Smoked a bear with my 338 AM

ol mike · #15 09-13-2007, 08:07 PM

You got any pictures of that bear laid out where you can see him better ?

Great story and shooting !!!!!!!!!!! Thanks

Shawn Carlock · #16 09-13-2007, 09:14 PM

Unfortunately I don't my digital still camera took a crap just before I got to the bear. I used it to take some early light sunrise pictures and 1 hour later zipo. Sorry. I am a pretty good sized guy and could only move one end at a time though.

mikenc · #17 09-13-2007, 09:52 PM

Great shot Shawn, fantastic story and fantastic bear. I am leaving N.C. to travel up to Maine for a bear hunt next week. I can only hope my luck is as good as yours and my story is not. I look forward to a good story, but sometimes boring is better and less stressful.

Dead Beat · #18 09-13-2007, 10:00 PM

cool story shawn im heading out in 2 weeks one week stay in ST LOUIS then on to northern wisconsin for black bear

JIM

goodgrouper · #19 09-13-2007, 10:23 PM

Great story and great shot Shawn. I suppose that bullet was the 300 SMK?

phorwath · #20 09-14-2007, 03:32 AM

Hey, great shot and hunt'in story Shawn. Looks like a really nice bear. Thanks for sharing your hunt with us.

Shawn Carlock · #21 09-14-2007, 07:12 AM

GG,

It was in fact a 300 SMK. I as not disappointed in it's performance but there is certainly room for improvement. No blood trail is a fairly common bear issue, but if the exit hole is big enough ..... It is back to the age old long range bullet performance issue. Expansion or penetration, on that hit location you almost could not have had to much expansion with a 300 gr bullet but if it had been off in windage slightly and hit the point fo the shoulder could you gaurantee penetration into the chest cavity. I have high hopes for Richards aluminum tipped bullets and this shot would have been the perfect test bed. Until then I will error to the side of penetration and deal with trailing issues. For me it is not a issue of will the SMK kill well on a give shot placement but rather will the exit wound leave a good spoor trail to recover the animal. In this case, on the bear the bullet left a good but not huge wound channel that was sealed off by fat not a bullet performance issue in my mind. Had this hit been on an elk or deer a blind man could have followed the trail. Had the bullet contacted a rib on either side would have made a huge difference. The 265 WC bullet on this shot would have impacted at maybe 2600-2700 I'm guessing and looked like a hand grenade went off. This would be good in a lot of respects, there could also be some other issues with it, but I believe that the best LRH bullet performance is coming down the road and could very well be the WC bullets.