Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Mule Deer - .338win question

Why Not! memtb

Not a 338 WM, but a 338-06 question, I shoot 250 gr NPT's and SAF's in my 338 WM, love em, I have a re-bored pre-64 M-70 that was a rusty bored 270 WCF rifle outta Oregon, JES worked his magic on it, it is now a very accurate 338-06 that fires 210 gr partitions to 2800 fps, my 'Smith installed a stainless M-70 trigger and cerakoted all the steel, question is, do You or MuleDeer or any of the other experienced elk hunters think this would make a good backup elk rifle?

I love heavy or even extra heavy for caliber bullets, what I'm reading here is the 210 NPT may be plenty, the rifle in question wears a 3.5-10x40 matte Leupold scope in Leupold DD rings and bases, it all sits nicely bedded in an old Pacific Research stock, and most likely weighs less than 8lbs all up.

Thanks in advance.

Dillonbuck,

Please allow me a chance to answer.

I went through the same thing when looking at longer-range computer ballistics with the .300 and .338 Winchester Magnums years ago, both of which I've used extensively over the decades. It seemed the .300 would indeed be superior with bullets around 200 grains, but when actually shooting both rounds with 200-grain bullets there just wasn't any noticeable difference, either in wind-drift or trajectory, out to 500 yards. And that's far as I've ever shot at big game. (Might shoot longer in the future, but maybe not.) This was somewhat puzzling, but eventually I concluded the 200-grain Ballistic Tip's BC was higher than listed by Nosler. Or at least it is in typical hunting conditions in my part of Montana.

Built my .338 in the 1980's, because like a lot of hunters (including Gunner :-) I thought heavier bullets had to be superior on heavier game. I'd also heard the .338 kicked HARD with 250-grain bullets, so initially built the rifle on the heavy side, around 9 pounds with scope.

Eventually discovered the .338 doesn't kick nearly as bad as most people suggested, so started "whittling" it down. Replaced the medium-heavy barrel with a slimmer one, and the stock with a lighter model. Eventually it weighed 7-1/2 pounds with scope, and while I initially used heavier bullets, I also started using lighter bullets because, well, that's my job. Discovered (unlike Gunner) that lighter bullets made right will do the same things as heavier bullets, and maybe better for most hunting.

This was partly because my .338 kicked less than the .300 Winchester Magnums I've hunted with, when using 200-grain bullets. This wasn't due to stock shape, because one of the .300's used the same Bansner High Tech stock as on my .338--and weighed a half pound more. But with 200's at the same 3000 fps, the .338 seemed noticeably milder. I assume this is because of using somewhat less powder, plus the reduced "rocket effect" of the muzzle gas in the bigger .338 bore, but there it is.

Now, I don't hunt all that much with either .300 magnums or the .338 Winchester anymore, having found that with good bullets, smaller rounds are totally adequate for elk and similar-sized African game. I regard my New Ultra Light Arms .30-06 as my big rifle anymore, like my wife did almost 20 years ago when she took it to Africa and killed gemsbok, blue wildebeest and kudu easily with 165-grain Fail Safes. Since then Eileen has dropped even lower: Her last two elk, both mature cows, were taken with the .257 Roberts and the 100-grain Barnes TTSX and the .308 Winchester with the 130 TTSX. One dropped on the spot, and the other went 25 yards before falling, both with angling shots, one quartering away and one quartering toward. The cow taken with the .308 was a big one, and the "little" bullet broke the near shoulder and was recovered barely hanging from the ribs on the opposite side.

That said, I am thinking about using my .338 again, mostly because in the past few years we've had grizzlies move into the mountain ranges on both sides of our Montana valley. At my stage of "middle age" I appreciate my .338's light weight even more, and if the odds go against me while hunting the local mountains, and somehow a grizzly gets actively involved, I'd like the .338 in my hands a little more than my .30-06. But I also know, from having shot it alongside the .300 Winchester Magnum that it doesn't give up anything at any of the modestly longer ranges I might shoot at an elk. I know it wouldn't be any more effective on a grizzly than any of my .300's, but it weighs and kicks a little less.

Now, all of this is indeed rifle-loony nitpicking, but it's why I would personally use my .338 over any of my .300's.

Good post. The highlighted portion is something some people just don't get. One of the reasons I choose the 338wm over the 300wm as well...

SU35,

I also might use my 9.3 Barsness-Sisk for elk hunting in the nearby mountains where grizzlies have started to increase in number. It's even lighter than the .338, about 7-1/4 pounds scoped, but gets basically the same velocity out of 250-grain bullets. (Plus, it's already taken a grizzly in Alaska.) The only trouble with the 9.3 is it's not as useful for hunting more open country as the .338 with 200-210 grain bullets.

But in open grizzly country I have also hunted quite a bit with rifles chambered for lighter cartridges, so far with no problems, despite bear signs (and sometimes bears) being quite evident. Once I backpacked a load of caribou meat to a boat tied up on a lakeshore in the Northwest Territories, with the rifle in my hands a single-shot .308 Winchester. A sow with cubs had been seen in the same general area the day before by some of my hunting companions, but I'd also just climbed up the open hillside I was packing the meat down three hours earlier, and hadn't seen any bear sign. The .308 didn't seem ideal, but it was a long way from being unarmed, and the odds leaned strongly against any sudden surprises.

jwp,

Maybe, though I doubt one of Montana's mountain grizzlies would refuse to fall after being hit in the right place with, say, a 165-grain monolithic from a .30 caliber. I simply don't have enough personal experience on grizzlies to make a judgment, so using the .338 or 9.3 would be more for psychological comfort than any conviction that it would work better than, say, a .30-06 with the same shot placement.

As noted, my one grizzly was taken with the 9.3, a 7-1/2 foot fall bear heavy enough that, after it died in a slight depression, required both me and the guide to roll it over for skinning. I put two shots into the bear, one at about 65-70 yards, and another at maybe 50 yards as the bear turned and ran angling slightly closer past us. I did not see any evidence of a "hard hit" on either shot, perhaps because while both bullets were well-placed, and either would have killed the bear, neither hit major bone. However, I also know the 9.3 will definitely penetrate a good-sized grizzly more than sufficiently with the load used.

On that same Alaskan hunt my hunting partner took a bigger grizzly with the .308 Winchester.

Phil Shoemaker has performed more back-up on really big brown bears than anybody else I know, using a wide variety of rounds, I believe up to the .505 Gibbs. He still prefers the .458 Winchester he acquired many years ago for stopping wounded bears, but has stopped quite a few with the .30-06, the last one maybe 3-4 years ago with 220 Partitions. And it was a lot bigger than any grizzly I might encounter around here.

He also killed a charging brown bear last summer with a palm-sized 9mm semiauto. It wasn't what he considered the ideal gun for the job, but it was what he had--and he'd thoroughly tested the ammo beforehand, finding it penetrated deeply. And one of the 147-grain bullets that killed the bear went through both shoulders before stopping under the hide on the far side.

The two most experienced bear guides I personally know are Phil on brown bears, and Jim Shockey on black bears. I've discussed bear rifles and bear shooting with both considerably (Jim on a hunt I did with his outfit on Vancouver Island, where the black bears are plenty big) and the most interesting thing both said is they don't advise their clients to shoot for bone to break a bear down. This is because they've seen too many clients become so fixated on breaking a shoulder, they forget to aim for the interior vital organs!