Are Big Bores really better killers?

[Northslope Nimrod]

This year, my great uncle, (80yrs old) shot a monster elk through the lungs at 20 yards with a 7mm (not sure of grain). We tracked it & tracked it. We would have found it but some freak blizzard came in and put down 1" in less than five minutes. Initially we thought the snow would help but it just covered EVERYTHING up. We lost him. :banghead:
I figured a 30-30 would have been more effective at that range. (even though it is considered light for elk)
THE QUESTION:
Most of our elk shots are less than 60 yards. Would a big bore caliber provide that much better killing power (shock) than the fast moving bullets (ie: 7mm)
I'm thinking about getting a 45-70 or 444 Marlin, but a buddy of mine doesn't think it will make a difference. What do you think? Also, would a 35 Rem. do the trick or does it move too slow for enough penetration? Would a 35 Rem. be THAT much better than a 30-30. (30-30 shows more velocity & energy on ballistic charts) I don't ever want to lose one like we did this year.

 

[JShirley]

Possible it didn't expand. Bullet could have maybe hit a bit too far back, too.

Failures can happen with any bullet. Whether that failure means a little less effectiveness, or lost game or life might depend on the caliber. 7x57 is an excellent overall round, but you maybe meant 7mm magnum? It's possible that a magnum round might have fragmented at such close range. In my opinion, that's the difference between these big bore "brush calibers" versus magnums. One depends on velocity, whereas the other just depends on a big hole throughout. Personally, I'd pick big bore vs. velocity if I was planning on taking on really big game, but I'd like both if I could get 'em.The thing is, some people call big bores "pre expanded". I can say a small buck I hit with a 300 grain .45-70 just fell.

I have seen a whitetail buck, hit solidly with a .35 Remington, jump up and run 30 minutes later. I can tell you what I'd do in your situation. I've bought a Remington 7600 in .35 Whelen. I plan on using that as my SD rifle when I go to Alaska one day. It should be perfect for fast shots at close big game.



John

 

[mete]

'Brush calibers ' are a myth in that ANY bullet can be deflected ! The 35 Rem is significantly better than the 30-30 ,ask anyone who has hunted with both. And for elk I'd use the Buffalo Bore 35 Rem load ,that penetrates VERY well. I hunt deer with a 45-70 and there are many good loads for that and elk .It's a fine cartridge....

 

[JShirley]

They're still "brush calibers" in that they're good for quick shots at fairly short range, ie, in the brush.

 

[Northslope Nimrod]

Yes, I did mean 7mm magnum.

I've never checked the ballistics on the .35 Whelan, that I recall.

Just checked the ballistics out. Sounds like a great cartridge for my purposes. However, I think I will get a levergun if I change. If I carry a bolt action...I'll just continue shooting premium bullets from my 30-06.

 

[phantomak47]

North slope,


Go buy this book it will fully explain how different hunting calibers work in regards to size and speed. Plus it has an index that shows the range of bullets and their drops. This book is well written and researched. It only talks about hunting and real world experiance while hunting.


The Hunter's Guide to Ballistics by Wayne Van Zwoll

 

[charger]

I've seen a lot of bad shots turned into good shots by a large frontal area...Like somebody above said"maybe you did'nt mushroom"...A 458 WFN is mushroomed before,during and after contact garaunteed

 

[Shawnee]

Hi Northslope...

This thread and another close by really drive home the eternal Truth that shot placement, not bore diameter or ballistics, is what kills game in its' tracks (or nearly so).

Personally, I am not a fan at all of the traditional lung shot. The best shot placement I have seen to date (by far) is the shot that enters just barely ahead of the point of the near shoulder and exits just behind the "off" shoulder, and is above the vertical center. This shot damages/wrecks the spine and part of the lungs, and if it is slightly low or the angle is sharper it takes the heart with it. It is especially lethal from an elevated position, usually dropping the game animal in it's tracks. What makes this placement so effective is it affects the spine/skeleton.

Just my 2 cents wurff. Local opinions may vary.

 

[R.W.Dale]

The best shot placement I have seen to date (by far) is the shot that enters just barely ahead of the point of the near shoulder and exits just behind the "off" shoulder, and is above the vertical center.

I agree, Shoot the shoulder. If you take out the undercarrage wounded animals have a hard time getting away.

 

[mete]

I wish you " shoulder shot " types would explain a deer hit [45-70 Win Partition] at the shoulder joint , destroying the joint and going through the lungs .He still went the tpical 50 yds without much sign of a problem !!!

 

[R.W.Dale]

tpical 50 yds without much sign of a problem !

What's the problem?? The deer only went 50 yds! a deer can cover that in about 5 good hops. Now if the deer kept on truckin for a couple of minutes That would be a problem. When a deer only goes 50 yds that's called sucess!

A deer is a wild animal they don't watch Magnum PI on television, they don't know that they are supposed to flop over dead pointing all four legs in the air when shot. I've seen deer go over 200 yds that the post mortem showed the heart to be completely shot loose.

 

[H&Hhunter]

THE 7MM STRIKES AGAIN...

Possible it didn't expand. Bullet could have maybe hit a bit too far back, too.

I am guessing just the opposite. The 7MM used to have a horrendous reputation as a wounder. It was mostly due to two things, one, factory ammo was using bullets designed for the 7X57 making bullet failure of these thin skinned projectiles a common occurrence. Two, people try and make this round into some kind of a long range death ray when in reality, ballisticaly it is nothing more than belted .30-06.

There were several outfitters around the west that were so frustrated with the 7MM that they wouldn't allow them in camp back in the good old days.

With the advent of premium controlled expansion bullets the good ole 7MM has come into it's own. It is a fine round when used within it's capabilities.

I'd sure be curious as to what bullet your uncle was using. I am guessing that at the range you described that it blew up, making a shallow wound.

And of course if the shot was too far back that wouldn't be good either. In any case that was huge bummer. I am sorry you lost the bull.

As far as a get "er" done elk cartridge goes I really like the .338's, any of the .358's or the .375's they give you plenty of close up thump and can reach out and touch em too. I'll be hunting my elk this year with a .30-06 in honor of the 100th year anniversary of the 06 and in honor of the late great Col. Cooper. With 180gr TSX bullets the 06 has never let me down yet.

Of course a .243 would have worked just fine in that situation if the bullet had got to the goods
.

 

[Art Eatman]

Seems like a mix of shot placement and maybe bullet construction. Or vice versa.

But critters do weird things when shot. You'd figure an '06 at 30 yards would pretty much drop a 90-pound doe in her tracks, right? Me, too. But, as I touched off for a neck shot, she took a step. The bullet entered the top of the right shoulder blade and angled downward to the top of the off foreleg.

Blew out a double-handful of goop. Blood spray like a Peckinpaugh movie. That doe reared up, spun 90 degrees and took off through the dead Johnson grass, leaving a foot-wide bloodtrail some three feet out from her tracks. She made it some 75 yards before she piled up. Color me slack-jawed.

Had she been a larger and wider animal, the bullet might well have not reached the offside leg. No telling how far such a critter might run before dying, unfound.

Art

 

[charger]

My two cents JSHIRLEY

I shot a 7x7 1050 lb roosevelt at trot with a very poor shot just and I mean just catching the rear of the lungs at 236 yds with a 350gr WFN out of a 45/70. I figure from my ballistics program it was doin 786 fps on contact two finger entry and exit. Wound on lungs was hockey puck size. 4 more trots and face first in the mud

 

[Northslope Nimrod]

SO, what is the verdict? Go for big bore (444, 45-70, 35 Rem) for those close range shots? OR Stick with the 30-06?

Where does this leave my 30-30's? I like to pack 'em but those darn elk are tough SOB's!

 

[charger]

Like I said,my opinion has and will always be a big frontal area right outta the muzzle. Sure takes practice with the rainbow trajectory but its mushroomed cause it was when you put it in the gun...my .02$. So what I'm in the process of doing as we speak is rechambering a 95 marlin to 450 AK so I get the big frontal area but with a bit more range. That'll put me out to the low 300's. Good enough

 

[AH-1]

I vote the 444 for close shoots that you are talking about.
lots of good loads out there.


the bucs I shot this year with my 7mm (7X64) where 1 shot kills.1st went straight down,2nd went maybe 20 yards.
pete

 

[FortyFive70]

I love my .45-70s. Absolutely. Of course I love my .30-06s and .30-30s, too, but not as much as my .45-70s.

My favorite is my Marlin 1895SS with microgroove rifling. I have a Lyman 66S peep sight on it. With Remington 300 grain HPs it's good for a 3 inches or less at 100 yards. My particular gun likes Remington for some reason. Accuracy falls off a little with Winchester or Federal ammo. Every deer I've ever shot with my rig fell to one shot. I've broken both shoulders on bucks with Remington's 300 grain HPs. I've also taken a shot from the rear where I fired into the deer's arse and had the bullet exit the chest - the entire body length of the animal. I've never recovered a bullet out of any deer I've ever shot, but given the damage I've seen, it performed very well.

I have a newer 1895 with the ballard rifling as well. It is no more accurrate with cast bullets than the microgroove gun, and, for me, somewhat less so with jacketed bullets. But it's a fantastic gun, too.

For me, the .45-70 was something I wanted to try when I felt I had become somewhat proficient with the standard calibers (.30-30, .30-06). It's not a long range gun, but it will cleanly kill big deer, black bear, and moose if ranges are reasonable. If anything, it makes a big hole.

I recommend the .45-70. If you ever want to handload and push the envelope on power, the Ruger No.1 single shot is a very nice rig and will handle the heaviest loads. The .45-70 can be loaded to handle the very biggest north American game, including the biggest bears.

The only caveat, with any caliber, is shot placement. If your shot placement on a deer or elk is poor with a .30-06 or other hi-vel round, a big-bore wouldn't help.

 

[Dr.Rob]

When you take a lung shot you've got to get BOTH lungs for a quick kill, else your deer/elk can run for a long ways before it decides to lay down and bleed out.

I'd guess a shot placed too far back that only partially deflated a lung or a bullet that blew up too quickly creating the so-called cratering wound. In the former you get a 7mm puncture wound that doesn't bleed and the critter just sneezes blood all day... in the latter you get a bloody trail but the animal is not mortally wounded.

It doesn't take much meat to blow up a 7mm Mag... as I've seen dozens of times with antelope. 3000 fps is 'too fast' at close range, IMO.

I'd think about placement over caliber, and when it comes to elk, a heavy bullet is better than a wonder bullet.

Sometimes bullets fail, and wierd things happen. It's part of hunting.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

I've never checked the ballistics on the .35 Whelan, that I recall.

Just checked the ballistics out. Sounds like a great cartridge for my purposes. However, I think I will get a levergun if I change. If I carry a bolt action...I'll just continue shooting premium bullets from my 30-06.

My "heavy" and elk rifle is Bigfoot Wallace, a custom '03 Springfield in .35 Brown-Whelen. My handloads drive a 225 grain Nosler Partition Jacket an honest 2,800 fps.

I like the Nosler PJ because it was designed with a slightly different philosophy than modern bullets. The idea was a bullet that would open up at low velocity on gracile animals, and yet have enough bullet to plow on through all the hair and mud, hide, muscle and bone of a moose hit at 50 yards.

In one case, I hit the left shoulder of an elk, and completely broke it. The bullet lost its fore-end (I assume, because it was never recovered) and made about a .60 caliber hole in the chest -- that was done by the remnants of the foreward jacket that goes along with the back end. It made a slightly larger exit hole and broke the right shoulder. Both legs literally fell off when I skinned him out.

I can't tell you how far he went under his own power, because he was just starting a downhill leap when I fired. The track showed that he probably rolled and slid until his fighting tines dug into the ground.

 

[Shawnee]

Lots of good info here and I'm just going to tack another tangent thought or two on.

Deer, even big deer, don't really offer a lot of resistance to the bullet and I think that often is a major factor when someone has a deer hit squarely and still go a couple hundred yards. The bullet has simply gone through and expended a lot, if not most, of it's energy (and maybe expansion) on the brush or dirt or rocks beyond the deer.

I think it was Jim Carmichael who often suggested that the best bullet for a deer may be the one that just barely makes it through the off side of the deer because that would mean it expended 100% of it's energy in the deer.
In Reality, that would be a hard bullet to come up with since deer #1 might be shot broadside and deer #2 shot lengthwise. But the point about where the bullet energy gets spent is, I think, a good one.

I personally have shot about 2 dozen deer with a .243 using handloaded Hornady 87gr BTHPs. All of those deer were between 125 and 180yds, most of them had no idea I was around (no adrenalin), and most of them dressed 120-130lbs. I can remember only two that moved 30 feet from where they were shot, and none that moved 50 feet. Many of them flipped and landed on their tracks and in many cases there was no exit wound. The point is those deer were taken with a bullet/caliber appropriate for their size and good shot placement. I really don't think there are any good substitutes on deer and probably not on anything.

Local opinions may vary.

 

[redneck2]

FWIW....

I've deer hunted for 30+ years. Taken maybe 30-40 total.

The old saying is "A 9mm may expand, but a .45 never shrinks". I gotta go with that simply because expanding depends on bullet performance. A .45 is still a .45.

Actually the most "whack" I've experience is with my muzzle loader, which would be very close to a 45-70. I've only had one deer that moved more than a few feet, and that was maybe 50 yards. All others were DRT (fell within sight). 300 grain Nosler hollow point .44 caliber sabots in a .54 Knight.

I've used a LOT of 12 gauge slugs. You'd think 70 caliber and total pass thru would be even more deadly. Sometimes and sometimes not. Two years ago I hit a buck semi-quartering in the right side of the front chest and exited left side at the rear of the ribs. Totally destroyed the heart, some of the right lung and mangled the left lung. Still ran maybe 80 yards. Looked like his innards had been run thru a blender. Almost no blood (outside, inside a different story).

If the shot is high and you just clip the top of the lungs, or particularly if it is back too far, you're in for a long day.

Nothing is going to make a bigger hole than a 12 gauge with total pass thru. Depends on shot placement. Every animal is an individual experience.

 

[kbheiner7]

A big bullet in a brush gun would probably be better for the shots you describe. As others have said, the .45-70 or .444 Marlin would be excellent choices for elk at short range.

I love the 7mm Mag, but it's a deer cartridge.

 

[waffentomas]

I'm as guilty of this as any hunter, I suppose, but I am always looking for that bullet that'll drop 'em dead with prejudice, every time.

It's like the "one shot stop" that people who carry for self-defense are always looking for.

I dropped an elk at 40 yards this year with a .308 pushing a Barnes 180gr flat base at about 2350 fps - hardly a screamer. Double lung - broke the far shoulder, she never took a step.

My buddy (who's never had to shoot an elk twice to drop it until this year - and he's shot a bunch) shot an elk at about the same distance with a 7mm mag, 160gr Barnes XLC, don't have my tables here, but I think it was around 3100 fps (I loaded them for him). First round blew up her heart, but she ran anyway. Second round blew up her shoulder and penetrated the lungs, but she was a big, tough herd cow and was getting the girls to safety. She kept running on three legs. Third round was another shot in the furnace that wrecked more lung and heart and she went down, but tried to get back up before a 4th shot to her head ended it. Carnage, a terrible experience for us, as we work hard to make good, clean, killing shots.

My point is simply that you just don't know how game animals are going to respond to being shot. The magnum pi comment above nailed it. Why did my elk drop dead with a measly .308 win., and the herd cow took 3 devastating shots from a 7 mag, with a good, tough bullet, and still had the will to escape? Her chest cavity was filled with blood, pieces of heart, lung and shoulder bones, but she wouldn't die.

Some big heavy brush caliber type gun will probably give you all the killing power you need, but that may still not solve your problem - as some willful bull gets up and runs off again. All I'm saying as there is no magic bullet/caliber.

We don't usually make kills at much longer distances than 60 yards either, and have had the same conversations about caliber/bullet weight around the camp fire as well. I'm still thinking about getting a .444 some day.

Tom

 

[Sunray]

"...a 7mm..." Which one?
"...Would a big bore caliber provide that much better killing power..." Nope. Chances are that at 20 yards the 7mm bullet went right through the elk and may not have expanded. However, there's no guarantee that any bullet, in any calibre, will drop any game in its tracks.
Buy the big bore anyway though. Although I'd go with the .45-70 over the .444. The .444 uses the same bullet as a .44 Mag. The .45-70 is more versatile.