Medium-bore for light game?

270 Speer btsp over 84gr rl-17 reaches 2840 from my .23" 375 ruger shoots plenty flat enough for anything I'll do with anything. My 7s still shoot flatter and kick less, but I can't really use it.....course my "light" 7 is a 1/2lb heavier than my .375, so they ARE easier to shoot.

Llama Bob said:

Bullets with worse BCs driven hundreds of ft/s slower are somehow just the same? They're not. If you actually want to do a comparison, post your elk load and we'll compare it to the best 7mag load and see how they stack up in terms of effective engagement range.

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Enlighten us? This sounds an awful lot like someone who doesn’t know how to shoot at mid and long range, trying to justify superiority based on short range velocity advantage. Range is simply clicks on an optic, or hashes in the reticle.

And frankly, anyone who has done this kind of shooting knows - a slower bullet with a higher BC will often outlive a lighter, faster bullet downrange... neither are more than a couple clicks difference out to WAY farther than most folks should be shooting game - way out there were bullet weight makes all of the difference in the world to ensure penetration.

Let’s talk about impact momentum when those 155grn bullets run into an animal downrange...

Wow, what kind of distances are you guys shooting game that all of this matters so much?

I hate to step into this excrement arena (OK, obviously, I don't hate it too much, since here I am). I'm no one's idea of a rifleman, by any stretch. But I have a question for the forum.

If sub-30 caliber rifles are the last word in game harvesting at range, how come the military snipers have been recently moving to .338 Lapua instead of, say, 6.5 Creedmoor?

Mycin said:

I hate to step into this excrement arena (OK, obviously, I don't hate it too much, since here I am). I'm no one's idea of a rifleman, by any stretch. But I have a question for the forum.

If sub-30 caliber rifles are the last word in game harvesting at range, how come the military snipers have been recently moving to .338 Lapua instead of, say, 6.5 Creedmoor?

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Anti-material capabilities.

Many hunters who head out into forests and foothills favor their 35 Remington rifles because their shots rarely exceed 150 yards or so. This is a cartridge which is quite lethal indeed despite somewhat boring ballistics. However, my Uncle Larry used his overtime income to fund many hunting adventures into Canada for moose and bears. His Marlin 336 in 35 Remington performed quite well and he always came home with plenty of meat and trophies! He gifted this rifle to me in his will. I have taken several big hogs with this rifle.

35 Remington is a keeper!

TR

Incidentally, if you actually run the math that particular .375 load spots the 7RM running 155 Edge TLRs 150 yards of range for 100% hit probability with +-3MPH wind error and a 1 MOA rifle on a 12" vitals zone. Make them both 1/2 MOA rifles and the gap increases to 180 yards.

Edit: This post belongs below the one currently below it.

LoonWulf said:

270 Speer btsp over 84gr rl-17 reaches 2840 from my .23" 375 ruger shoots plenty flat enough for anything I'll do with anything. My 7s still shoot flatter and kick less, but I can't really use it.....course my "light" 7 is a 1/2lb heavier than my .375, so they ARE easier to shoot.

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What a baffling reply.

First off, I shoot very well at long range, far past hunting ranges.

Second, the advantages of a 7mag shooting a .62 BC bullet at 3250 ft/s compared to say LoonWulf's load at .429 BC and 2840 ft/s (not picking on it, just an example) should be obvious and have nothing to do with dialing drop and everything to do with wind. You can run them through AB analytics or do the probability math yourself if you know how, but I guarantee you the answer is that 7mag can guarantee hits at much farther distance on any target of any shape in any environmental conditions as long as you hold rifle accuracy constant.

Since the 155 Edge TLR is highly suitable for game across a wide range of velocities (far wider than the Speer) and gives exceptional terminal performance there is literally no situation hunting non-dangerous gamer where the .375 load is preferable. That's not to say it won't work, just that it doesn't work AS WELL. And the fact that it doesn't work as well is why there's little or no interest in the medium bores for non-dangerous game.

Really this is obvious. There's just a couple people here who want to pretend that nostalgia is a substitute for ballistics.

Robert said:

What's your point?

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My point is simple: as tools for hunting medium or even large non-dangerous game, the medium bores offer less effective range and inferior bullet performance with more recoil (or rifle weight to compensate). They are inferior across the board. Some of this is inherent in the bore diameter, some is due to the best bullets not being available. Of course that doesn't prevent anyone from shooting a medium bore because that's what they've got or nostalgia or giggles.

That is the answer to the question posed in the thread title - "Medium bore for light game?".

OK youngsters , back in very early 80s where I lived in Salinas Calif. , my old company Commander had bought a historic gunstore in town and of course after he did I hung out there . I found stacked against the wall some estate rifle from a Dr Ramon Samovia of Hollister Calif the I was very interested in . Apparently he was an advanced ballistician beside having his practice and used the huge Hollister ranches to shoot on .http://www.cartridgecollector.net/257-condor
I found a 30 pound bench gun on a 1914 Enfield action with a 20x Unertl Programmer scope and a 32" barrel (labeled "TimkenSteel" in the white) in .258 Super Condor which is the full length .300 H&H case mildly improved with a neck long enough to support up to 200 grain spitzers !!! the gun had a very quick 6-1" twist as I remember and there was a wooden crate with dies, couple hundred fired cases and 50 loaded rounds with dope card and a few hundred 160 grain hollow point and 200 grain custom made spitzer .2575 boattails ! All for the princely sum of $600 1980 dollars . I saved and gave my friend $1000 for it and a Lyman scoped .17 K Hornet on a custom Martini Cadet action (which I still have ) with it's own box of ammo and dies that was from the same estate !!
Any way I shot all the loaded ammo at a ranch in Salinas early on at up to 1/2 a mile and found it amazed everyone around and prompted the old timers to tell weeks of stories about the old times in the area with rifles and game and bandits buried in mine shafts ! The huge cannon was eventually chronographed in the later 80s as giving almost 3000 fps with a case full of H870 and the 160 grain bullets I had left. It also shot 117 Grain Sierra BT VERY well and shot those at 3400+ FPS . I fired that gun about 800 times total and it appeared fired very little when I bought it. I sold it in 1993 during a divorce for $1500 at a LGS. Guy bought it for the scope I think , it went with dies and fired cases in it's wooden box. The dope card on the Big Unertl lens cap inside had come ups to 800 yards on it and believe me it was like 30 clicks up 200 to 800 yards . Think those are 1/4MOA clicks . I did fire the rifle at boulders over a mile away and you could see the puffs off the granite pretty well. . Shot ground squirrel at 500 yards in Hollister with the 117 Sierra BTs , for old times sake
That was my prime years of fun with High BC (SD) rifles .

rodinal220 said:

I'm with troy fairweather on this. The 35 Remington may not look sexy on paper but it kills cleanly and effectively. I have mentioned a few times on this forum that its a death ray. I have had excellent results with the Remington 200gr cor-lokt. There are plenty of examples of the paper ballistics not matching the real world. My old cap and ball revolvers with a soft round ball are deadly on many types of "vermin".

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Count me in with Troy, you and others the .35 Rem and add the 200gr cor-lok for factory ammo. Once I read somewhere, the 35 Rem is a 30-30 on steroids. The 30-30 is a great deer round and so is the 35R.
IMO, same as the 30-30, it kills well and quite well.. My other deer slayer was the 30-06 bolt action.

Yeah, I have a 300 winmag, 7mm Rmag etc and I get the bigger hammers; OTOH, anywhere I hunted the 35 R did well enough to fill a tag consistently. OTOH, at my age (old), I know a lot of other calibers will do the same. It's called debating a moot point or depending on one's skill; they all work.

Llama Bob said:

What a baffling reply.

First off, I shoot very well at long range, far past hunting ranges.

Second, the advantages of a 7mag shooting a .62 BC bullet at 3250 ft/s compared to say LoonWulf's load at .429 BC and 2840 ft/s (not picking on it, just an example) should be obvious and have nothing to do with dialing drop and everything to do with wind. You can run them through AB analytics or do the probability math yourself if you know how, but I guarantee you the answer is that 7mag can guarantee hits at much farther distance on any target of any shape in any environmental conditions as long as you hold rifle accuracy constant.

Since the 155 Edge TLR is highly suitable for game across a wide range of velocities (far wider than the Speer) and gives exceptional terminal performance there is literally no situation hunting non-dangerous gamer where the .375 load is preferable. That's not to say it won't work, just that it doesn't work AS WELL. And the fact that it doesn't work as well is why there's little or no interest in the medium bores for non-dangerous game.

Really this is obvious. There's just a couple people here who want to pretend that nostalgia is a substitute for ballistics.

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my reply was a little disjointed, basically I ment that my 7mms don't do anything extra for me that the .375 dosent do besides kick less.

and again it's not that I think the .375 is a better long range round, it's just that within my usage it really doesn't matter what I shoot. We're I hunting elk I'd take my .375 running accubonds at 28+, because within my usage they shoot flat enough with low enough drift for any shot id take. I like more energy where I can get it as well, especially for game and terrain I'm not familiar with.

^ and hit softer...

I've got a Weatherby vanguard in 7mmRM, a .Winchester M70 classic in 300WM, and a Ruger No. 1 tropical in.375 H&H.
Out of the 3, the .375 is more comfortable recoil wise than the other 2, particularly the .300. I haven't shot the .300RM in years because of its recoil. The .375 carries easier than the other 2, and has more than enough range to satisfy my needs. If I need to take a 400 yard shot, the .375 will handle it no problem. If I need to take a quartering away shot on an elk, the .375 will do it with ease. For my needs, the 7mm and .300 offer no practical improvement of any kind over the .375, and offer less terminal performance at any ethical hunting range within my abilities. The .375 damages meat less than the other 2 while penetrating deeper. I shot a deer with the 7mm and after seeing it destroy the entire shoulder, ruining a good portion of edible meat, then deflect 90 degrees out the front of the chest, I put it aside and went with the .375 for more straight line penetration which is more suited to my needs as a hunting rifle.

For me to buy into one being “better” than the other solely because of superior ballistics I would first have to accept that a 150-160 grain 7mm bullet is the same as a 200-300 grain .338-.375 bullet. But they are not the same. It’s like comparing a sports car and a 1 ton truck. Each will do something the other won’t so how could one be better without a specific context of how they are to be used?