Which caliber rifle is best

On the other hand, a. But recoil! It kicks almost as hard as the. Obviously we have to strike a balance. Unless you destroy the meat you came to eat. As far as comfort, convenience, and smooth handling are concerned, a lighter rifle with less recoil makes sense.

A lot of sense. Not too big, not too small. Not too heavy, not too light. Not too soft-hitting, not too hard-hitting. Fortunately, we can modify recoil, trajectory, and terminal performance without changing or modifying our rifle. Those inconspicuous, half-buried little protrusions of metal at the ends of our cartridges can change 2, fps to 3, fps. They can soften 29 ft-lbs of recoil down to 18 ft-lbs. They can boost muzzle energy from 2, ft-lbs to 3, ft-lbs.

In the same rifle! They can reduce bullet drop at yards from 4 inches to 0 inches. By changing the bullets we shoot, we can optimize our versatile, one rifle to do the work of a half dozen. You knew this whether you remembered you knew it or not. Many of us have loaded our beloved. More of us have traded out our grain deer bullets for grain elk loads. Many a brown bear has been tamed by a. This can be done with many if not most cartridges, especially if you handload.

Right now. On the other hand,. But it comes at a price. You have to learn different trajectory curves for different bullets. The other thing bullets bring to the game are varying degrees of hardness and expansion. Bullets kill by destroying the central nervous system or cardio-pulmonary system. The more tissue the bullet tears, the more hemorrhaging it induces, and the faster the animal expires.

While radiating pressure does some tearing, most tissue is elastic enough to stretch and absorb such pressure. More reliable is physical contact, the ripping effect of hard metal against soft tissue. This can be enhanced a number of ways. Extra frangible bullets break into fragments to radiate outward from the contact point. These can cause massive bleeding and quick demise, but they rarely penetrate far.

Controlled expansion bullets are engineered to stay in one piece, expand to varying degrees, and penetrate more deeply. So, you choose a light, flat shooting, frangible bullet for coyotes, a medium weight for deer, and a tough, heavyweight for elk, kudu, and bears. One-rifle versatility.

Now all you have to decide is the cartridge that propels those bullets. Caliber means the diameter of the bore. Rifling grooves are then cut into it to create a groove-to-groove diameter of.

However, when the bullets get heavy, the "Seven Mag" gets going. Judicious handloads can push grain Bergers, grain Nosler Partitions and Hornady ELD-Xs, and Berger grain bullets at capable velocities, making it one of the finest everyman's long-distance cartridges.

Until a few years ago, I was an all-American. While I still revere. I do think the magnum versions of those fatter cousins still hit harder, courtesy of a larger frontal diameter and increased bullet weight, but for the average guy — and even the accomplished rifleman — the 7mm Rem.

Some old-timers have a sour taste over the 7mm Rem. In the early years it quickly developed a reputation for poor killing ability, which wasn't a fault of the cartridge at all.

Rather, it stemmed from ammo manufacturers loading soft, thin-jacketed hunting bullets designed for the much-slower 7x57 Mauser. On impact, they tended to blow to bits, resulting in huge craters and little penetration. Long blood trails and extensive meat loss did little to endear the cartridge to traditional American hunters.

Today, it's much better understood, and when stoked with a long, sleek, high-BC bullet designed for high velocities, it's probably the most practical long-range hunting cartridge available. While its much older, more established, smaller 7mm brother is arguably the most practical long-range hunting cartridge available, the 28 Nosler is arguably the best of the best — if you walk practicality off the metaphorical plank.

Yes, there are faster cartridges, such as the 7mm Remington Ultra Mag, but none offer quite the ideal balance of usability and performance that the 28 Nosler does. The 28 Nosler isn't a new concept. Gunwerks's 7mm LRM is very similar, and like-performing wildcats abound.

All Nosler did was perfect arguably, of course the non-belted, standard-length magnum 7mm. Of all the cartridges on this list, the 28 Nosler is the only one not proven by at least a half-decade of use and is the only one too young to have earned the stamp of popular approval. So I'm going out on a limb a bit by including it. What I like about it is the refined design I really do think it's the best of the standard-length modern magnums , plus the fact that Nosler brass is typically very consistent, favoring accuracy.

And, of course, it's in my favorite far-shooting bullet diameter: 7mm. With light 7mm bullets the 28 Nosler puts lasers to shame. With heavy Partitions and X-type bullets, it penetrates like a depth charge. But in light of what it's really good at, one may as well just go with a heavy, aerodynamic hunting bullet and use it for everything. There's not a hooved animal on the North American continent that it's not prime for.

For the fella that can handle the recoil and doesn't mind spending the extra money on ammo, the. For such a hunter, it's a better choice than the glorious. Plus, the. For many decades, the 7mm Rem. A decade or so ago the gap closed, and according to many polls, the. Were I pressed to guess why, I'd say that the bigger cartridge just kills a little faster, probably a product of the greater frontal diameter.

I've shot a lot of game with my favorite. Another advantage the. The last time I went to Africa, my baggage was lost for a couple of days. No problem: I borrowed a pocketful of the outfitter's outstanding grain Norma Oryx handloads and went hunting. A big blue wildebeest fell to that bullet before my baggage arrived.

Speaking of bullets, there's little one can't accomplish with a good grain pill from a. One of my favorites is the grain Nosler AccuBond. With it I dropped an old aoudad ram with one shot at yards; it's become my go-to long-distance bullet. Note that for me a very long shot on game is yards. I don't promote extreme-range shooting at game. As for factory loads, I've had incredibly good results using Federal's grain Trophy Bonded Tip; it gave me 13 one-shot kills in Africa after my luggage arrived.

Much as I respect the. This is the cartridge the. Offering outstanding velocities and just enough bullet weight to be really effective, at a very polite price in recoil, the.

With bullets in the to grain range, it's also superb for predators. But I digress. Choose a sleek bullet in the to grain range, which will exit the muzzle of your favorite deer slayer somewhere between 3, and 3, fps, and never look back. You'll be able to reach out to plus yards — if you're rifleman enough to do so ethically — with outstanding effect. As for the bigger game, well, the. But with a grain Nosler Partition, it will do for caribou and elk as long as good shot presentations are taken.

For the chap who pines for magnum performance but clings to the advantages of a standard-size cartridge greater magazine capacity, less recoil, more efficient powder usage, less costly brass, longer barrel life , the. By blowing out the case walls to a straighter taper and the case shoulder to a much steeper angle, P. Ackley who was the master of the improved cartridge case turned the languishing. I dropped what was at the time my biggest bull with one well-placed shot at yards with the grain TTSX, which exits the muzzle of my custom rifle at 3, fps.

Better yet, the. We prefer sturdy, bonded bullets with a heavy copper jacket, or monolithic solid copper bullets. These bullets are more accurate, penetrate better, and less prone to violent fragmentation which ruins meat. I hesitated to include the. In fact, Steve used a. Keep your shots to a reasonable distance and aim for a double-lung shot and the. The 6. And for good reason. In Europe, the 6. My experience with the 6. The 7mm is a necked-down version of the.

Like the 6. I killed my first, and biggest bull elk with a 7mm with a single shot through the shoulder blade at yards. It shoots flat out to yards, which makes it a point and shoot rifle caliber for the vast majority of shots on big game.

You can take the same. The 7mm Remington Magnum was the first magnum hunting cartridge to achieve widespread commercial success among American big game hunters, and the magnum craze among big game hunters has never been the same since. The 7mm Mag has been around for over fifty years and is still very popular today as an all-purpose big game killer.

It kicks out bullets of the same weight faster than popular non-magnum calibers like the.