting,it seems that nothing less than the latest hyper rifles will do....but I seriously wonder how much real advantage to the average deer hunter they offer? I 'm not talking about special situations where grizzlies are likely to be encountered ,or long shots are more the rule than the exception, but in my own experience,most of my deer were killed well UNDER 50 yards...I knew an old guy who used a Winchestor 25/35 with great success on his wood lot.Compared to that I was 'over gunned' with my 303 on typical coastal Blacktails .Today I pretty much just carry a 6.5x55 swede with a fixed M-8 4x Leopold and just regular SP ammunition and the deer seem to drop just as dead with that as the latest 'must have' rifles capable of shooting deer 1000 yards away..
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Only if you are susceptible to advertiser's and marketing. The gun makers need to sell guns to stay in business. It's hard to come up with a marketing strategy to convince people to put away their old 270 and but a brand new ".277 that does exactly what your old 270 win did" the only place to go is faster from a marketing perspective.
 
'If it ain't broke don't fix it'...the .260 may not have taken off because it didn't really offer anything substantially more than the venerable 6.5x55 swede and I wonder how many more latest whiz bangs bit the dust while some of these old cartridges soldier on,doing what they do best-putting game down very efficiently....funny the bull moose my hunting partner shot at about 250 yards with his 30 06 with regular ammunition took two steps and collapsed,as did another bull I was in on,hit once with a 270 and stumbled and went down.
 
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Many of the old cartridges were the whiz-bang wonders of their day, not the moderation above all models of humility and virtue that they are presented as today. The 30-06 ruled the roost amoung American 30s, the .257 Roberts was a wildcatters dream of necking a 7x57 til it didn't suck. Savage was so proud of 3000 in a 25 that they put it in the name. The .270 was greased lightning with a trigger and they weren't scared to say it. Neither were its fans who got to haul them around before the model A was built.

Is it that hard to believe that further progress was possible?
 
Dogleg said:
Many of the old cartridges were the whiz-bang wonders of their day, not the moderation above all models of humility and virtue that they are presented as today. The 30-06 ruled the roost amoung American 30s, the .257 Roberts was a wildcatters dream of necking a 7x57 til it didn't suck. Savage was so proud of 3000 in a 25 that they put it in the name. The .270 was greased lightning with a trigger and they weren't scared to say it. Neither were its fans who got to haul them around before the model A was built.

Is it that hard to believe that further progress was possible?
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As we continue to progress to the point where the actual shot is automatic, the animal not visible to the naked eye and the battle of senses between the hunter and his prey nullified, it is very difficult to conclude that progress is being made.
 
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