Best Cartridge for Each Big Game Animal: My picks

welcome to the oddad room in the harmer household that's what my kids call it for obvious reasons this is a little bit of a diversion from the series we're doing on cartridge wars that we're going to be returning to so in alphabetical order odd ad these would be my top picks the reason that i'm picking cartridges kind of in this class is i would value long range shooting on this because audad are almost always in tough open terrain and the other thing is i was surprised by how big bodied oddad can be holy cow look at that thing i mean there are big tough bodied animals when you shoot a mature one and so for me i want something bigger than a 6'5 creedmoor for odd ad and something for long range so i think 65prc would be an excellent choice that's actually what i used on that hunt but i might even step it up to something with a little bit bigger of a frontal diameter i think if i were going today i'd probably take a 6.8 western a little bit bigger frontal diameter we're only talking four more foot pounds of recoil than energy than a 65 prc but you're getting more than a hundred foot pounds of energy and shooting a significantly heavier bullet up next is antelope and i'm going to kind of mix that in with spring buck which is really just the african equivalent these are incredibly easy to kill i mean you like look at them wrong and they die right they're very fast animals have good vision sometimes it's going to take the longer shots you know you go out in wyoming and you may have a little bit of a longer shot at one of these and they're also physically smaller animals and so you have to be very precise i've shot a ton of spring buck with 6'5 creedmoor and they all go down almost instantly or instantly so all five of these are really good options and you really wouldn't go wrong with any of them however my personal choice i would probably cut out the 6.5 creedmoor because ballistically it just can't hang with the rest and we may get some long shots because antelope are almost always in very open country then we look at the 25.6 it's a very versatile popular cartridge still but it is certainly waning in popularity it's a long action it's kind of a very different case design than what we might see today it's a great choice and that's why i've put it here but i probably might remove it so that we can get a little bit of a shorter barrel six millimeter creedmoor and 243 i really like i would edge though the 6.5 prc because of the wind drift you know let's say we're out in wyoming it wouldn't be uncommon to see 20 mile an hour winds and at 300 yards that really saves you a lot in figuring out your wind it's a tiny bit more recoil but it's still so manageable i might as well do it i really gained respect for how tough the black bear is a few years ago when i was setting up a trail cam and i caught a fight of two black bears and when you see them in the wild they just look like these cuddly slow-moving things but they are powerful and so fast i i mean a black bear even though usually they're pretty small they are just so powerful and when i saw that i thought man i have more respect for this when i see those things in the woods and i've been charged by a black bear before while bow hunting and i had to spray it with pepper spray um i was coming over a little bit rise and i'm like 15 feet from a from a cub and as soon as i saw it i was like crap sure enough mama comes tearing through the bush right at me and fortunately i had brought bear spray i rarely do unless i'm in grizzly territory and i sprayed it and it was over like that if you're from a stand it's going to be an easy shot anyway the only thing you don't want to do is allow that thing to run off into thick brush and now you've got to go through thick brush and just hope it's dead right from a stand i think 308 is money here it's a big frontal diameter you can shoot a heavy bullet you can get good penetration but it's not unnecessary recoil either for a close shot now if we're talking longer range these would maybe be my picks if we're talking about you know out west this is a spot and stock kind of hunt where a cross canyon shot's pretty likely and i think for me the pick is going to be the 7 millimeter remington magnum i think it's a great choice because of the ballistics it has we don't give it enough cred for for how good it does shooting pretty long range it has great ballistics it has a lot of steam to it caribou i have not personally killed a caribou it is very high on my list because my wife keeps telling me that that spot above our fireplace in the living room would just look really really good with caribou there for me i think my options are going to be these i'm looking my notes a little bit 6.8 western 280 actually improved now 6.8 western and 280 actually improved the ballistics are nearly identical i mean almost the exact same thing and so between those two i mean it's difficult to pick i mean they're very very similar beasts right there 280 actually improved and six five or a six eight western i probably wouldn't pick the thirty odd six because it has 32 inches of drop at 400 yards compared to 25 with the 6 8 western i like that flat shooting but also you're probably in grizzly territory and so having a 30 out 6 is a pretty good option the 270 winchester just doesn't have a ton of bullet option options in that heavier grain weight that i'd probably want to pick for this and so i don't think i'd go there the 6.5 prc i'm not crazy on the 6.5 caliber for anything bigger than even antelope i just i've seen dozens of animals that i or my kids have shot with 6'5 caliber i mean dozens of animals we've shot with it so i i'm not saying this flippantly i've shot a lot of animals with six fives and it's a little bit light you know 99 of the time thump and then every once in a while it's like oh that probably shouldn't have happened all right coyotes a lot of great options for coyotes i'm looking for something that's very fast and flat because you can't always get an accurate range you don't always have time with it when you're coyote hunting and i want something that's going to be light on pelts something like a 243 or a six creedmoor may anchor them a little bit better but it is a little bit tougher on pelts so for me i'm going 22 to 50. all of these cartridges will absolutely kill deer no problem they're all successful for a reason but there are three that i would probably knock out for my general purpose hunting of deer and that's the 350 legend and the only reason i take it out is it's not a bottleneck cartridge like these so it's not shooting super fast it doesn't have very good range but it'll absolutely thump a deer up close very useful in states that require straight wall cartridges but for me it's a specialty cartridge 3030 is a great round for lever actions it's obviously been used for decades successfully but i mean nobody's going to argue that it has the most incredible ballistics and so why why why pick it there are newer cartridges that i think can do everything it does plus a little bit more but if i'm shooting a lever action boy it's a cool choice i love it 243 for me is also a specialty cartridge now when i'm taking you know jim jr out shooting i don't have a gym junior i have ruger and coal yeah i want to give them the 243 so they have the lowest recoil so i can be sure they'll make a good shot but since i have seen quite a few things die to the 243 i also have seen at least in one case a very uninspiring death from a very good shot and so for me it's not about how little of a cartridge can i possibly use to get away with for general shooting i'm going to take the biggest thing i can shoot accurately so what are my top picks for me it's the 308 if i'm shooting in a deer stand i love 308 big frontal diameter plenty of power it's going to absolutely crush that deer and i want to give it as much power as i can for hunting out west i like that 6.5 prc it's perfect for deer very flat shooting inspires confidence in high winds 270 68 western 280 actually improved would also be my notable mentions elk so here are my choices for elk and man that's the dream team any one of these is great but you'll notice two are missing 308 and 7m08 that a lot of people would pick as well as 6'5 prc that a lot of people would put on that list i personally wouldn't i'm not saying you shouldn't hunt with them whatever it's your choice but just for my personal dream team it wouldn't make it elk is by far the number one animal for being shot wounded and not recovered and so when i'm hunting elk i want to tip everything in my favor i want it to be such an unfair fight i want to blast that thing obviously shot placement is key bullet construction is very important but if we're also picking a cartridge to stack in our favor i want one of the dream team what happens i think with elk and the reason so many get wounded is somebody sees a 400 class bull and they just and they're like i'm i'm gonna try you know and suddenly the limits that we've all placed on ourselves or out the window and so or let's say it's just a 250 yard shot but you get caught in a 25 mile an hour crazy wind out there i want to have everything stacked in my favor ballistically on these things personally my three picks are going to be 300 wsm is my number one and the reason is it's a short action and so um and that in addition to other factors you're getting a short barrel that extension of the suppressor isn't a big deal when i'm hiking through the mountains that's why it's my number one my number two is seven mag you can never go wrong with seven mag i know everybody always says 30 odd six just go with the 30 out 6. for me it's 7 mag just go with the 7 mag but then if you've got to go to a very light rifle let's say we've you know we're going to something like a kimber mountain ascent we're just this is deep back country we've got to save every every single ounce then i'd probably go with 280 actually improved okay i'm gonna knock a few out in kind of rapid succession here um hogs i'm probably picking 308 kudu zebra or red stag my pick is going to be the seven rim mag moose i'm gonna have to defer to joseph von benedict from the backcountry hunting podcast awesome podcast definitely my favorite in the industry and his recommendation was 300 win mag mountain lion you know you're usually up close it's usually a hunt with dogs um for me again i'm all about the most ethical death possible and so i'm you know it's just like any tree stand ground blind close-up hunt i want the 308 short barrel tons of power sheep hunt oh this would be a tough choice i think i'd probably go 6'5 prc wildebeest i hunted six blue wildebeest with the 6'5 prc this year and it was not adequate to the task it just wasn't it was a very unfortunate situation i had experience with that with that guide i'd been there before i knew them i had even kind of helped them out during the pandemic where they were struggling financially and we get there the day the day of and the place had just changed you could tell maybe the low money from the pandemic and not having hunters in but we had picked a package of animals we'd agreed on it paid for it everything the day we get there totally switched up the the package and just said ah these are the animals that we have available right now and i thought you know what that's okay i can be flexible with you but why didn't we talk about this two weeks ago when i could have made a proper cartridge selection so we hunted blue wildebeest with six five prc again it was it just wasn't up to the task in my opinion anyway so if i'm hunting blue wildebeest 300 win mag if we're talking black wildebeest then i'm just going to just my general recommendation for plains game just take the 30 out 6. thanks everybody for your support on this channel and we will see you in the next video

Channel: Backfire

Views: 679,306

Keywords: Backfire, Hunting, Outdoors

Id: GMakQPRBSBw

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 13 2022