Love to know what everyone else thinks but... I have hunted a lot, globally, and I am not into gimmick calibers, wildcats, and I am not a fan of shooting everything on the planet with a 6.5 Needmoor... in all of my hunting experience I found that I could take just about everything in terms of plains game with a .300 Winchester Magnum.
My resume includes taking over 300 big game animals with the .300 Winchester Magnum and a 180 Gr Barnes TTSX bullet... Including some of Alaska's biggest bears.
And in Africa I was incredibly impressed with how my combination of rifle and ammo worked... The reasons I liked this caliber/bullet the best:
#1. The 180 Gr Barnes bullets don't damage trophies... in Africa all of the plains game are relatively thin skinned animals compared to bears. And lets face it, those hunts are trophy collection trips and the trophies and taxidermy are important. And the guys who shot animals with more frangible bullets had big holes in their hides. Some capes were ruined. I had no ruined capes, those Barnes bullets don't fragment, expand to 3x diameter inside 3-4" of soft tissue, and exit with a clean hole. I liked this very much... plus the animals died quickly.
#2. With bigger animals that I wanted to anchor, I was able to break one, if not both shoulders, if needed. The 100% weight retention on almost every bullet I have ever fired is incredibly consistent, when I can recover a bullet. And animals dropped when both shoulders were pinned.
#3. And they are damn accurate. I have shot this caliber/bullet a lot... most of our .300 Win Mag rifle packages go out with these bullets in the rifle (not all, but a lot) and these are 1/2 minute rifles. Depending on barrel length, etc... the round goes out an average muzzle velocity of between 2925-3000 fps, they generate a good amount of energy.
I know not everyone will agree... but I wanted to give my two cents, and want to hear what everyone else likes to shoot for plains game animals in Africa.
My resume includes taking over 300 big game animals with the .300 Winchester Magnum and a 180 Gr Barnes TTSX bullet... Including some of Alaska's biggest bears.
And in Africa I was incredibly impressed with how my combination of rifle and ammo worked... The reasons I liked this caliber/bullet the best:
#1. The 180 Gr Barnes bullets don't damage trophies... in Africa all of the plains game are relatively thin skinned animals compared to bears. And lets face it, those hunts are trophy collection trips and the trophies and taxidermy are important. And the guys who shot animals with more frangible bullets had big holes in their hides. Some capes were ruined. I had no ruined capes, those Barnes bullets don't fragment, expand to 3x diameter inside 3-4" of soft tissue, and exit with a clean hole. I liked this very much... plus the animals died quickly.
#2. With bigger animals that I wanted to anchor, I was able to break one, if not both shoulders, if needed. The 100% weight retention on almost every bullet I have ever fired is incredibly consistent, when I can recover a bullet. And animals dropped when both shoulders were pinned.
#3. And they are damn accurate. I have shot this caliber/bullet a lot... most of our .300 Win Mag rifle packages go out with these bullets in the rifle (not all, but a lot) and these are 1/2 minute rifles. Depending on barrel length, etc... the round goes out an average muzzle velocity of between 2925-3000 fps, they generate a good amount of energy.
I know not everyone will agree... but I wanted to give my two cents, and want to hear what everyone else likes to shoot for plains game animals in Africa.
