Multiple cartridges based on the same case -- always choose 308/30-06 inside of 300-400 yards?

[Llama Bob]

Few people load it this way, but the 6.5CM is actually a pretty decent rifle for the bigger side of big game. You can do a 160 Woodleigh Weldcore protected point at 2750 out of a 24" barrel. That'll go through an elk, moose or kudu at any angle you like and stays in the manufacturer velocity window to 440y at sealevel. And we're talking about a relatively low recoil package that could be mountain rifle weight for normal recoil tolerance shooters, or sporter weight for the recoil shy.

When you think about it, we really live an a marvelous age of rifle technology after a half century of stagnation.

 

[MCMXI]

Like Lama Bob, I prefer cup n cores, but my preference runs towards the softer bullets. Again ive seen a difference in exit wound size as both bore, and bullet weight increase...this is considering a fairly constant velocity.
.270 with a 130 at 3100 will generally produce a smaller exit than an 150 from an 06. While dead is dead, bigger holes equal deader faster?

My go to hunting rifle is a .375 H&H shooting a 250gr TTSX bullet with a MV of 2,800 fps. I get a small entrance wound and a small exit wound and a very dead animal time after time. From what I've seen and read, there isn't a correlation between exit wound size and internal damage.

 

[LoonWulf]

My go to hunting rifle is a .375 H&H shooting a 250gr TTSX bullet with a MV of 2,800 fps. I get a small entrance wound and a small exit wound and a very dead animal time after time. From what I've seen and read, there isn't a correlation between exit wound size and internal damage.

Agreed, but the larger exit wounds dump more blood faster. Blow a fist size hole thru the side of something and you can be pretty sure its going down quick.

As a note I droped a 150-175lb axis buck this morning with a borrowed .243. 100gr PP made jello of the heart, liver and some of the lungs, but did not exit. Deer piled up within 20' of being hit, but left no blood trail. 06 or something similar would have blown thru and left a pretty good trail, but probably wouldnt have made it any deader.

 

[someguy2800]

Agreed, but the larger exit wounds dump more blood faster. Blow a fist size hole thru the side of something and you can be pretty sure its going down quick.

As a note I droped a 150-175lb axis buck this morning with a borrowed .243. 100gr PP made jello of the heart, liver and some of the lungs, but did not exit. Deer piled up within 20' of being hit, but left no blood trail. 06 or something similar would have blown thru and left a pretty good trail, but probably wouldnt have made it any deader.

That is a point to often overlooked. Small caliber may work just fine if your in open space where your going to see where the deer went. Where I hunt all our stands are elevated so your shooting down at them and in two hops they are in the brush and out of sight. If you don't blow a good hole out the other side you have no blood you are tracking from hoof prints among 10,000 other hoof prints in a wet slough. We have had deer go 60 yards and it has taken us 2 hours to find them due to how thick the brush is, and we are good at it. In many spots where we hunt you cannot see 5 yards on the ground in the tamarac sloughs. This is where a solidly constructed lead soft point comes into its own. A round nose bullet out of a 270 or 30/06 gives you a 1-1/2 entrance and a 2" exit hole and lots of blood.

I've given up on Barnes bullets for this reason. They kill the deer sure as anything but the all the ones I've shot with them (probably about 15) have all gone 100-200 yards and I never get a blood trail. I shot an 8 point buck last year right in the heart and tracked him 250 yards by hoof prints alone and never found a drop of blood. Bullet took out the top of the heart and the whole chest was full of blood but nothing made it out the pencil sized entrance or exit. This is with a 100 grain Barnes with a stiff load from a 25-06

 

[Nature Boy]

Blow a fist size hole thru the side of something and you can be pretty sure its going down quick.

Then I need to get a .22-250

I've seen first hand that it does exactly as you describe on west Texas whitetail. Many of my hunting buddies hunt with this caliber now after issuing them as youth rifles to their progeny and witnessing junior kill his first deer deader than Elvis with an exit wound that you could stick your head in.

 

[Varminterror]

Permanent wound cavity size = how much blood is available to be leaked.

Exit wound size = how much of said blood can be leaked.

Takes two to tango.

 

[Corn-Picker]

I've given up on Barnes bullets for this reason. They kill the deer sure as anything but the all the ones I've shot with them (probably about 15) have all gone 100-200 yards and I never get a blood trail. I shot an 8 point buck last year right in the heart and tracked him 250 yards by hoof prints alone and never found a drop of blood. Bullet took out the top of the heart and the whole chest was full of blood but nothing made it out the pencil sized entrance or exit. This is with a 100 grain Barnes with a stiff load from a 25-06

In my limited experience, the Barnes need to be going really fast when they hit. Barnes says they expand down to 2000 fps, but they seem to need 2400-2600 fps to get the expansion like you see in the advertisements. Seems like your 25-06 should have been going 2600+ though, assuming a reasonably close shot.

I had a copper bullet (from Remington's discontinued line) zip right through a deer like it was FMJ. A pencil sized entrance and exit, shot from a 308 at 50 yards. The deer never reacted and there was no blood. I started to doubt myself and I wondered how I could miss such an easy shot. I was lucky to find that one, dead about 150 yards from where I shot it.

 

[someguy2800]

Impact velocity would have been over 3000 fps. The internal damage has always been good with them, they just don't leave a good exit hole for me. I have a hard time reasoning why.

 

[someguy2800]

I have only ever recovered one of them from a doe shot quartering away. Shot behind the diaphragm, went through the chest and I found the perfectly opened bullet under the skin on the front left shoulder. That one also went about 150 yards. For this year I am going back to a soft point lead 120.

 

[MCMXI]

Permanent wound cavity size = how much blood is available to be leaked.

Exit wound size = how much of said blood can be leaked

My point is that there's no correlation between exit wound size and permanent wound cavity size. The blood doesn't have to go anywhere other than fill up the chest cavity. I guess if you have to track an animal a big exit wound is useful. So far I've never had to track anything using my .375 H&H and Barnes bullets, which is a good thing since the exit hole is always small. A friend from Hawaii shot a whitetail through the heart at 168 yards using a .270 Win and a Barnes TTSX bullet. The deer went 50 to 75 yards but we didn't find it until the next morning. The heart had a big hole in it but a small exit wound.

 

[FL-NC]

With a decent setup and good marksmanship skills, and caliber you listed is more than adequate inside 400 yards. I like 308 due to price, choices in factory loads, mounds of reloading and ballistics data, and short action.

 

[LoonWulf]

Impact velocity would have been over 3000 fps. The internal damage has always been good with them, they just don't leave a good exit hole for me. I have a hard time reasoning why.

Ive generally found that its the broken off pieces of the bullet, and bones, that blow big chunks of skin out.

I agree with MCMXI, you can have pretty significant internal wounding but still have a small exit wound, especially with the monos as they tend to not cause the shrapnel effect expanding softies do.
Ive seen the same results as monos with lower velocity rounds using softpoints, or even super high velocity hits with very soft bullets. Case in point, ive found Berger VLDs to be perfect at producing the kind of wounding im looking for on deer size game, when driven at 2750-3100fps, this gives me what im looking for from 50-400yds or so, haven't shot anything with them farther than that. At muzzle burn range they offten dont exit except on full broadside shots, but if they do whats inside, becomes outside.

Getting back to the OPs point the standard .30s generally deliver his velocity range with the mid weight vlds, smaller bores usually are at the top end of the range I like. Thus giving them an advantage in maintaining similar performance as range increase, but also decreasing likely hood of exits on very short range shots.

Again these are just MY observation.