Interested to hear what your one calibre and load would be for a do it all and what rifle .
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Interested to hear what your one calibre and load would be for a do it all and what rifle .
I'm going to assume your only referring to NZ, so I would go for a 284 or 280 pushing a 162 eldm.
Yup Nz I hunt Canterbury and do multi day trips covering every terrain you can think of currently have a 7rem with a 26 inch barrel but I’m over it being heavy and getting snagged on everything! I have been tempted to leave it in the thick shit a few times . Having a long heavy contour barrel and hurling the 180s very accurately I am reluctant to cut it down as it is doing what it was designed for very well
30 06 easily obtainable factory ammo, easy to load heavy slippy BC pills for streatching the legs or download lighter pills for reduced recoil.
cheap plentiful components = easy to feed
Not quiet a Magnum but with the right hand loads it's knocking on the door and plenty for any NZ game out to 600y with the right load, in the right hands.
243 and either 100 grain Hornady BTSP, or 85 grain Hornady Interbond.
223 62gr sp 25.5gr 2206H will kill everything from small game to big stuff if close enough and cheap to run
#1 choice.270w fed a good 130grn suppressed. overkill for wallabies and rabbits but it works for anything.
#2 choice love the 223 with 50-55grn softpoints but big animal out past 150 yards the .270 just does it a whole lot bettter/quicker/more humanely.
Any of the 6.5 cal as they will do everything.
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308.
you can do anything from 240gr subs to .......oh wait sabot ammo is now banned......anyways the 42gr jhp 22 cal projectiles went out near 5000 fps.
anyways nothing you can hit and humanely kill with a 308
I'm with the 6mm (ideally modern fast twist) or 6.5 crew . . .
6.5x55 in a modern action and handloads
Tempted by the .223 with a heavy bullet, but would actually settle for a 7-08 with a docked barrel (18-20") shooting 120 grn NBT @ 3K.
Have had a couple. Last one was a tricked Sako A7 and was near faultless.
For about the same fuss you got a margin over the .243 and the 120NBT is a brilliant bullet. Ive got 150 of them waiting for the next 7-08 :)
So we have votes for 223 to 3006. Seems to me to be a case of (excuse the pun) choose your poison.
6.5prc or 7saum
Happy with either for 1 gun to do it all in NZ
Fixed it. Sorry, pet peave of mine!Quote:
Originally Posted by Younghunter123
308 Winchester for me. Can load from 125 to 180 grains, rifles tend to not be fussy and plentiful ammo and components. If I can only have one load Id go 165gr. Slippery enough for longer shots and heavy enough to make everything very dead.
270. 90g hollow points for rabbits, hares, wallaby.
100 or 110g soft point for goats, fallow etc and 130 to 160g for deer and tahr.
I was giving this one a lot of thought - this from Rumpy hits it on the nail - yup thats me toQuote:
Originally Posted by RUMPY
Before covid, a 300 wsm with 165 cheapy, now nothing is cheap or obtainable.
ah yes..but you have to pick only ONE load........ I agree 100% by the way LOLQuote:
Originally Posted by RUMPY
Decide that you want to replace that long 7mmRM. Do away with scrub grabbing and aching biceps yet keep that long range big tahr capability ?
The rifle is as important as the cartridge. Action only as big as it needs ( rule out tikka) , short barrel, decide if youre going to do without a suppressor cos then you can have an extra couple of inches of barrel ; light scope with both low and high power.
Sako 85 SS in 300 WSM with VX5 3-15 metric clicks heavy duplex. ZL
https://media.sako.global/image/uplo...ess_oidj9u.pdf
I suppose it depends on where you live and what you're planning to shoot
.308 with 150gr SP
12 GA shotgun with shot , buckshot , and solids
From purely survival/subsistence…22 lr
This isn’t a “ one size fits all “ scenario.
For my current situation and requirements…………. 223 is the one that ticks the boxes.
My Big Game ( large Deer etc ) opportunities most of the time are limited so that has a bearing on my choice.
If my usual quarry was large animals then I’d move up to the 6.5 cal ( doesn’t matter what flavour) and be very confident of the outcome.
I would have picked the 308 as ammo is easy to obtain and it comes in a very wide grainage option to cover a variety of game size, but one area that it does fall a bit short is it's long range capability. So with that in mind I will go for the 30-06.
go one better 6.5 06
Dosnt have the knock down of a 30cal though eh.
And can you buy that off the shelf?
I reckon a .25 calibre would be enough, a 257 Robert's with a 22 inch barrel, 2-10 lightweight scope and a premium 100 grain bullet would deal to everything; if you had a choice of bullet anything from 60 to130 grain are available nowadays for the 25 calibre.
Maybe a 303 would manage
It used to do it all
After the other recent thread on here re. cartridge overlaps, I reckon it comes down to .270 win or 30-06. My personal preference is .270 for faster / flatter, but for projectile options (especially at the heavier end) the 30-06 has a slight advantage. In saying that, there’s not much in NZ you can’t hunt comfortably with a .270
This is really a click bait post isnt it ?
What on earth will chat GPT make of it ?
The lads have rogered the content good and proper.
well for mer the mighty no4mk1 1943 longbranch .303 with 18ogn soft nose round nose slug.now she may be slow ,but hell goes through trees and aint seen one yet who played wicketkeeper survive the delivery.must admit though tad rough on smaller stuff ,turned a hare into 99%compost leaving one back foot and a piece of ligament.cousin used it on a possum,having forgotten to bring the ammo for his old mans .270-yeah well skinnin the aussie bastrd was out of the question after that.MD-a bit like the other you problem solved with the .270
For a given cartridge, you get the most kinetic energy with the biggest bore. Overbore variants like the 25-06 and even the 6.5 Cr strangle themselves and compromise on brute power. Also if you compare KE across bullet weights in the same cartridge it seems to be more power at the lighter bullets. Booth somewhat untrendy trends this year.Quote:
Originally Posted by Allizdog
308 of course ;)
For me this would be either a 7mm08 or 284win, 20 inch barrel, supressor and a lightweight/compact dialup scope in a carbon stock. Load would be a 162gr ELD-M. Result a light, handy rifle that you can hunt bush-tops.Quote:
Originally Posted by Younghunter123
For about a year in my early 20s I only had a 270 to shoot.
I had sold my 22 and 303 to put a deposit on an Anschutz 22 and then had to wait nearly a year for it to arrive
My friends though it was nuts using the 270 for everything.
But I was a reloader and it was a very accurate rifle.
Pre ballistic charts
Pre range finder
Pre dial up scopes
Pre massive magnification
I had a hunting dog to feed and it was fine on hares and rabbits as long as you only took head shots.
So not much real progress in 40 years then
Slightly different approach but if I was you focus on the rifle.
Look around, go into a gun shop and handle some rifle. Get an idea of what you would like and what fits you. Once you have that sudsed then calibre sorts itself. You may end up with 2-8 calibre choices and reality is they all kill animals! I’m closer to 60 than I want to be and I’ve hunted since I was 14, killed first 6 animals with open sight .303 (my son used same rifle recently to kill a deer) Then I was onto 6.5x55, .243, .308, 7mm/08, and now I have (2) 6.5 CM - one 16inch suppressed and one 22inch.
One of life’s true joys is buying a new rifle, a new scope - calibre? No idea but whatever suits the hunting you are doing the most of. Buy two rifles if you want to shoot rabbits and deer.
First up I’d say 308 Win. With 150 gr projectiles, have shot everything from mice upwards with this combo. Have to say 223 Rem with 55/62 gr projectiles comes second for me, only Fiordland Wapiti to complete the list with this combo. Has to be said, frig-all margin for error with some of the bigger species.
Yeah a lot of different cartridges to suit different peoples needs wasn’t a question for my search purposes was just interested to hear what others options would be as for many it is a hard question to answer when you know you have to miss out on all the good offerings
308 with 18in barrel.Hornady 150gr ssts or cheap 147gr for small game.