Is it necessary to put on all the hunting rifles a fresh headstamp to do old work? In a market which continues to make fresh numbers and new standings, there are still cartridges which continue to earn their pay in the unheroic manner of adjusting to ordinary behavior, of shot-fitting bullet weights and of allowing a hunter to shoot without being sent down to the bench. Raw speed is not often their advantage. It is predictable field performance, the type which appears when the shot is rapid, the light is dimming down, and the rifle is brought to the shoulder without any dramatics.
Such calculated thinking follows the most eternal fact in terminal ballistics: position of the shots is king. The art of building bullets should still not be neglected, particularly where angles become sharp, or when bones are to be hit, but those cartridges that are easy to drill become more likely to be carried and hit.
1. .338 Federal
The .338 federal is a simple mechanical concept that has worked: the .308 winchester casing opened to.338 caliber. The outcome is a short action cartridge which shoots heavy broad front bullets without dragging the shooter into the magnum recoil and blast. In the thick stuff, when shots have to be counted in seconds and yards rather than on dialed turrets, that is the entire thing.
It is usually confined to 185-225 grain bullet range that allows it to act like a woods round that hits like a hammer and follows without complicated tracking. It also enjoys the advantages of the contemporary bullet world: bonded and monolithic designs can increase the margin when the impact angles are less-than-ideal, and traditional cup-and-core bullets are not useless in closer and in broadside operations.
2. 7mm-08 Remington
The 7mm-08 achieves what many deer hunters desire, but will not necessarily admit openly, and that is ensuring low recoil to protect good form, but retaining sufficient downrange capability to be effective beyond the beanfield boundary. It is also another cartridge based on .308 but this time it is reduced to 7mm, thus fitting more compact rifles and usually easy to tune.
The choice of bullet is a huge component of its do-it-all image, ranging between 100 and 175 grains, with many hunters making a compromise of between 140 and 150 grains in game of deer size. It is, also, in the same old-time reality newer cartridges cannot get out of: there is overlapping, duplication and redundancy of the performance of the rifle cartridge, and the 7mm-08 continues to win because it makes the overlap comfortable to shoot in.
3. .35 Whelen
The .35 Whelen has never made any sales pitch or slogan. It is made of the.30-06 family but necked in to the larger size of.358, and it operates in a standard-length action, but reaches a heavier, larger-diameter category that many hunters would identify with deep, sure penetration on large-bodied game.
It is a simple commerce in the inside work of realistic hunting, ugly bullets compared to the high-BC crowd, but a solid, heavy hit in the right places. An example of a typical performance snapshot is a 200-grain bullet at 2,800 fps, which is a combination of why the Whelen has always been talked of as being a balanced performance in medium bore instead of a specialty round.
4. .280 Remington
The.280 Remington is frequently given as having come late and been overseen, not as having been an imperfect design. This was built on the .30-06 with necked to 7mm, aimed at tapping into the wide range of 7mm bullet, such as the heavier hunting bullets that the standard set up of many .270 would not be able to stabilize.
That versatility is reflected in the viable upper limit: hunting bullets of as much as 175 grains. It can, in reality, be chambered in a useful fashion too: a duct cut.280 Ackley Improved chamber can be fired with.280 Remington ammunition, and the cartridge can be used by hunters who support the AI concept but can afford not to make every shooting trip a scavenger hunt.
5. .257 Roberts
The “.257 Roberts is nicknamed the Bob because it has endured long enough to have a nickname. Constructed using the 7×57 Mauser case reduced to.25 caliber, it has long been known to be efficient and have a very mild recoil in deer and pronghorn applications where a good shot hits the target rather than curves the chart.
It has a rare standards footnote as well, being one of the few common rifle cartridges to bear a SAAMI +P designation, rated at 58,000 PSI instead of 54,000 as the standard one would be. That fact will explain why the older factory loads would be polite at times, the cartridge had more useful headroom than its fame had indicated.
These cartridges are never retro solutions to the new problems. They are illustrations of engineering prudence: effective case designs, practical weights of bullets, and realistic recoil levels that allow practice to be realistic. Hunters can match those qualities with the appropriate bullet type, cupandcore, bonded, monolithic and keep their mind on the placement of the shot and then the cartridge name no longer becomes the story, but what it was meant always to be, a tool that is out of the way.
