ORIGINAL: stubblejumper
In our family, we have 2 270s, a 308, and a 300 Win Mag. Who do you think wounds the most elk? It ain't close. The 300 Win Mag wounds, and loses, more elk than the other 3 combined. Why? Because the 300 Win Mag user takes all your big caliber arguments and uses them as a license to let fly at any elk, any time.The rest of us use a bit of discretion inpicking our shots, even to the point of letting an elk go without shooting.
If more elk are wounded and lost with the 300win mag,it's because you have an incompetent shooter in your family.I have seen the same type of incompetent shooters using 270s and 30-06s with the same results.Don't blame the equipment,blame the operator.
Yes, but extolling the killing virtues of a magnum cartridge on a forum full of hunters of all experience and skill levels, both imagined and real, is not conducive to producing anything but wounded game. Fact is, pure and simple, most people are better off with a standard cartridge, for a variety of reasons, most notably that they are easier to put the bullet in the right place with with minimal practice. If I had it my way, magnums would be mentioned rarely on these forums and then never in the context of "what's best."
And we ain't talking "caliber" here, we're talking "cartridge." An M1 carbine fires the same caliber bullet as a 300 RUM.