What caused the Rokslide shift to smallest caliber and cartridges?

[Squincher]

Those are specifically marketed to LE.
I dont work for an ammo company and I'm not sure where the line is but I dont see anything saying hunting on that page for the tactical rounds.

However I know federal makes soft point hunting ammo but my google fu says its a brass case with a copper bullet and not the nickel case with copper bullet.

Why that matters and to what degree I couldnt tell you.

The way these things usually go is that is a run of the mill soft point bullet in a nickel case with law enforcement printed on the box and marked up 20%.

 

[texag10]

Interesting consideration. I'll let the something like a few out of every 100,000 hunters in the US that hunt brown bear on a given year pontificate on that. Seems like guys who've shot inland griz haven't hesitated to use 6.5s but understand that's not quite "big bears" to many.

I don't think a little AR loaded up with 77 TMKs would be the least comfortable option but not sure it'd be first.

I wouldn't mind having a rifle with 31 rounds on deck with which I can also put 5 shots a second into a USPSA a zone if things go poorly at close range.

 

[Formidilosus]

If butt shooting elk is the goal, count me out.

And it's yet just another strawman argument

I’ve seen three elk shot through the femurs/hips/spine that I can remember right now. All dropped immediately. No issues whatsoever.


As far as shooting through the butt trying to reach vitals… yeah no. I have done so dozens of times, and watched dozens more taken and hit with everything from .224’s to .458’s. Having done it repeatedly, 100% I want the rapidly fragmenting, widest wound creating bullet that can be fired. It’s a minimum of a two shot affair- shot one goes through bone to drop the animal, second goes through chest to kill it.
I have seen Barnes TSX’s from a 375 H&H get caught in the grass in the stomach of a whitetail deer and not make it to the lungs. There is no guarantee of penetrating deep enough to reach lungs after going through the leg/hip/spine, and stomach contents regardless of what cartridge and bullet one uses.

 

[hereinaz]

I know 10% ballistics gel isn't a 1:1 game, but seeing the objective data between these made me feel better before I dove in. Mostly clueless at reading gel, but I get the basics (neck, penetration, TC, TC length). At high velocity, which should be the worst for match bullets, there isn't a crazy difference in regard to penetration. From a TC size perspective 223 gets you about 4ish", 6.5 gets you about 5.5-6", 30cal gets you about 8". Big difference in total volume, only increases margin for error about an inch in any direction. Slow velocity down at distance and you'll probably get better penetration from how I understand it.


77TMK at 2750
View attachment 635112

6.5CM w/ 147 ELDM at 2700fps
View attachment 635113

6.5CM w/ 147 ELDM through 2 sheets of 20 gauge steel and gel block 18" away...in case the elk is hiding behind a car door
View attachment 635116

300PRC w/ 225 ELDM at 2850
View attachment 635120


For the big vs small debate: 100% not my intention to be preachy or to stir the pot, but for those who shoot big guns well, just a heads up on a quick way to quiet everyone down about your shooting competency. Do the "hunting rifle drill" and post your honest, timed results. 100 yard range is easy to find and will only burn 20 rounds, which is no biggie for good field practice.

Equipment versus practice posts and Rifle practice/shooting

This isn’t in response to anyone I particular, but there is an up tick in the amount of “I want a XXXX distance hunting rifle” traffic the last few months. I am getting a lot of questions relating to this, which I do not mind helping, but thought a public post might help answer some questions...

rokslide.com

I have my opinion about gel block interpretation.

What matters to me is looking how many fragments get spread out and how far they penetrate.

The “temporary cavitation” in gel people wow about isn’t convincing to me, because the cavity can be huge on a mono in gel but the wound channel very small.

I asked myself why…

Researching wounding in humans as described by trauma surgeons led me to see more technical reasons why highly fragmenting bullets destroy tissue and penetrating bullets wound less.

Skin, muscle, and lung tissue is highly elastic, so it will stretch and return with maybe broken capillary’s. Heart and liver are less elastic, but you’d still see a hole because monos pass through and the temporary cavitation just goes back. For the heart, fragmenting bullets have typically already broken up significantly by then.

I think that mechanically, when you combine the temporary cavitation with many fragments, tissue destruction is magnified. Temporary cavitation compresses tissue and then the fragments tear through the compressed tissue doing more damage than could be done if the tissue wasn’t compressed.

Also, blood vessels and the lungs that are basically sponges filled with blood act differently. The vessels are not elastic, otherwise blood wouldn’t pump. When the blood in the vessels and lungs hit with the pressure wave, the vessels can’t contain the PSI of the shock wave on the blood.

This why how a mono at high velocity can do more damage in lungs than a hole, but that is like 3000 fps by what I see guys finding. Fragmenting bullets can do it down to 1800 fps reliably.

Anyhow, it’s the way I picture lungs getting souped. Might be something else, but it’s my hypothesis.

Others might have a better explanation.

 

[Formidilosus]

@Formidilosus I agree with the premise of most of what you stated there, including that a smaller caliber could make it to the CNS, except for this quote:

"Well since the whole “but what about bears” is a spurious argument to begin with, why wouldn’t one learn to shoot an AR well and then use it?"

If you, or anyone else here, has hunted blacktail or elk on Kodiak or Afognak Is., then you will know that this is in no way a spurious or trivial matter. And I'm not talking about the one off trip with a group of 6 guys to the Island, but year in and year out hunts in these areas, often solo.
I struggle to think of anyone I know that has done this for years or decades and has NOT had to DLP (Defense of Life and Property) an aggressive Brown Bear.

I didn’t mean that dealing with bears is a spurious argument. I meant that using the “what about bears running straight away from you and chewing on your buddy’s leg when you need to defend him” argument- after all their other arguments have failed, is spurious. It only comes up as a last resort fallacy to try to have something to stand on when it’s clear their base belief is wrong.


I’m not going to carry a bolt gun hunting deer that is specifically just in case of a bear attack. It the worst of all worlds- I get a massive, heavy, very hard to shoot rifle for deer or elk; and in return I get a massive, heavy, and very hard to shoot rifle for a very quick, often total surprise shot on a moving animal.
If bears are that large of a legit concern, and I can’t, or am not comfortable with a pistol (I am) and am not comfortable with whatever rifle I am hunting with on bears (I am)- then I absolutely would carry a very short AR in my hands with my hunting rifle strapped to the pack, or just choose to hunt and use an AR.

There is no task with bears where I would choose a 375 H&H over a purpose built AR platform.

 

[B23]

My dad is soon to be 85 and when he first started hunting game animals all he had and used was a 220 Swift. Then he had a 270 Wby built on a Pre 64 Model 70 and that became his deer and elk rifle. As a kid, you know back when we think we know everything, I used to give him shit about not using a real man's gun like a 300 mag of some sort and he'd just kind of ignore me and wouldn't really engage in the conversation but always said the same thing "when you've killed as much stuff with your 300's as I have with my Swift and 270 Wby maybe we'll talk about it" and all my dad would ever shoot in his 270's was 130gr bullets. Of course the bullets we have now can't really be compared to what they had back then but even with that I've come to realize maybe I should have listened more than I talked because over the past 45 years I can't say that I've killed anything more dead than my dad has and I've mostly used either a 7mm mag of some version of a 300 mag. Reading and following through the twenty two pages of posts has been interesting reading to say the least and has reminded me of some of the conversations I had with my dad when I was younger.

 

[Formidilosus]

I need to clarify the statement below:

“there is no task with bears where I would choose a 375H&H over a purpose built AR platform”.


I mean that if the task is specifically to stop and kill a bear in the quickest and cleanest way possible, it will not be a big “bear” gun. I 100% will use one out of nostalgia to hunt a bear.

 

[eric1115]

An AR with 30 TMK's is holding roughly 4,200 cubic inches of wound channel if we assume a 3"x20" average.

A .375 with one tough, bone crunching bullet in the pipe and four more in the mag is holding 750 cubic inches of wound channel if we assume 2"x48" average.

If you shoot a six round Bill drill in 2 seconds (very achievable) that's 840 cubic inches of wound.

If you get two rounds of .375 off in two seconds (also pretty reasonable to expect I think), that's 300 cubic inches of tissue destruction.

I know which one I would take with something angry and toothy coming my way.

 

[Shō[t]gun]

The African big five went nearly extinct in places, and wasn’t done with 470 NE’s. It was done with AK’s and FAL’s.

The bear thing is the last dark hole for people to cuddle their big guns with hard bullets whispering “my precious”.

It’s ridiculous. If you sent people to exterminate, that is cull- an entire region of every brown bear alive it wouldn’t be done with 375’s. It would be AR15’s with red dots or LPVO’s.

Bears are large, but they are soft. Their bones are thin- only muscle and fat covering them. The ONLY way to stop a bear on demand is a CNS hit. Which is interesting, because all the “I had to shoot a wounded bear 7 times and didn’t stop” stories illustrate that the only reason they didn’t get mauled was because the bear didn’t want to- it didn’t “stop” from a 458 win to the body. Partly, that’s probably due to the also ridiculous habit of taking really big cartridges and then making sure you load them with bullets that create the tiniest wounds known to man. A 400gr V-Max might do something…..

Everyone is worried about a bear charge in the classical “coming right at me” scenario. Ok, shoot it in the face which is the center of everything coming at you anyways. You have to hit the CNS to stop them to begin with.

I’ll take- a short and maneuverable platform that is literally designed and engineered to be shot as fast and accurately as humanly possible, with 30 rounds of some of the most destructive projectiles on the market, where I watch in real time as the projectiles strike the target at .14 seconds between shots, that is literally removing chunks of flesh as the bullet penetrates 16+ inches; over one that is long, heavy, slow, with massive recoil, creating wounds that you can barely fit a pinky through, that maybe I get one or two shots off on.

I'm making zero arguments for large wheel guns and 45-70's. I feel (it's all hypothetical to most of us here I assume) that a semi-auto of some sort would be the answer, and preferably something that can cause both immediate damage as well as penetrate deeply, like a partition or similar. If you don't hit the head, it would be good knowing that bullet is going a longer ways towards something else the bear requires to operate. Ar15, Ar10, tacticool 20ga, pick your poison. I wouldn't want to be the bear or the dude with any of those options.

I just got done reading about Frank Glaser, who was hired at one point to take out as many G-bears as he could and experienced quite a few lethal charges. So here's where my trepidation stems from:

“On September 23 I returned to where I had set some traps at the entrance of a ground squirrel’s hole high in a saddle in the sheep hills northwest of my cabin. One of my wolf traps was gone with its log toggle, which had been buried. I thought I had caught a wolf. The nearest willows were about a mile away, and I thought the wolf had gone down there with the trap and toggle. I expected to find him tangled among the willows.

I lit out down the hill. Here and there I saw where the toggle had struck the moss. I reached the edge of the willows, and ahead I could see where the wolf had gone into the willows, and I started that way.

I had the surprise of my life when a big sow grizzly burst out of the willows about 15 feet away. She was shaking her head, growling, and bounding toward me. I quickly fired my .220 Swift, hitting her in the body. The 48-grain bullet slowed her, but she kept coming. I backed up and shot again. She kept coming. The bear slowed with each shot as I continued to shoot, but she kept moving and kept absorbing bullets. After dodging the bear several times and doing a lot of leaping and shooting, I finally dropped the animal with my eleventh shot. It fell scarcely a rifle’s length away. I hated to shoot the old girl but had no choice.
The Swift is a good wolf rifle, and I was hunting wolves, not bears. I had been trying to avoid grizzlies. I had previously killed a couple of grizzlies with it but picked my shots carefully. Moose and caribou I killed with the Swift dropped quickly and a lung shot, especially, was lethal."

 

[TaperPin]

If butt shooting elk is the goal, count me out.

And it's yet just another strawman argument

If you don’t like a shooting angle you shouldn’t take the shot. If you think the base of the tail is the butt, that’s a different story

I have no intentions of letting a bull slowly walk away, if it’s an easy rear spine shot to stop him, I wouldn’t hesitate.

The base of the tail is conveniently right in line with the spine.

 

[Wyo_hntr]

If you don’t like a shooting angle you shouldn’t take the shot. If you think the base of the tail is the butt, that’s a different story

I have no intentions of letting a bull slowly walk away, if it’s an easy rear spine shot to stop him, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Awesome.

 

[Formidilosus]

If you shoot a six round Bill drill in 2 seconds (very achievable) that's 840 cubic inches of wound.

What are you eating an apple while doing that Bill drill…? If it ain’t under 1.5 sec for 6 in the A zone, you need to to get on that trigger.


Grin

If you get two rounds of .375 off in two seconds (also pretty reasonable to expect I think), that's 300 cubic inches of tissue destruction.

From low ready to an A zone/8” circle at 7 yards, what I have seen from “good” shooting hunters is around 4 seconds for two shots with 375’s, etc- that’s the good ones. The average is about 5-6 seconds with both shots being misses.

 

[roosiebull]

Mythbusters quote that explains my stance on this perfectly: "I reject your reality and substitute my own"

I do understand this sentiment, and in many cases I’m the exact same, but in this particular case (for me) my reality was formed with feelings and fudd lore, and their reality was based on a bunch of very consistent real world experiences, so it became less logical to substitute their reality for mine.

It doesn’t add up in my head to discount empirical evidence for my feelings.

On the other hand, if someone is content with what they’re doing and their system works well for them, i have never been one to argue with success… I don’t like shooting prone with heavy recoil, and if there is no reason to deal with it, I don’t want to

I have been working my way down for several years, but didn’t expect to have anything below 6.5 creed energy, but here I am, planning to do all of my rifle hunting with a little 223. I can already appreciate shooting as much as I want with no consequences… even when I shot a 270, not a cannon by any metric, shooting several days in a row, I would have some discomfort after day one, and I know that doesn’t do me any favors..

If you know it’s going to hurt pulling the trigger, there will be shot anticipation, no getting around that. I don’t care for brakes on my personal rifles for several reasons, so why even consider it? For me, pea shooters make sense for me

Kinda the same thing with bows, I found a good deal on a 60# bow, now I don’t know if I’ll ever buy another 70# after many years of shooting mid 70’s# I can shoot for a long time and I will start fading mentally well before physically, and 63# and a 500gr arrow is plenty for elk, and there is no such thing as too easy to shoot

 

[Macintosh]

I have my opinion about gel block interpretation.

What matters to me is looking how many fragments get spread out and how far they penetrate.

The “temporary cavitation” in gel people wow about isn’t convincing to me, because the cavity can be huge on a mono in gel but the wound channel very small.

I asked myself why…

Researching wounding in humans as described by trauma surgeons led me to see more technical reasons why highly fragmenting bullets destroy tissue and penetrating bullets wound less.

Skin, muscle, and lung tissue is highly elastic, so it will stretch and return with maybe broken capillary’s. Heart and liver are less elastic, but you’d still see a hole because monos pass through and the temporary cavitation just goes back. For the heart, fragmenting bullets have typically already broken up significantly by then.

I think that mechanically, when you combine the temporary cavitation with many fragments, tissue destruction is magnified. Temporary cavitation compresses tissue and then the fragments tear through the compressed tissue doing more damage than could be done if the tissue wasn’t compressed.

Also, blood vessels and the lungs that are basically sponges filled with blood act differently. The vessels are not elastic, otherwise blood wouldn’t pump. When the blood in the vessels and lungs hit with the pressure wave, the vessels can’t contain the PSI of the shock wave on the blood.

This why how a mono at high velocity can do more damage in lungs than a hole, but that is like 3000 fps by what I see guys finding. Fragmenting bullets can do it down to 1800 fps reliably.

Anyhow, it’s the way I picture lungs getting souped. Might be something else, but it’s my hypothesis.

Others might have a better explanation.

If anyone is familiar with cut propagation I believe tissue behaves the same. When a group of fibers are stretched near their elastic limit, a tiny nick to one fiber will pop it—and the resulting transfer of stress that had been held by that fiber is suddenly transferred to the next one and it pops, and you get a cascading effect of damage. This is how climbing ropes cut—only under tension, and a tiny nick propagates across the entire rope. If I understand correctly its something like this—or very similar to this—that the fragments of a bullet do during the temporary stretch cavity.

 

[eric1115]

What are you eating an apple while doing that Bill drill…? If it ain’t under 1.5 sec for 6 in the A zone, you need to to get on that trigger.


Grin




From low ready to an A zone/8” circle at 7 yards, what I have seen from “good” shooting hunters is around 4 seconds for two shots with 375’s, etc- that’s the good ones. The average is about 5-6 seconds with both shots being misses.

Ha!
I prefer sour gummy bears or peach-O's in between shots.

I was trying to be as charitable as possible for the rifle that people think of as a best choice to stop a charge.

 

[Formidilosus]

I'm making zero arguments for large wheel guns and 45-70's. I feel (it's all hypothetical to most of us here I assume) that a semi-auto of some sort would be the answer, and preferably something that can cause both immediate damage as well as penetrate deeply, like a partition or similar. If you don't hit the head, it would be good knowing that bullet is going a longer ways towards something else the bear requires to operate. Ar15, Ar10, tacticool 20ga, pick your poison. I wouldn't want to be the bear or the dude with any of those options.

I just got done reading about Frank Glaser, who was hired at one point to take out as many G-bears as he could and experienced quite a few lethal charges. So here's where my trepidation stems from:

“On September 23 I returned to where I had set some traps at the entrance of a ground squirrel’s hole high in a saddle in the sheep hills northwest of my cabin. One of my wolf traps was gone with its log toggle, which had been buried. I thought I had caught a wolf. The nearest willows were about a mile away, and I thought the wolf had gone down there with the trap and toggle. I expected to find him tangled among the willows.

I lit out down the hill. Here and there I saw where the toggle had struck the moss. I reached the edge of the willows, and ahead I could see where the wolf had gone into the willows, and I started that way.

I had the surprise of my life when a big sow grizzly burst out of the willows about 15 feet away. She was shaking her head, growling, and bounding toward me. I quickly fired my .220 Swift, hitting her in the body. The 48-grain bullet slowed her, but she kept coming. I backed up and shot again. She kept coming. The bear slowed with each shot as I continued to shoot, but she kept moving and kept absorbing bullets. After dodging the bear several times and doing a lot of leaping and shooting, I finally dropped the animal with my eleventh shot. It fell scarcely a rifle’s length away. I hated to shoot the old girl but had no choice.
The Swift is a good wolf rifle, and I was hunting wolves, not bears. I had been trying to avoid grizzlies. I had previously killed a couple of grizzlies with it but picked my shots carefully. Moose and caribou I killed with the Swift dropped quickly and a lung shot, especially, was lethal."

The issue with his 220 Swift is the bullet. The one he used would get about 6” of penetration in properly calibrated gel, which is fine for lung shooting herbivores and does result in dramatic kills, but isn’t enough for general shooting. He actually would have been better off in that scenario with an FMJ.


As for the amount of shots- objectively look at how many videos, stories, etc of bears taking 4, 5, 6, 7 ,8 plus rounds of 375’s and 458’s before stopping. They’re all over the place. But when a bear needs 6 rounds of 460 Weatherby to stop, they’re “just tough”.

 

[KenLee]

Deer, pigs, yotes, bobcat (we only get one a year ) wild dogs, targets, plates, cans, nutria. I love shooting it. Easily my favorite rifle I've ever owned. It's like a death ray. I'm also fairly young and very stupid so maybe that'll change one day. The barrier to me trying a .223 is that I like using my .338 so

I shoot literally everything legal to shoot with my .338.



I got old and went from 30 yrs with a 270 to 300wsm for my primary rifle. Felt recoil to me is no worse. Went from a hockey puck for recoil pad on the 270 to a great factory pad on the 300wsm.
Folks on here love Tikkas, but a Tilka kicks hard for caliber. I'd rather shoot a 7mm-08 x-bolt than a 243 Tikka.

 

[gerry35]

@Formidilosus have you hunted Grizzly or Brown bear?

Btw an amped up grizzly or even black bear is hard to stop. Seen it personally unfortunately.

 

[roosiebull]

Louder for the people in the back

I don’t think it will matter

 

[Formidilosus]

@Formidilosus have you hunted Grizzly or Brown bear?

Nope. I’ve dealt with them.

Btw an amped up grizzly or even black bear is hard to stop. Seen it personally unfortunately.

What does “hard to stop” have to do with the reality of wound channels and shootability? Your cartridge and bullet you choose to use creates narrower wounds, is vastly harder to shoot well, can not be shot as quickly by anyone, and makes you lose sight of your target during recoil. Those are facts. Ignore bullet diameter, that’s reality.
Now if you tell me your are shooting 390gr A-Tips out of your 375, and you are a world class shooter… ok, that changes a bit.



I have yet to find an animal that is magical. First it was “big deer”- well they die like everything else. Then it was “elk”, they die like everything else. Then it was “big elk”, they also die like everything else. Then it was moose.. die like everything else. Then bear, they too die like everything else. Maybe when I kill 100 brown bears I will find that magical creature that works with holes in their brain and missing parts of lungs and heart… Somehow I doubt it.