homers brother

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.

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.

gmil6184

I agree with the general premise of this thread (or at least what i think the general premise was) that not everyone who shoots a magnum does so because they want to feel macho or want to replace marksmanship with raw power. I deer hunt with a 7 mag and I've never shot a deer that I couldn't have killed just as dead with a .243 (in fact I have killed a couple with a .243 too). That being said, a 7 mag is much more powerful then a .243 and though it might not make a difference on a perfectly placed shot it certainly does if the shot is less then perfect. No i'm not advocating taking bad shots, no i'm not saying a deer gut shot with a magnum will drop on the spot and die. From time to time things do happen though and i'd much rather put the biggest hole possible in them. I also kind of roll my eyes to those who say "oh you waste so much meat with a magnum." You shoot a deer through the shoulder with a .243 or a 7 mag you are going to end up throwing most, if not all, of the front shoulder away due to it being all bloodshot. You tuck either one in the crease of the shoulder you might lose some meat but you will be able to salvage most of the front shoulders...again, its all about shot placement. I know some people are recoil sensitive and if that's the case by all means shoot a rifle that doesn't kick as much. But I would hardly classify the recoil of the 7 mag as oppressive. I grew up turkey hunting and deer hunting with 12 gauge shotguns, and after shooting three inch magnum 12 gauge loads the recoil of a 7 mag is a gentle caress.

kodiakhuntmaster

You are correct about the original intent of this thread. It was originally a question about why some people have a stigma againstothers who don't choose to be a minimalist, about experienced hunters and marksmen (not a novice picking out their first deer rifle) who make an educated choice about what firearm to use and find that a magnum will do everything they want and more and hunt deer sized game with it even though it's more power than what you may need.

It was never about trying to infuence someone to use anything other than what they want to use on deer or other eastern game. I guess to me, I always looked at it like this;

There are a hundred and one reasons why someone hunts with one gun over another, and the vast majority of hunters are going to know their weapon inside and out and be the best that they can be with what they have. Yet why haven't we evolved out of stereotyping someone for using what they like and what they are good with just because it mayshoot a round with a few more grains of powder in it?