7.62x39 or RPG for elephant hunting?

[H&Hhunter]

These pique my interest especially the shorter cartridges such as 45/70 and 444 which can be loaded with energy a little better than 30-06 levels.

These rounds have been used succesfully on buff and elephant. However they are less then adequate. I would not choose a .45-70 on elephant under any circumstance.

The 45/70 is an extremely iffy round on buffalo. I have read all the promo stuff from Garrit too so please spare me the marketing hype.

Once again the old can it be done vs should it is in play here.

Oh and just by the way I saw (as in witnessed) a 330gr Garrit 44mag hammer head break in two on a hog. It killed the bugger but the hard cast indestructable flat nosed wonder bullet broke on a little ole hog......I am NOT sold on this whole hard cast thing by a long shot.

I am going to start another thread on what I like in a DG rifle. Just so as i may be able to answer some of your questions.

 

[twoblink]

Oleg, you have the ".17HRM" crowd asking if they should take it to go deer hunting..

And I think that's what makes people cringe..

The goal is to aim for a "one shot stop" and to do that, the bullet has to be big enough. How big? that's like a 1911 vs glock debate. It's not gonna have an answer..

But most agree a .22LR ain't it. There has been recorded cases of an elephant killed by a .22LR. But since a large male elephant's heart is the same size as an NBA basketball, "bleeding out" from a .22LR hole is gonna take a while. Most consider that to be unethical, to make an animal suffer for so long. I tend to agree.

also, being asian, I find "just huntin' for fun" to be a waste. We eat everything (I mean EVERYTHING) and if that's the case, RPG's makes it hard to get most of the animal into the pot..

Varmints, same thing, the least amount of suffering than required...

 

[cooch]

The owner of the 2-bore which he referred to affectionately as "baby" was indeed Sir Samuel White Baker.
Perhaps he had it built after an experience in which he shot an Asiatic Buff with several 12-bore slugs and still had to stop a determined charge from the (by now rather agitated) animal with his last shot ..... which consisted of a handful of loose change as he'd run out of slugs.

Remember that in those days the rule-of-thumb for suitable range when hunting big game with black-powder smoothbores was "Get as close as you can, and then get 5 yards closer." If you didn't have to jump backwards when the dying animal fell towards you, you obviously weren't close enough!
Or so the story goes....

 

[Mornard]

YOU CAN'T USE AN RPG, IT TEARS THE BACON UP TOO MUCH...

 

[MeekandMild]

Oleg, you have the ".17HRM" crowd asking if they should take it to go deer hunting..

That would be really dumb considering the wind error problem.


H&H thanks for the info on the other thread. Being entirely ignorant about DG that thread is a real eye opener. I think I'm going to limit my hunting to north america.

 

[twoblink]

That would be really dumb considering the wind error problem.

That hasn't stopped quite a few from being tempted to try... I hope they don't..

 

[H&Hhunter]

Meekandmild,

I hope all that hoopla on the other thread didn't scare you away..

These things tend to get a little out of hand.

 

[MeekandMild]

Well actually no. Except the part about the mean old woman.

 

[WheelMan]

When reading "Death in the long grass" I got to wondering what military weapons might make good big game weapons (reading about all those game wardens and culling operations). Anyway, I think a WWII BAR wouldn't be too bad an option. Loaded with the hottest fmj it can handle (or something like a partition for thinner skinned stuff) and go to town. The stratagey would be to make your first shot a killing blow to the brain or boiler room, but should he or she not fall as quick as you like you just keep that trigger pressed down for another 19 rounds. I've never fired one but my understanding was that the BAR was very accurate in full auto fire, maybe too accurate for a suppressing machine gun roll (no point in putting 20 rounds through one guy )

 

[Stand_Watie]

Twoblink

also, being asian, I find "just huntin' for fun" to be a waste. We eat everything (I mean EVERYTHING) and if that's the case, RPG's makes it hard to get most of the animal into the pot..

Do you mean by ethnicity as well as by location? I had figured you to be an American/Briton/Australian living in Taiwan as you write as if English were your first language. On the subject of eating everything do you eat cats and dogs in Taiwan? We euthanize something like 2 million cat/dogs in the US every year and I had always thought that was a big waste as we have so many people living here who don't object to eating them. Americans are funny about animals they consider "pets". I wish an "old school" Korean family would move into my neighborhood as we have a real stray problem around here - people bring their stray dogs and cats out into the country and abandon them. They eventually die of starvation or are shot by homeowners, but not before they've made a big nuisance of themselves and suffered horribly (I'm watching a discovery channel production called 'Children of the secret state' about starvation in N. Korea right now and its breaking my heart - they're showing little homeless orphans picking bits of food up off the street and eating it).

The big issue here in Texas recently has been horsemeat - there is a horse rendering plant right up the road here in Kaufman that a lot of people have been trying to get closed down because they export to Europe for human consumption. That would be a big waste I think. If an animal needs to be destroyed anyway there is no shame in putting it to good use rather than wasting resources burying it or burning it.

 

[DFBonnett]

H&Hhunter
Senior Member
wrote....

" The FN is a fairly common elephant culling weapon in some parts, however a game ranger is only allowed to use this type of service weapon after he has demonstrated that he is competent in the art of the brain shot from any angle."

I saw that on a nature show about elephants in a preserve. The FAL the park ranger used certainly got the job done. Two fast shots to the head, IIRC.

 

[Balog]

I don't recall which book it was in, but Peter Hathaway Capstick once eliminated an aggressive tribe of baboons with a MAC-10. That was a great story.