I literally just signed up for this site to shed some light on this subject because I see a lot of "I think" and "in my opinion". Well I'll tell you what I know. I've hunted whitetail for 18 years and black bear for 14-15. The 1st three deer took were with my uncle's rem 742 30-06. The first one I shot was a yearling at roughly 15 feet that was looking dead at me. I turned most of its organs to mush and the thing managed to run 65-70 yards! All 3 with the '06 wasted lots of meat. I saved up and had my dad buy me a secondhand marlin 30/30 after that and started hunting with that using 150 grain Winchester soft points and jacketed Hollow points. I don't remember a single deer that I've tracked with that combo. The only bear that ran on me after being hit with a 30/30 softy made it about 35 yards. Countless deer and 7 bear have fallen to that same 30/30 using the same loads with shots ranging from on top of me to 150ish. Well right when I turned 18 I bought a saiga 7.62x39 because they were still plentiful and cheap. Mainly bout it for a plinker but after I realized its accuracy I quickly decided that it was going in the woods with me. I could easily shoot 1 1/2-2 inch groups at 100 with irons so I slapped a decent scope on it and was shooting 2 inches or less at 200. That 1st season I dropped 2 whitetails between 50-100 yards and a nice boar black bear that dropped with a neck shot at 40 or so yards. Killed several hogs with it that year too. The kicker is I've only ever used 123 silver or brown bear "cheapo" Russian hollow points. No they don't explode like regular hp rounds but will mushroom and deform nicely when they hit a shoulder. I've since shot 13 deer with that rifle and 5 black bears and ranges all the way to 190 yards and felt super comfortable doing so. I wouldn't push it further than that though. 2 deer made it less than 40 yards after being shot and 2 bears went 30 or less. Everything else including the hogs I've shot with it have dropped. All with those same ol cheapo rounds. THAT'S WHAT I KNOW from firsthand experience. Deer don't require a small cannon, I can promise you that and I feel extremely comfortable taking medium sized black bears with either rifle and load and I know that it'll tear up way less meat than a .308, 30-06 or bigger. I feel like a lot of this folks will use the biggest guns possible because they aren't the best of shots and figure a .300 win mag will still knock them down with a pisspoor shot not knowing that the mule kicking calibers actually make them worse shots than before because they are flinching. Just my 2 cents on that. I've actually since bought an Ar 10 and my grandfather gave me his Winchester 70 30-06. Neither ever hit the deer or bear woods. I'll take boar with it because I'm not worried about meat wastage with them. So to wrap it up, the 7.62x39 is a great round for medium sized game out to at least 150 yards. If you don't like the thought of the Russian ammo, buy some American made "deer" loads or hand load. I would hand load but brass isn't recommended for the ak action and I run steal. There's plenty of good ones out there now since the 7.62x39 is becoming more popular. Don't let people who have never shot them and are telling you what they think sway your opinion on this load. This will be my 10th year using it along with my ballisticlly similar 30/30. Hope you decide to give this great little round a try!
Enjoyed the post and welcome to the forum. Hope to see a lot more from you in the future. A lot of folks have shot a lot of game who post here. Most of us tend not to preach what we KNOW in capital letters. The more I hunt, the less I seem to KNOW, but the more I seem to BELIEVE. There is a difference. I come from a military background, and in evaluating rounds we didn't think we KNEW very much until we had literally thousands of controlled impact observations. My more than fifty years of hunting observations tend to pale when compared to that sort of controlled evaluation.
We all have favorites that seem to work very consistently regardless of the situation. For me it's the .270 and .375. With them alone, I have taken at least a couple of hundred game animals. They always have done the job with minimum fuss and bother. I suspect that they are very nearly ideal in their respective environments. But I know that others could make the same case for the '06, the 30-30, the .300 (in several forms) etc, etc. I personally also truly love the milder 6.5's (Schounauer and Mauser) and the grand old WR .318. But those are merely calibers that I know work - for me - under the conditions in which they were employed.
My only criticism of the Russian round is that it is indeed essentially a 30/30 (which made the old 47 a pretty awful main battle rifle despite its mythology). For the deer hunting I do, I could manage about 75% of my opportunities with a caliber like that. However, I occasionally have to take that 200 yard + shot, or more likely, have to thread a bullet through a very small opening. Faster, flatter trajectory is a hunt saver in those instances. For bear, and I have hunted them as well, I am a 9.3 fan, but plenty of other calibers work. The 30/30 and the AK will as well. But in my experience, not nearly as well as many other choices - particularly a 9.3. I should note most of my bear hunting has been spot and stalk, where a bit of reach can be very important.
Lastly, except at the velocity extremes, meat damage is - again, in my experience - much more a matter of the bullet chosen than the caliber. I have taken reed buck (about the size of a southern whitetail) with 300 gr TSX's from a .375 and damage was quite minimal. I have seen whitetail shot with fragile 130 gr bullets that were severely damaged and others taken by the same rifle using stout 150's that showed little meat loss at all.
If you like the 7.62x39, then by all means use it. Employing it effectively with its obvious limitations requires skill and commitment. I personally, based upon my experiences, simply have little use for it.
