Well gents, lock the thread. In the meantime, I’m gonna go buy a 300 win mag and put another round through the big 6 point I’ve got shoulder mounted in my front room that I killed with a 6.5 creed. He was a “pressured, public land” full rut bull that was full of adrenaline, so I’m pretty sure he’s probably not quite dead even though he’s been hanging up since 2020.
All joking aside, how many animals have you killed/seen killed with the 6.5 creedmoor and all its adjacent brothers/predecessors (6creed, 243, 25-06, 257 Robert’s, 260 Remington, 270 Winchester, etc.)? Animals die ONLY through 1 of 2 ways: oxygen deprivation, or central nervous system interruption. And if a guy can put a properly constructed KILLING bullet through either the heart, lungs, or the central nervous system (high shoulder/spine/head/neck) through his 6.5 creedmoor, the animal won’t know the difference. Foot pounds of energy don’t matter if you “dump all the energy” into the grass bag or into the spinous process, there’s no “margin of error” that will make up for poor shot placement. There’s not a person on this planet, again contrary to popular belief, who shoots a 300 RUM or Win or 7 rem mag or [insert magnum cartridge here] as well as they’ll shoot a lower recoiling round. A guy may shoot them well, but they’ll ALWAYS shoot less recoil better. On top of that, the vast majority of hunters don’t shoot enough to be anywhere near as proficient as they think they are every year, which further exacerbates the issue.
So, no, more gun isn’t more better. It doesn’t kill them better, it doesn’t give you “the ability to punch through the dreaded elk shoulder” any better, and it doesn’t allow you better “margin of error” for bad shots. In fact, the single worst kill I’ve ever witnessed was my dad’s moose in 2003, which soaked up 9 rounds of 165 grain partitions from his 7 mag at 250 yards. Dad was digging through his backpack looking for any more ammo after round 9 because the bull just wouldn’t drop, and about a minute after the last shot (and about 5 after the shooting commenced), the bull finally tipped over. It’s only an example of 1, but to me it shows that magnums are not the “end-all be-all” that Elmer Keith wanted everyone to believe. They’ll kill for sure, but they kill stuff the same way that any other cartridge does: by putting holes in the front half of animals.
To the OP, I’ve seen multiple elk and mule deer killed in 2 different states over several years from 25 to 500-ish yards with a 6.5 creedmoor and its adjacent brother, the 270 Winchester, all with 140-143 grain projectiles from both Hornady and Berger. Only 1 required a follow up shot, none of them traveled further than 25 yards or so, and one of the mule deer (shot at 225 yards with a 143 grain ELDX) exhibited the single most impressive exit wound I’ve every seen, a 5 inch diameter hole with daylight visible all the way through as he ran 25 yards from left to right in the snow on Colorado 3rd season in 2022 before dying. Left a blood trail so impressive that Ray Charles could’ve followed it. I would happily carry a 6.5 creedmoor for everything until the day I die, and don’t regret dumping my own 7 mag to do so.
