RWK

Any thing bigger than a 30-06

Whitetailaddict13

nothing smaller than a .243....i like the .280

Valentine

that I know of, that were efficient for harvesting deer. But knowing hunters, they are sure to come up with more than ten more calibers that are twice as efficient and will knock down a deer in no time at all.

skeeze

I use a 30-30 lever action, 7mm bolt action and a 30-06 bolt action.
They all seem to work as well as the other.

vermont bowhunter

one of the reasons so many deer have been killed by 30-30's is the fact that it expends all its energy in the animal not passing through,,that said any bullit that exits the target is wasteing energy that isnt doing anything.in this state we hardly ever shoot over 100 yards so we dont need magnums,,,ive had three or so 270's and i wouldnt give you a penny for any one ever made...im sure they work great out west but here they just punch holes clean through. i believe any high velosity round does at 100 yards. i stand by 30-35 cal rifles in moderate rounds like 308-or 30-06,,keep your little 223's and 270's for shooting chucks...thats all thier good for

mcraddock

No such thing as too big a bullet. Here is why:

I used a .50 bmg to take a doe a few years ago just to prove a point. I let some friends of mine shoot my Ligamec UltraLite .50 , and afterwards they started joking about what you could hunt with that thing. I said "Anything! Including deer." They simply remarked that it would blow a deer in half. Instant burger. I told them that it would be no different than a .50 cal muzzle loader. Bones and meat are not hard enough to make a 685 grain .50 bmg bullet expand. Even with Hornandy A-max soft tipped ammo.


So to prove my point, I took that heavy @$$ rifle hunting in box blind on a gas line right of way (I know! Natural gas pipeline and an anti-aircraft weapon! Great Idea!) and shot a doe that morning at about 75 yards. Just as predicted, a perfect half inch hole passing through both shoulders with just a little bit of bloodshot meat where the bones desimated in the shoulder.

So, .223 is legal for me to shoot deer with, but I wouldn't. .50 bmg is legal for me to shoot deer with, but I won't anymore ( too heavy and loud!). My beat up Savage 110 in 30-06 is about the most perfect deer rifle and cartridge that I have ever owned. Think I'll just stick with that.

rustynobles

Agreed. The only thing buckshot is good for is home invasion protection.

BarnesX.308

This is a complete falacy and a physics impossibility. The magnum bullet expends far more energy inside the animal. The fact that it still has energy when it exits is purely because it had plenty the spare. The reason your less powerful bullet expends all its energy in the animal and does not exit means it ran out of steam before finishing the job.

This is also an old wives' tail. The faster the bullet is going, the more rapid the expansion. Period. Unless you use really tough bullets in the faster rifle, but then it's the bullet that is causing the performance difference, not the cartridge.

ipscshooter

I've never understood where that ridiculous "theory" comes from either. If you think about it... let's say you're doing a broadside shot through both shoulders of a deer. That hypothetical .30-30 bullet is hitting the on-side shoulder with, say 1500 foot pounds of energy, passes through the body, "expending all of its energy" and hits the off-side shoulder with 50 ft pounds of energy, perhaps not even enough to break the off-side shoulder. The hypothetical magnum bullet hits the on-side shoulder with, say, 2500 ft pounds of energy, passes through the body, expending only "some" of its energy, and hits the off-side shoulder with 1000 ft lbs, clearly enough to break the off-side shoulder. In this hypothetical, we've got two bullets, both of which lost roughly the same amount of energy inside the animal, but, the magnum still retains enough to put a solid hit on the off-side....

And, break it down by inches as it passes through... say, it's 15 inches through the chest cavity of the deer. At the first inch, the magnum hits with 2500 pounds, the second inch it's hitting at 2400 pounds, the third inch, it's hitting at 2300 pounds, and so on... The .30-30 hit's the first inch at 1500, the second at 1400, the third at 1300, and so on... add it all up, and despite the fact that both lost 1500 ft lbs on the way through, the magnum has struck the various tissues per inch with a cumulative total of 28,000 ft lbs, where as the .30-30's per inch cumulative total is 13,000 ft lbs.

The only reason the .30-30 has killed so many deer is because it has been used for much longer, and by more hunters, than the more recently developed magnum cartridges.

On a couple of pre-season sight-in trips to the range, I've walked up and down the shooting line to see what the other guys were using. The .270 was, hands down, the favorite among folks here in Texas, and our hunting is typically done from box blinds, stationed about 100 yards, or less, from a feeder... If you're having trouble with pass throughs, insufficient tissue damage, and/or lost deer, you're hitting them in the wrong place and you're using the wrong bullet. Kind of ridiculous, to me, for someone to say the .30-06 is OK for deer, but a .270 is only good for chucks... That's just not logical/sensible/rational...

Chuck7

Hunting in Florida..not crazy about killing our small deer with the 30-06

I use either a 30-30 or my 270