Old Trapper
Member
Who belives in the value of an exit wound in big game, or who believes that that an exit wound is a sign of wasted bullet energy?
The 06 has served me well and has accounted for most of my deer and elk. I've never lost a wounded animal with the 06, but I did once have to work hard to find a mortally wounded elk that wasn't leaving a blood trail. Several hundred elk had migrated across the mountainside during the night so the ground was covered with elk tracks. I'd hit the rag horn high through the lungs shooting up a very steep mountainside. About an hour later I found it with its head hanging down in heavy timber about 200 yards from where I first connected.
Blood gushed out of the body cavity when I opened it up revealing that it had just about bled to death internally. The 180 grain Nosler Par. was just under the bull's hide. After that I decided I wanted an exit wound to reduce the probability of losing a wounded animal in the future.
The next couple of years I fed my African fantasies hauling a big heavy and beautiful .375 H&H around the Montana mountains, but never got a shot at an elk while I was carrying that Model 70.
Now I'm again thinking about increasing a the probability of an exit wound, but preferably with a lighter handier short action rifle. Tracking is a lot easier when the animal you want is leaving a good blood trail.
So fellers, I'd appreciate if you'd weigh in on this one, but from a little different perspective than people have taken so far in the discussions about the .338 Federal, 325 WSM, and even the old 6.5 Swede and 300 H&H. What's enough gun and bullet to produce an exit wound on an elk-sized beast without being too much?
What's it going to take take to have a high probability of an exit wound on an elk? Can we get there consitently with bullets in the 200-to-250 grain range? How much of an advantage is a longer bullet with higher ballistic coefficient than a relatively shorter fatter bullet? Can .308-based cartridge such as the .338 Federal or the .358 Winchester efficiently handle a long enough bullet for optimal (pass-through) penetration and down-range energy for those low-probability long shots?
It seems like much of the discussion about the .338 Federal and .358 Winchester have focused on bullet weight without consideration of bullet length. Remember that when Bell shot all those elephants with a 7 mm Mauser he was shootling long-heavy 7mm bullets not short high-velocity 7 mm bullets. Bullet length and penetration have traditionally been considered for heavy dangerous game in Africa. Have superior modern bullet designs make bullet length much less important than it was in Bell's day?
Isn't the biggest disadvantage of the new short fat cartridges designed for short actions -- that they aren't designed to load long bullets as was that first H&H family of magnum cartridges?
Will we eventually go full circle back to longer cartrides in longer actions so that we can load long-enough bullets for the best performance in both heavy-bodied animals and longer shots?
Or should I stop worrying about exit wounds content myself with a hyper-velocity rapidly expanding bullet that will turn an elk's innards into a quivering mass of dark blood clots.
What say ye sages of the range? What kind of size matters most -- length or diameter or weight? What's the smallest optimal combination of length, diameter, and bullet weight for consistently blowing a hole out the far side of an elk? Can a sane man get there with a 6 1/2 pound short-action rifle?
The 06 has served me well and has accounted for most of my deer and elk. I've never lost a wounded animal with the 06, but I did once have to work hard to find a mortally wounded elk that wasn't leaving a blood trail. Several hundred elk had migrated across the mountainside during the night so the ground was covered with elk tracks. I'd hit the rag horn high through the lungs shooting up a very steep mountainside. About an hour later I found it with its head hanging down in heavy timber about 200 yards from where I first connected.
Blood gushed out of the body cavity when I opened it up revealing that it had just about bled to death internally. The 180 grain Nosler Par. was just under the bull's hide. After that I decided I wanted an exit wound to reduce the probability of losing a wounded animal in the future.
The next couple of years I fed my African fantasies hauling a big heavy and beautiful .375 H&H around the Montana mountains, but never got a shot at an elk while I was carrying that Model 70.
Now I'm again thinking about increasing a the probability of an exit wound, but preferably with a lighter handier short action rifle. Tracking is a lot easier when the animal you want is leaving a good blood trail.
So fellers, I'd appreciate if you'd weigh in on this one, but from a little different perspective than people have taken so far in the discussions about the .338 Federal, 325 WSM, and even the old 6.5 Swede and 300 H&H. What's enough gun and bullet to produce an exit wound on an elk-sized beast without being too much?
What's it going to take take to have a high probability of an exit wound on an elk? Can we get there consitently with bullets in the 200-to-250 grain range? How much of an advantage is a longer bullet with higher ballistic coefficient than a relatively shorter fatter bullet? Can .308-based cartridge such as the .338 Federal or the .358 Winchester efficiently handle a long enough bullet for optimal (pass-through) penetration and down-range energy for those low-probability long shots?
It seems like much of the discussion about the .338 Federal and .358 Winchester have focused on bullet weight without consideration of bullet length. Remember that when Bell shot all those elephants with a 7 mm Mauser he was shootling long-heavy 7mm bullets not short high-velocity 7 mm bullets. Bullet length and penetration have traditionally been considered for heavy dangerous game in Africa. Have superior modern bullet designs make bullet length much less important than it was in Bell's day?
Isn't the biggest disadvantage of the new short fat cartridges designed for short actions -- that they aren't designed to load long bullets as was that first H&H family of magnum cartridges?
Will we eventually go full circle back to longer cartrides in longer actions so that we can load long-enough bullets for the best performance in both heavy-bodied animals and longer shots?
Or should I stop worrying about exit wounds content myself with a hyper-velocity rapidly expanding bullet that will turn an elk's innards into a quivering mass of dark blood clots.
What say ye sages of the range? What kind of size matters most -- length or diameter or weight? What's the smallest optimal combination of length, diameter, and bullet weight for consistently blowing a hole out the far side of an elk? Can a sane man get there with a 6 1/2 pound short-action rifle?
I won't hesitate to take that big magnum elk hunting, though. I don't want to loose an animal to inadequate energy transfer and that 7 has energy to transfer. Some of the biggest exit wounds I've had, as in the whole danged shoulder blown off, was with that gun. 
