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Anybody regret NOT going 338?
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<blockquote data-quote="D.Camilleri" data-source="post: 803571" data-attributes="member: 2567"><p>Caribou aren't really that big of an animal, nowhere near the size of a bull elk and elk is where the 338's shine. To say a 338 lapua is too much cartridge is like saying a 300 rum is too much also. All the bigger cartridges do is extend the good kill range. The 338 win mag has been dropping elk and brown bears for years and does it well because of the range of shots taken with it, less than 300 yards. Add some more powder capacity and you have a cartridge capable of making clean kills at double the range. Make a perfect shot with most any caliber and the results are usually good, but make a less that perfect shot with a marginal caliber and the results usually end up in lost game. If I was going to limit my longest shot to 600 yards on elk, I would still shoot my 338 rum. I believe in quick humane kills. This comes with lots of experience and plenty of kills with 30*06 7mm mag and 300 rum. The 300 kills great, but all of my elk have been taken with my 338. I once shot a very nice black bear cross canyon with a 160 grain partition from my 7mm mag at about 500 plus yards. Dropped him like a rock as I watched him bite his shoulder where the bullet hit. He rolled for 200 yards down a steep hill. When I got to where I had last seen him, he was gone with no blood trail. Later that year I killed a large black bear at less than 150 yards with the final shot going through the boiler room from my 7mag. I recovered the 160 gr partition in the chest cavity, it never touched a rib on the off side. This was a 500 pound plus bear that sucked up 3 hard hits and almost got away. At that point I bought a 338 and never looked back.</p><p>When you live in elk country, you will here of good shots being made with small cartridges and sometimes they work and sometimes the elk runs off to die miles away. I have seen and heard of it many times and many times the fault isn't the caliber, but the bullet and failing to perform the way it should and this can happen with any caliber. I have personally witnessed bad hits from a 300 weatherby that made a cow elk sick but didn't put her down with a bullet that didn't fully penetrate and didn't do much internal damage, luckily I was able to track her down for my friend and finish her off. Big animals need lots of trauma to effectively put them down. I am really impressed with how much trauma berger bullets do to animals, with these types of projectiles, smaller calibers have a better chance of making quick clean kills and when you have lots of DRT kills on big elk, it trumps the theory and on paper ballistics. Broz has good solid data backing up his 300 win as an excellent killer, however he is getting some pretty impressive velocities that not all people will get with a 300 win and when you drop the velocities down to the more common numbers, the results aren't quite as good in my opinion.</p><p></p><p>That being said, I know a guy from Casper that has killed many animals from many different continents all with his trusty 30-06, using different bullets for the game he was pursuing. One time while elk hunting I told him the canyon I was going to hunt and he told me he called that canyon long shot and that he wouldn't shoot a bull there because he had shot a bull in the shoulder and the bullet from his 06 failed to penetrate the shoulder blade. That canyon was only 400 yards across. I asked him if he ever felt under gunned while using his 06 and he told me that while on a Kodiak bear hunt in alaska he was charged by a 10 foot man eater Kodiak, he was shooting 220 grain bullets and put 7 bullets into the charging bear. It dropped within several feet of where he stood and he told me in hind sight he wished he had a bigger gun.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="D.Camilleri, post: 803571, member: 2567"] Caribou aren't really that big of an animal, nowhere near the size of a bull elk and elk is where the 338's shine. To say a 338 lapua is too much cartridge is like saying a 300 rum is too much also. All the bigger cartridges do is extend the good kill range. The 338 win mag has been dropping elk and brown bears for years and does it well because of the range of shots taken with it, less than 300 yards. Add some more powder capacity and you have a cartridge capable of making clean kills at double the range. Make a perfect shot with most any caliber and the results are usually good, but make a less that perfect shot with a marginal caliber and the results usually end up in lost game. If I was going to limit my longest shot to 600 yards on elk, I would still shoot my 338 rum. I believe in quick humane kills. This comes with lots of experience and plenty of kills with 30*06 7mm mag and 300 rum. The 300 kills great, but all of my elk have been taken with my 338. I once shot a very nice black bear cross canyon with a 160 grain partition from my 7mm mag at about 500 plus yards. Dropped him like a rock as I watched him bite his shoulder where the bullet hit. He rolled for 200 yards down a steep hill. When I got to where I had last seen him, he was gone with no blood trail. Later that year I killed a large black bear at less than 150 yards with the final shot going through the boiler room from my 7mag. I recovered the 160 gr partition in the chest cavity, it never touched a rib on the off side. This was a 500 pound plus bear that sucked up 3 hard hits and almost got away. At that point I bought a 338 and never looked back. When you live in elk country, you will here of good shots being made with small cartridges and sometimes they work and sometimes the elk runs off to die miles away. I have seen and heard of it many times and many times the fault isn't the caliber, but the bullet and failing to perform the way it should and this can happen with any caliber. I have personally witnessed bad hits from a 300 weatherby that made a cow elk sick but didn't put her down with a bullet that didn't fully penetrate and didn't do much internal damage, luckily I was able to track her down for my friend and finish her off. Big animals need lots of trauma to effectively put them down. I am really impressed with how much trauma berger bullets do to animals, with these types of projectiles, smaller calibers have a better chance of making quick clean kills and when you have lots of DRT kills on big elk, it trumps the theory and on paper ballistics. Broz has good solid data backing up his 300 win as an excellent killer, however he is getting some pretty impressive velocities that not all people will get with a 300 win and when you drop the velocities down to the more common numbers, the results aren't quite as good in my opinion. That being said, I know a guy from Casper that has killed many animals from many different continents all with his trusty 30-06, using different bullets for the game he was pursuing. One time while elk hunting I told him the canyon I was going to hunt and he told me he called that canyon long shot and that he wouldn't shoot a bull there because he had shot a bull in the shoulder and the bullet from his 06 failed to penetrate the shoulder blade. That canyon was only 400 yards across. I asked him if he ever felt under gunned while using his 06 and he told me that while on a Kodiak bear hunt in alaska he was charged by a 10 foot man eater Kodiak, he was shooting 220 grain bullets and put 7 bullets into the charging bear. It dropped within several feet of where he stood and he told me in hind sight he wished he had a bigger gun. [/QUOTE]
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