Rifle by the Inch

[Tirod]

First, longer barrels have diminishing returns. Second, dangerous game may be nice to hit out at 300+ meters, but a big heavy bullet isn't a flat shooter and it's going to take a lot of practice getting the hang of the bullet drop.

That alone will tend to get you to shoot closer, and where it lives adds more range reduction. A missed shot and ethics will get you into dense cover where they can hunt you. The grizzly has a top speed of 35mph, you will get about 2-4 seconds to react and put more rounds into it.

I say more, even the Great White Hunters of Africa carried doubles with an experienced bearer who was practiced ready to hand over the spare. We tend to have a guide loaded for bear to do that.

Since you get a short window at close range as the worst case scenario, better to work with the limits of an extreme situation rather than thinking it's all about easy long distance shots. They happen about as rarely, and certainly get talked about. But in some areas, what happens is you shoot the elk and the grizzly comes by to challenge you - sometimes while you spend the two or three hours get it ready to pack out.

Do you want to have a rifle that forces you to lose the sight picture while you manually cycle the bolt reloading it? Controlled feed or not, it's going to take practice in that small window of time between you locking eyes with Mr Bear and having it ready for the second shot. As said, you may very well need it.

I'd tend to favor the AR-10 in .338 at that point.

 

[Robert]

My 270gr 375 bullets almost the same point of impact as a 180gr 30-06. Near enough that an animal would not know the difference. Not much to really adjust for. I have fired my 375 out to 535 yards per the range for need and hit exactly where I was aiming using nothing more than my Boone and Crocket reticle in my Leupold VX3 on 2.5x. It is not too tough to do if you know your rifle and your ammo.

I am not a great rifleman by any means and I need to do far more practicing than what I do now. But that is what it takes to be good at anything, practice. Get off the bench and shoot from field positions on the crappy days when no one else is at the range. Anyone can shoot well off a bench on a sunny day, try it off a pack in the rain, or snow or wind. An old addage comes to mind that one could adapt for hunting, train like you hunt and hunt like you train.

 

[Float Pilot]

After half a century of shooting and handloading, I have found the average bullet velocity gain or loss to be 25 to 32 feet per second, per inch of barrel length. That is for barrels between 16 to 26 inches in length and with standard non-magnum chamberings.

I tend to like barrels between 22 to 24 inches. But a lot of that is due to my height and arm length.