Best All Around Caliber for Plains Game

[Safari Dave]

When I finally go, I'm bringing a .338 win mag for everything that it's legal for.

With a .338 Win. Mag or a .340 Weatherby Mag., at least, you don't have to worry about the bullets in rifle.

The most inexpensive factory load of "cup & core" bullets will, cleanly, take any PG.

Kudos, to you for not wanting to try to take an eland with a .243, arrow, pistol, or blowgun!

 

[CZDiesel]

I think the OP is probably right? A 7mm is hard to beat but 30-06/300 Mag is probably best?
I personally went with a 300 H&H

 

[Safari Dave]

IMO -

The .300 Weatherby Magnum is the best .30 caliber ever devised. Roy Weatherby developed it in 1944.

Winchester developed the .300 Winchester Magnum in 1963.

Remington came along several years later with the .300 RUM.

Then, Weatherby came along again, with the .300-.378 Weatherby, which blew all all them "out of the water.," in 1996.

Yet, all the military "brass" stopped on the .300 Winchester Magnum. Even though the .300 Weatherby was superior in almost every way (and even pre-dated the Winchester by at least 19 years).

 

[Safari Dave]

So, 81 years ago, the U.S. had a superior sniper cartridge, but we just didn't want to use it for some unexplainable reason???

 

[Borderer]

I keep thinking an 8x64S would be the best all round solution.

Would be a pain if your ammunition went missing though and I am not convinced it would offer a lot more than a 30-06. Some articles suggest it does, others don’t.

 

[Philip Glass]

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.

Ditto everything you said!

 

[.300RUM]

On the group hunt I was with, one fella was using .308. The largest game he was after was Wildebeest, in witch he took a nice blue and a stunning golden, both were one shot drops and in that 125 to 150 yard distance. I don't remember if he was using 150 or 168 grain, but it was Barnes solid copper bullets.

 

[Creigh]

The 30-06 with a 200-gr bullet surprised me last year. The year previous to that we used 180-gr and below and the 200-gr was a visibly hitting harder. Some of the animals went straight down, not something we were used to with heart lung shots. There's a medium game guide book here somewhere that recommends 200-gr for the 30-06 so we used it. Substantial bullet drop at 300m, we never shot anything beyond 120m because of the bush. 200-gr Bullet from a 30-06 at 300m isn't really a good balanced outcome in any direction imo. That would disqualify it for me.

There are a handful of choices around the 7, 8, 9 mm range, i suspect the 300 wm is the one. I use a 250-gr in a 375 H&H because things here fight back. Like someone else mentioned, I've been recommended to investigate the wsm as an alternative. You might find the die hards fighting about the wm and the wsm in the same way guys argue about the 458 wm and the lott.

All the best, good hunting.

 

[Green Chile]

For PG, I feel the 300 win mag and 180 TSX or TTSX has been very successful for me on a range of PG. I prefer a heavier caliber for eland but in a pinch, I could make the .300 work there too...not ideal but it can do it. Of course, it's heavy for T10 but stay behind the shoulder and you can make that work too. For me, the .300 is very good and I have one around or a 7x57 or .375 on every hunt.

 

[One Day...]

Only one, close & far, big & small...

I too vote for a .300 Mag.

Whether it be the Winchester (the most common?), the Holland & Holland (the oldest?), the Weatherby (the best?), the Remington Ultra (the next to be discontinued?), the PRC or Norma (the latest fashions of the day?), the Remington SAUM or Winchester WSM (why do they even exist?), the 30-378 Wby (too much of a good thing?), etc. etc. is today (emphasis: today) somewhat irrelevant.

In the days not so long ago when laser range finders did not exist, and BDC turrets were crude and only seen on 7.65x51 (.308) military rifles, and the choice was only between the H&H, the Win and the Wby, the .300 Weatherby was king because it shot flatter and had a longer MPBR (maximum point blank range).

There is no question that there are a lot more .300 Win than .300 Wby out there, but there is also no question that the .300 Wby still offers superior performance.

As to the others, if you can find commercial ammo for them at your local store, today AND in 3 years, they do not offer much, if anything, over the Wby.

TTSX, yes, but not 180 gr...

The addiction for the 180 gr bullet is a vestige of the past when cup & core bullets blew up to pieces, and it was better to start heavy (200 gr was common too) in order to retain fragments heavy enough to penetrate.

Even the Nosler Partition, the first "modern" premium bullet, lost its front core (ALTHOUGH IT MUST BE NOTED THAT IT WAS BY DESIGN) and penetrated deeply only with its rear core which typically weighs ~60% of the bullet, after the front core shredded the lungs in the typical behind-the-shoulder-double-lung shot. Not a bad concept...

But the times, they are "achangin", and that disappearing front core bothered some folks who forgot that in the process of disappearing, it was also 'grenading' the lungs. Admittedly, this worked in Europe and America where folks sensibly shoot in the vital area to kill, but it was not ideal in Africa where folks, out of reverence for the 1900's literature, shoot to break shoulder bones.

Therefore, the TTSX operates differently and retains ~95% weight (and Swift built a business on bonding John Nosler's front core).

As a consequence, where a 180 gr Nosler Partition (NP) -- which killed very well for over 40 years from 1946 to the 1989 introduction of the Barnes X, and continues to kill very well, thank you very much for asking... -- penetrated with 180 gr x 60% = ~108 gr; a 165 gr TTSX penetrates with 165 gr x 95% = 156 gr.

Which means that if ~100 gr at appropriate speed remaining from a 180 gr NP was the benchmark for a .30 bullet deep penetration, then ~150 gr at the same speed remaining from a 165 gr TTSX ought to be plenty enough, right?

I know a few folks who push the logic to its logical end and shoot 150 gr or even 130 gr TTSX in their .300, with perfectly good result I must add.

I personally find the TTSX 165 gr just as deadly as the 180 gr TTSX on any PG.

But what about a 100 gr TTSX from a .257 Wby ?

While a 165 gr TTSX launched from a .300 Wby (or Win) will punch right through, in & out, any PG that lives (except Eland, for which .338/.340 or .375 medicine really makes sense), it must also be observed that so will a 100 gr TTSX from a .257 Wby.

My own experience in Africa with Roy's favorite goes from Duiker to Sable, and while it does not number several hundred animals (yet?), it now certainly numbers several dozen, and I have yet to recover a 100 gr .257 TTSX.

True, I do not shoot to break the shoulder (most animals can run perfectly well on 2 rear and 1 front leg), I shoot to collapse booth lungs and wreck the heart (no mammal can go more than a few seconds with a brain deprived of oxygenated blood) so a 100 gr .257 TTSX does the work just as effectively (more effectively because of blistering speed?) than a 165 gr .300 TTSX and it is SO easy to shoot with surgical precision due to about half the recoil.

I still bring a .300 Wby Blaser R8 barrel to Africa, and I bolt it on for difficult Kudu trophy hunts in the Karoo, just to have an edge if the only shot is either far, or quartering, but I now do 90% of my PG hunting with the .257 Wby barrel.....................

 

[Green Chile]

I have a 257 Wby R8 barrel, partly due to influence of Ross Seyfried and partly due to our @One Day...and I look forward to trying it out. I have no reason to doubt their experiences. Hopefully, I don't cut the little guys in half!

 

[Andrew62]

I am a big fan of using a rifle that if I show up in Africa and my ammo does not show up, which has happened to me 2x, I can easily find ammo for my gun.

 

[Jack Stevens]

Just offering some thoughts ...

Best "All-Around" Plains Game Caliber.

One way to look at this question is from a historical perspective, which asks what cartridges and loads were deemed the most successful on African PG in the pre-WW2 period (roughly 1918-1940). Then look for what modern analogues exist.

If you read the classic accounts of African hunting (e.g., "Pondoro" Taylor and others), the most popular cartridges for PG early on were the .318 Westly-Richards and Rigby's .350 Magnum. Holland's .375 came later as its answer to the Rigby .350.

The .318WR sent a 250grn bullet of .330" diameter @ or near 2400fps. It was accurate and felt-recoil was deemed mild even in light-weight rifles.

The .350 Rigby Magnum launched a true .358" dia bullet of 225grns at a claimed m.v. of 2600fps although that was never matched in the field. Real-world velocity of the 225grn load was more in the low-to-mid 2500fps range - variously stated as 2520-2550fps. A 250grn load was developed later, sending a SP bullet in a similar m.v. range circa 2550fps.

The Rigby .350, in particular, was favored for PG by famous old-school African hunters such as Denys Finch Hatton, Peter Pearson, Baron Bror Von Blixen, and of course, Taylor.

The .375H&H really needs no detailed review of suitable loads or of its historical field performance on African PG. If that's the rifle you're taking, just pick a tried-n-true load for the species you intend to hunt, dial it in, and have at it.

For a modern American analogue cartridge to the .318WR, the .338WM obviously comes to mind. Solid loads exist using 225grn and 250grn premium bullets and would basically duplicate the .318WR's performance on non-dangerous PG.

Two older American analogues exist for the .350 Rigby: the .350 Remington Magnum (the world's first Short Magnum) and the .35 Whelen, also known as the "Poor Man's Magnum." Either would be highly effective on PG; the real difference is in the size and weight of the package.

.35W rifles are built on long actions (.30-06 length), whereas the first Remington .350 RM rifles were built on short-action carbines weight 6lbs with 18.5" barrels (the model 600s). Afterwards, using the same short-action, Remington built 7lb, 20" rifles (the model 660s). Ruger once chambered the .350RM in its long action M77 rifle.

More recently, Lipsey's marketed a Ruger African rifle chambered in .35 Whelen.

Regardless of the package, either of these .35-cal cartridges has proven capable of taking down The Big Stuff, ranging from feisty moose to the huge AK bruins. So there's no doubt either could match the record of Rigby's 350 on African PG.

The .350RM can push 250grn bullets into the 2450fps range generally and, with some powders, at circa 2500fps, and that's out of a 2.800" short-action and 20" tube. In the long-action Ruger 350RM with 22" barrel, where you can long-load bullets, you can get higher velocities. (See Ken Water's chapter on the .350 Rem Mag in his tome, Pet Loads).

The Whelen's real advantage, again due to its COAL and a long-action rifle, is the ability to shoot the heavier 300grn/310grn thumpers if you need to go that heavy.

But then a typical wood-stocked .35W rifle, with scope, mounts, and sling, is running north of 9lbs unloaded. The unloaded weight of my 20" model 660 - decked out with scope, sling, stockpack - is just touching 7.9lbs. (Obligatory pic attached).

So, loaded with premium 250grn bullets, in an easily carried package, my M600 would be my choice for hunting African PG. (I'm sure my custom .375 H&H BRNO 602 would be jealous ) .

M600 in .350 Rem Mag