I don't mean to sound rude but you don't sound like you have a heck of a lot of experience shooting rifles. Usually an experienced shooter doesn't ask questions like you are asking. From reading your questions I would honestly recomend staying away from the ultra mags and most other magnums for a little while.


Lets just start over with some questions for you to answer.......

1) What is the hardest kicking rifle cartridge that you have ever shot?

2) How many times have you fired that rifle?

3) How often do you shoot a center firerifleon a regular basis?

4) When you do shoot a rifle, at what distance from you is the target?

5) How often do you shoot at that distance.

6) Do you reeeeeaaaalllly know how far 300, 400, 500yards is? It's a heck of a lot farther than it sounds.





Reliability is built into the rifle and not the cartridge with few exceptions but then we would be talking about true dangerous game cartridges.

Quality... Again, built into the rifle and not the cartridge.

Accuracy... Again, pretty much built into the rifle. Any big game cartridge can be accurate or inaccurate.

Knock down power... There is no such thing. You would do well to forget that phrase for the rest of your life. Any cartridge from the .243 up has more than enough "power" to drop most big game animals in their tracks provided you put the bullet where it needs to be do drop an animal in its tracks..... and that place is either through both shoulders or take out the central nervous system.

Most bang for the buck.... It sure as heck isn't going to be from an ultra magnum. You are going to be looking at cartridges like .270 Winchester, 30-06, .308 winchester, 7mm-08, .243 Winchester, etc... for deer sized animals and if you are going to be hunting elk, moose, and big bears then the 338 Win mag is the first pick.