ORIGINAL: HEAD0001
Let me give you a situation that actually happened to me. And the only reason I scored was because of the confidence I had in my magnum.
I was elk hunting in NM, and I was over watching a large open are. A group of about 15 elk ran approximately 200 yards, and they ran within 5 yards of my position. I had a large 5X5 bull standing at 5 yards distance and he was looking staight at me with his chin up. I already had my rifle raised and was pointing it straight under his chin. The cartridge was a 340 Weatherby. It was either take the shot or not!!! I had 100% confidence that the 250 grain bullet I was shooting would drop him right there with that shot. It did.
I would not have taken that shot with a lesser cartridge. No gut shots involved. But a tough shot that is fully capable of a humane kill with adequate firepower. That is why I cringe when I hear people call a 25-06 or a 243 as adequate elk medicine. I would never have taken that shot with a "Pea Shooter". Do you not agree?? However with the 340 Wby. Mag. there was no doubt of the outcome.
So I either come home to WV empty handed. Or I shoot a trophy bull in a not so every day shot, with supreme confidence. So a magnum can make a difference.
Good for you, but you don't say where you hit it. You say you were holding under his chin, and he was looking straight at you, so I have to assume that the "vital" area you hit was his neck? A hit to the nervous system with just about ANY caliber will produce a dead animal nearly instantly. Where's CSI when you need them? If that truly is the situation, a .300 Mag, .30-06, or - hate to say it, but a .243, probably would've produced the same result. At point-blank ranges, you'd be surprised how devastating ANY soft-point bullet can be. You BETTER have had supreme confidence that a .340 would do the job at that range.
A few years back, I shot a bull (raggedy old 4x5) with a .375 H&H at about 50 feet, jumped him in his bed. Bullet (300 gr)went in behind his right front leg, came out in front of his left front leg. Heart and lungs turned to jelly, but the entrance and exit wounds were very similar in size, telling me that the heavy bullet didn't expand very much. He went about 100 yards before piling up. On the plus side, I'd have expected to have to discard that left shoulder, but becauseof that heavy bullet not expanding, there was very little bloodshot tissue.From your "more damage with a magnum" theory, shouldn't Ihave seen something different?
Though I don't ADVOCATE shooting elk with a .243, I HAVE done it. And I'll tell you that the light bullet (100 gr) and higher velocity (2900 for the .243 vs 2650for the .375), at slightly greater distance (50 yards), that little bullet simply blew up after passing through the forward left shoulder, right in the heart and lungs. Dropped like a stone. Was like scoopingJELL-O when I field dressed her.
Between the two, in terms ofpounds-of-meat discarded due to"damage", the .243 caused significantly more destruction than the .375 didto the off-shoulder, even though it didn'tfully penetrate it.
Now that I have a .30-06 (and the .300), I probably won't be hunting elk with the .243 anymore. I'll be tempted again to hunt elk with the .375, simply because it's nice having four quarters in the freezer rather than three.
ORIGINAL: HEAD0001
And yes I do believe a gut shot animal with a magnum is much more likely to die and be recovered over a gut shot deer with a "Pea Shooter".
And as far as bullets. Well that is another discussion. Tom.
Obviously, I'm not going to change your mind without a serious discussion about tissue composition. Maybe you're thinking that if you blast a big enough hole, the intestines will fall out and the animal will trip over them and get all tangled up? Yup, I've seen that happen with an elk gut-shot with a .300 Win Mag. Pretty pathetic, but yes, the elk did slow down long enough to be hit a second time in the chest, which put him down. I'll add that the guy who did the shooting hasn't hunted elk since. On a deer? Yeah, I can imagine the effect would be even more pronounced.
Believe what you want, but my experience has shown differently than your claim. Gut-shoot and animal and it's a roll of the dice whether you'll recover it or not, regardless of what you're shooting.
If you think bullets are another discussion, then you're only partially understanding the forces and variables that come to bear when it comes to terminal performance of a given cartridge. Bullets are integral to this discussion.