Standard calibers or Magnums?

Maybe it was inevitable that I would grow up to be a hunter and look forward to deer and elk season each year. Both my grandfathers were big game hunters as well as bird hunters. Unfortunately, my grandfather Merkley died before I was born, so I never was able to hunt with him. My grandfather Andersen was in his mid 60s when I was born and had stopped hunting by the time I was old enough to start hunting.

My father started me off by taking me jack rabbit hunting on the Arco desert during the 1950s. When I was 12 years old I received a .30-30 Winchester for deer hunting, and my grandfather Andersen gave me the only hunting rifle he owned, a .30-40 Krag-Jorgensen, a rifle that was almost taller than I was. He had hunted both deer and elk with that rifle.

Although I never hunted with my grandfathers, I did hunt with my father’s older brothers, so many of my grandfather Merkley’s lessons on hunting and firearm safety as well as proper care and storage of firearms were handed down to me.

No one on either my mother or father’s side of the family ever owned a Magnum-caliber hunting rifle until I decided to purchase a .300 Weatherby Magnum and began considering a couple of others. Now my son has purchased a couple of Magnum rifles also.

Today some of the most interesting discussions among hunters deal with the merits of standard hunting calibers as opposed to various Magnum calibers that became available to hunters starting in the late 1940s. Most advocates of the old standard hunting calibers such as the .30-30, .270 Winchester, .308, .30-40 Krag and .30-06 will tell you that those old standard calibers will kill and continue to kill everything on the North American continent including the big bears of the Rocky Mountain Northwest, Canada and Alaska, and they are absolutely correct.

Hosea Sarber, an Alaskan hunter, guide and game officer out of Saint Petersburg Alaska, killed most of the problem bears he was sent to dispatch with either a .270 Win or a .30-06. His favorite load for the .30-06 was the now-obsolete 172-grain Western Tool and Copper company cartridge with an open-point bullet. Jack O Conner, a popular outdoor and hunting writer, preferred a 180-grain Remington round-nose Core-Lokt bullet in .30-06 caliber, which he always referred to as the perfect bear medicine. Dave Hetzler, of Petersen’s Hunting Magazine, once said, “If I can’t get it done with a .30-06, I can’t get it done.”

However, the cheering section for Magnum calibers will at least insinuate that if you play around with North America’s big stuff using any of the standard calibers that my grandfathers and uncles used, you are going to get your profile really messed up eventually, and probably eaten. Therefore, you ought to be doing your serious hunting with one of the more powerful Magnums.

So who is right, the standard caliber advocates or the Magnum cheering section? As is usually the case, one has to make that decision based on the advantages and disadvantages as perceived by the individual.

Using the .270 Winchester and .30-06 as examples of standard calibers, the advantages I see are adequate power out to several hundred yards, inherent accuracy, easily available ammunition in several bullet weights, reasonably flat trajectories over 300 to 400 yards, versatility for several different species of game animals and acceptable recoil with which most can become very comfortable.

The primary disadvantages of standard calibers are less bullet weight, loss of effective power over distance and accompanying bullet drop over distance.

If you think that the .270 or .30-06 are marginal for the bigger bears in North America, stop and think for a moment. Once a hunter finds a bear, the distance is usually under 100 yards, and at 100 yards or less both the .270 and especially the .30-06 “hit like a ton of bricks,” to coin a phrase. However, both calibers have taken North American bruins of all sizes at considerably more than 100 yards and were doing so before magnum calibers became popular.

The 700 Remington Magnum and the various .300 Magnums as well as the .375 H&H, and .340 Weatherby Magnums are cartridges with a purpose. That purpose is to achieve higher velocity with any given bullet, and in some cases larger heavier bullets, while achieving flatter trajectories over greater distances than the standard calibers.

The advantage is more retained power at distance and less bullet drop. The disadvantages are more expensive ammo whether or not one reloads, generally a rifle with a couple extra pounds to carry around, and more than twice as much recoil in some cases, which makes most people flinch in anticipation of the shot. Recoil of the Magnum calibers really isn’t something most people are completely comfortable with. However, it can be tolerated by some to the point that they can concentrate on sight picture right through the shot with no flinching.

Typically, an 8-pound .30-06 firing a 180-grain bullet will recoil back at the shooter with 20 foot-pounds of energy at a speed of 12.8 feet per second. A 9-pound .300 Weatherby Magnum firing a 180-grain bullet will recoil back at the shooter at close to 35 foot-pounds of energy at a speed of 15 feet per second. A 9-pound .375 H&H Magnum firing a 300-grain bullet will recoil back at the shooter with about 40 foot-pounds of energy, at a speed of 16.3 feet per second. A 9-pound .340 Weatherby Magnum firing a 250-grain bullet will recoil back at the shooter with 43 foot-pounds of energy at 17.6 feet per second. We all have a limit as to how much recoil we can ignore without flinching in order to get an accurate shot off.

It makes little sense to hunt with one of the Magnum calibers if you are thinking about the recoil when you could shoot a standard caliber that will do the job and with which you are more comfortable.

An Alaskan guide and outfitter put it in perspective once when he advised me, “If you can shoot your Magnum rifle really well, then bring it; otherwise your .30-06 will do just fine.”

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

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