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I doubt that "shots-per-kill" have very much to do with shell cases.
They have a LOT to do with;
(A) marksmanship and
(B) bullet choice.

I have been hunting since I was a young boy and I am not approaching geezerhood. I was blessed to live a life that allowed me to hunt a lot and except for a few years during my military service, (And only 3 of them, out of 15, U.S.M.C. and D.O.D.) I have been able to kill multiple head of game every year. Some of those years I was able to kill a very large number of animals.

I do not know how many big game animals I have shot in my life. In fact, I had lost count of that number in my early 20s.

And what I think is interesting is that the ones I have killed, that I was dissatisfied with the results, were shot with the cartridges that get more ink in the modern gun-rags then those that are old and well established. In other words, over-all, my best results have come from cartridges that are anywhere form 85 to 120 years old rather than the new improved ones. New shells that were supposed to be the improvements on the old-school cartridges were the ones I have had the bad results with.

This is NOT to say that the new is bad. I have not had that many failures with the new stuff ether, but far more than with the old ones.

Of the old ones, the 270 Winchester and the 300 H&H are the 2 I have used that are "fast" and yet still old. I learned early on that such shells need bullets that hold together if you want to avoid disappointments. Actually I think ALL do, but finding such bullet that work well starting out in the 2200 to 2700 FPS range is a lot easier then fining those that work well started at 3000-3400 FPS. The expanding solids of today (Barnes X and their copies) solved the problem to a large degree with the super fast magnums.

In my 1/2 century of hunting the kills I have made that were not what I wanted ( Note: these are kills. I only ever lost 2 head of game that I shot in my life, both mule deer)were mostly shot with modern magnums, vintage of the 1960s and later. I did recover all of them. But the ones that I saw a lot of room for improvements with were those that had bad bullet performance. These animals were recovered because of good marksmanship. There were a few that had both bullet failures and a long follow up, even when hit exactly where I wanted to hit them, 2 of which were followed over 1/4 mile, one of which was followed for a full mile.

I just read a report of a deer killed about 5 minutes ago. The hunter said "superb bullet performance" with a very bad bullet. He said the bullet totally came apart, and the jacket was found under the skin. This was with a Burger bullet. He had to follow up a nice deer hit with a 7-08.
I guess his logic is that the dear was dead, so the bullet was "Superb". I disagree with this way of judging bullet performance. From that line of logic cancer, CWD and old age are even better.

But back to the post:
I have been loading my own ammo since I was 12 years old. I and my dad and uncle hunted together for a few years before that, going back with me about 4 years. They started teaching me to hunt when I was in 2nd grade if memory serves me correctly.

By shooting 1960s made Winchester Silver-Tips and Remington Bronze Points, I learned that bullets that come apart are not the best for dependable kills. This was learned in 300 Savage, 30-06 and later my 270 Winchester.

MY dad sold the 300 Savage when I was 12 and the "family rifle" was then the 270. We killed everything with it for years. Not just game but ranch and farm animals too.

In all the years I have hunted, in thinking back, I can say I never lost one animal I shot with a 270. In all those animals I can also say I can remember exactly one I (thought I) had to shoot 2 times. ( Only 2 seasons ago I killed my elk with 2 shots and the 2nd one was probably not needed, but I didn't know it when I fired it.) All the others were 1 shot kills. Those I hit with bullets that came apart were still killed, but I did learn that a good bullet kills well and penetrates at the angle I want it to.

The longest tracking jobs I have ever done on game that I personally shot were shot with 7MM Mags and 300 mags, and one with a 338 mag. None of these make me think that anything was wrong with the shells, but that I used the wrong bullets. The 338 surprised me. It was a smallish deer killed when hunting elk with a 250 grain Hornady Round Nose. The deer went about 500 yards after being hit at the rear of the lungs and the exit was about 2" around, but the deer didn't seem to notice it for several hundred yards.

The so-so performance I got when I shot with the 300s and the 7mm Mags were all just because bullets came apart and didn't penetrate well, or penetrate straight. I can't say a 300 Win Mag, 308 Norma Mag or 7MM Rem Mag are not enough gun for deer or antelope, but the projectiles were not good enough for those fast magnum. Those same bullets seemed to do just fine in my 308 Winchester, 30-40 Krag and in my 7X57.

So I think a list of "shots fired to kills made with various cartridges" is not really going to teach us much, even if one could be made.

The bullets are the working part of the cartridge, not the brass powder bottles.

Edited by szihn (22/12/17 05:04 AM)

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