I am planning on heading to Africa for the first time for a plains game hunt, no dangerous game in the near future. I have experience shooting a 300 win mag in a very light rifle so the recoil of the the big 30s with a suppressor won't be an issue for me. Of course this is a great excuse to buy a new rifle, and I have narrowed my cartridge choices to 7mm PRC or 300 PRC. I ended up on those 2 choice for the modern case design and the ability to shoot long, heavy for caliber bullets. I am looking at mostly bonded or all copper bullets for their penetration. I am hoping to get some insight from everyone here on which one might be better for all of the plains game I might encounter up to Eland.
Morning Archer,
I took plains game in Namibia with my 300 PRC and Barnes 208 gr LRX. Oryx, springbok, impala, baboon, blesbuck, blue wildebeest, jackal and Eland. One shot kills on wildebeest, baboon, springbok, impala and jackal. Good performance on all game. I don’t have any experience with the 7 PRC. My eland was killed cleanly and the first shot was through the vitals, but following the instructions of my PH I continued to fire until he was down. He received a total of 4 hits and none exited. There was visible reaction to the first shot and he began painfully trotting in a loop. IMO, I wouldn’t want to go any smaller for an eland and would be quite happy to go larger. For me, everything a 300 WM will do, a 300 PRC will do better. However, where the PRC outshines the WM is past 400 yds which really isn’t applicable for African hunting. In other words, for hunting there is no significant difference.
I have since purchased a Blaser R8 with 300 WM and 375 H&H barrels. It will be my travelling rifle going forward. I have 200 gr terminal ascent for the WM and tsx for the 375 though I would like some a-frames if I could find any. I love my 300 PRC and if I could have bought my Blaser in that cartridge I would have, but the advantages for traveling are real with the older, more common cartridges.
My 2 cents, re 7 PRC vs 300 PRC is to go with the 30 cal for plains game including eland. I think the heavier bullets in the 7 mag make it more effective on larger game, but I don’t believe it is the equal of 180 gr and heavier bullets in 30 cal. At the ranges commonly hunted in Africa, the 300 WM and 300 PRC (and even the 30-06) will have similar terminal performance on game with the same bullets IMO. Buy the rifle you like the best, but a 300 PRC will work well and ammo availability is less of an issue than it used to be. Those who say that a 300 WM or 30-06 have proven performance for decades and ammo available in most camps are also correct.
