I have a whole new perspective regarding hunting rifles, cartridges and ethical killing of game animals thanks to the guys at Exo Mountain Gear doing their multi-part podcast with Formidilosus. I've re-played those 3 times and actually took notes! I have since listened to every audio podcast I have found regarding sim. issues on Shoot2Hunt and have started to read through the many thousands of posts regarding on this site. Thanks to all for the fact-based effort to arrive at rifle best-practices.
I have an old Tikka T3 30.06 that has been sitting in my safe for many years unused. I want the re-build of that action to be my next rifle project.
Goals of New Build:
1-General hunting of Antelope, WT Deer, Mule Deer, Elk, Moose and Bear.
2-Max range 500 yards. (my personal max range hunting ethic on these animals is 400 yards, the extra 100 is for followup and margin of error.)
3-Durability
4-Backpack, backcountry build- 8-9 pound max weight (I have heavier rifles for non-backpack hunting already.)
5- Suppressed
6-Prefer a rifle under 16 pounds of recoil for shootability, comfort, fun and accuracy.
7-Prefer to keep standard bolt face.
8-Handloading okay
The auto-answer from Rokslide is clearly .223, .243. or maybe 6mm using highly frangible match or ELD-X style bullets.
But here is my curveball- I want to use a compressed powder or petal-peeling mono-metal bullets instead. aka- Hammer, Controlled Chaos, Bulldozer, Maximus or DRT.
Given this curveball, what are your thoughts about caliber and bullet weight?
1- Knowing that I'm compromising the most affective terminal ballistics (wound channel size) with this choice of bullet; does going larger with caliber partialy compensate? From the options listed in the next paragraph- is there a real-world difference to wounding capacity by increasing caiber?
Given recoil and bolt face goals; candidate cartridges in each common caliber are as follows: (open to others if i'm missing any,)
.30 cal--- pretty much just .308 win
7mm cal-- pretty much just 7mm-08, .284 win or .280 rem
6.5 cal-- options open up here-- 6.5 cm, 6.5-284 Norma, 6.5-06, or .260 rem
6.0mm and below cals--- wide open but no magnums due to bolt face
2-Given mono-metal's need for higher impact speed to maximize bullet upset and expansion- (not sure if this is true for DRT but certainly for the petal shedders,) am I better off using a light-for-caliber or heavy-for-caliber bullet? My assumption is that given my max range of 500 yards I'm better off going lighter and faster. But is that wrong?
Thanks.
I have an old Tikka T3 30.06 that has been sitting in my safe for many years unused. I want the re-build of that action to be my next rifle project.
Goals of New Build:
1-General hunting of Antelope, WT Deer, Mule Deer, Elk, Moose and Bear.
2-Max range 500 yards. (my personal max range hunting ethic on these animals is 400 yards, the extra 100 is for followup and margin of error.)
3-Durability
4-Backpack, backcountry build- 8-9 pound max weight (I have heavier rifles for non-backpack hunting already.)
5- Suppressed
6-Prefer a rifle under 16 pounds of recoil for shootability, comfort, fun and accuracy.
7-Prefer to keep standard bolt face.
8-Handloading okay
The auto-answer from Rokslide is clearly .223, .243. or maybe 6mm using highly frangible match or ELD-X style bullets.
But here is my curveball- I want to use a compressed powder or petal-peeling mono-metal bullets instead. aka- Hammer, Controlled Chaos, Bulldozer, Maximus or DRT.
Given this curveball, what are your thoughts about caliber and bullet weight?
1- Knowing that I'm compromising the most affective terminal ballistics (wound channel size) with this choice of bullet; does going larger with caliber partialy compensate? From the options listed in the next paragraph- is there a real-world difference to wounding capacity by increasing caiber?
Given recoil and bolt face goals; candidate cartridges in each common caliber are as follows: (open to others if i'm missing any,)
.30 cal--- pretty much just .308 win
7mm cal-- pretty much just 7mm-08, .284 win or .280 rem
6.5 cal-- options open up here-- 6.5 cm, 6.5-284 Norma, 6.5-06, or .260 rem
6.0mm and below cals--- wide open but no magnums due to bolt face
2-Given mono-metal's need for higher impact speed to maximize bullet upset and expansion- (not sure if this is true for DRT but certainly for the petal shedders,) am I better off using a light-for-caliber or heavy-for-caliber bullet? My assumption is that given my max range of 500 yards I'm better off going lighter and faster. But is that wrong?
Thanks.
