7 Rem Mag for African plains game

sgt_zim said:

If the jackets are thin, it means especially no shoulder shots from close distances. At the range VLDH 175 is the most accurate out of my 308. I wouldn't even use them for white tails or pigs, though. Yotes, definitely.

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I could never understand shoulder shots. An animal can run in to the next county on three legs. I ALWAYS go for a lung shot. They can't run if they can't breathe. I have to beat it in to my hunting friends heads. DON'T GO FOR THE SHOULDER, SHOOT THE FKN LUNGS! In the last two years they've lost two white tails going for the shoulder shots. Oh, and the Bergers will kill them even if you hit them in the ass. They dump ALL of their energy inside the animal, not in the dirt behind it. Their HVLDs and hybrids is all I ever use and I have NEVER lost an animal nor had to take a second shot with them and that's 100 to 700 yards, plains game.

Hogpatrol said:

I could never understand shoulder shots. An animal can run in to the next county on three legs. I ALWAYS go for a lung shot. They can't run if they can't breathe. I have to beat it in to my hunting friends heads. DON'T GO FOR THE SHOULDER, SHOOT THE FKN LUNGS! In the last two years they've lost two white tails going for the shoulder shots. Oh, and the Bergers will kill them even if you hit them in the ass. They dump ALL of their energy inside the animal, not in the dirt behind it. Their HVLDs and hybrids is all I ever use and I have NEVER lost an animal nor had to take a second shot with them and that's 100 to 700 yards, plains game.

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The only deer I was able to pull the trigger on this season was with my 45-70 and wide meplat 405 gr out of my 45-70 from maybe 40 yards. I put it just behind the shoulder for a double-lunger. He managed to run off into one of the deepest, darkest, thorniest thickets on the 2000 or so acres we hunt. It was not more than 100 yards from the little rye patch where I shot him to where he ran, and probably not even 75 yards. That was a tough hour following the blood trail and dragging him back out. I don't know how he managed to get in there, but it took a machete for my brother-in-law and me to drag him out.

On a shot where impact velocity is no more than about 2400-2500 fps, VLDH and ELD-X aren't a problem in my mind. But I do not care for the idea of 2800 fps MV and a 40 yard shot with either of those bullets, and especially not on animals a bit tougher than white tails.

hog,
first apologies for my last pot.
not sure why, but it did not downlod in entirety.
first i have not gone to africa, so have never shot plains game.
however i have shot numbers of australian game and had the opportunity to study killing effect and wounds with different bullets at different velocities and calibres.
i have used sierra, speer, hornady, riverbrand, woodleigh, berger, swift, kynoch, barnes, norma, and other bullets from rabbits to cattle and camels.
it was with the 7mag that i learned the advantages in terminal ballistics of certain bullet designs and weights over others, on donkeys, and have never looked back from then.
the trouble with killing animals is that rarely are 2 shots the same, range, angle, size of animal, mental state of animal, and so many other factors, including how full that animal is with food and or water.
when i started hunting, we were told by the gun writers that we needed a bullet to go into the chest and blow up.
this can work well, but the bullet that will do this side on cannot by definition also do it on a raking shot or a shoulder shot or a texas heart shot.
here is where bergers limit shots.
they have no controlled expansion, and in fact rely on that to dump massive energy instantly.
when this works it can be absolutely impressive, but you have to understand the bullet and only fire the shot where that will work.
when they blow, they blow very suddenly.
and sometimes they fail to open at all, just pencilling through.
at close range they blow very easily, and at longer range/lower velocity they blow less.
when i shoot fclass, berger is the bullet of choice mostly.
they have high b.c. and are accurate.
when i hunt i use a bullet more appropriate for that job., because terminal ballistics come into priority.
bruce.

My suggestion 7 x57 or 9,3 x 62.
solood luck.

hog,
i have always found the shoulder shot to be seriously effective.
especially if the animal is quartering towards me.
probably a bullet thing.
bruce.

@bruce moulds No apologies necessary. I've heard too many hunters and PHs, badmouth Bergers while having no experience with them. They only repeat what they've read or they look at the bullet and make a determination before seeing it in action. Agree on all you points, every shot is different and a broadside is optimum for the Bergers. No qualms with other bullets, certainly we agree it' all about shot placement. As far as the odd angle and quartering shots, I aim for the opposite leg with any bullet. That geometry usually works even with the Bergers. Aside that, have you used the thicker jacket target bullets? I have yet to try them but they should work better at close range.

sgt_zim said:

The only deer I was able to pull the trigger on this season was with my 45-70 and wide meplat 405 gr out of my 45-70 from maybe 40 yards. I put it just behind the shoulder for a double-lunger. He managed to run off into one of the deepest, darkest, thorniest thickets on the 2000 or so acres we hunt. It was not more than 100 yards from the little rye patch where I shot him to where he ran, and probably not even 75 yards. That was a tough hour following the blood trail and dragging him back out. I don't know how he managed to get in there, but it took a machete for my brother-in-law and me to drag him out.

On a shot where impact velocity is no more than about 2400-2500 fps, VLDH and ELD-X aren't a problem in my mind. But I do not care for the idea of 2800 fps MV and a 40 yard shot with either of those bullets, and especially not on animals a bit tougher than white tails.

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You would think that big slug would hammer him to the ground but he was one of those tough SOBs and decided you were going to get yours. Some are like that, shot through the heart and still run a hundred yards. Sorry to hear about your escapade. I've had a few of those myself and they're usually at last light and you wind up with a headlight looking in the dark, losing your hat and getting scratched up all to hell. Like Bruce posted and I agree, every kill is a different setup on a different animal. Hope you got a decent amount of meat from him.

Oh yeah. It was at last light, sort of. It was overcast and spitting intermittent rain. Last shooting where I hunt is 1730, give or take a couple. It was dark enough at 1615 that I had decided "If I don't see anything by 1630, I'm calling it a day because I don't want to track anything in the dark." Of course, this guy and a doe walk out at 1625. First blood I found was about 10 or 15 yards away from where I shot him. After the first 20 or 30 yards, most of the blood I found was on tree trunks where he was venting. And me being 6'6" and 240-ish, it was tough going.

If you've ever read the book or seen the movie "The Hobbit," our family place could have been Mirkwood Forest.

Why I use VLDH and ELD-X in my 308 ZA rifle: That's 5 shots at 100 yards, with an off-the-shelf Savage 10 FPLC. This one happens to be with Berger 175s, but I get within a short-and-curly of the same with ELD-X 178, both just a little north of 2600 with 42.5 gr of Varget. I've got a buddy at work with a custom M700 Rem that can't do this. He probably spent 3X on his rig what I spent on mine.

Savage has been making some good rifles the last few years. Have you reached out with it?

Hey sgt_zim I have the same Savage. I put a 4x16 x44 Vortex on it.
Shooting Barns 150 factory loads to 500 yards. Took 10 animals in May 2018.
Everything from 65 to 375 yards. All 1 shot dropped with in eye sight.
Springbok was my long shot. Sable my closest.
Everything else from 150 to 250 out. I was told to bring what I shoot best.

Hogpatrol said:

Savage has been making some good rifles the last few years. Have you reached out with it?

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Just to 300. About the time I was ready for long range, I got some pretty significant pay bumps and started rebuilding my gun (all hunting) collection. Except for maybe a 275 Rigby, I pretty much have the hunting rifles and glass I want now, so time to start filling the vault with 308 ammo.

For storing what I want to store, I need 2 more 8# of varget, plus shooting. The only public range near me has 600 yard lanes. So that's as far as I'll be able to go with it. But the only difference between 600 and 1000 is holdover and more wind correction. If you can hit 600, you can hit 1000

Berger bullets in action and postmortem examination:
https://www.ballisticstudies.com/Knowledgebase/Wound+Database/7mm+-+Berger+VLD.html

7mm Rem Mag - go to the bottom of the page for VLD bullets review:
https://www.ballisticstudies.com/Knowledgebase/7mm+Remington+Magnum.html

Woody631 said:

Hey sgt_zim I have the same Savage. I put a 4x16 x44 Vortex on it.
Shooting Barns 150 factory loads to 500 yards. Took 10 animals in May 2018.
Everything from 65 to 375 yards. All 1 shot dropped with in eye sight.
Springbok was my long shot. Sable my closest.
Everything else from 150 to 250 out. I was told to bring what I shoot best.

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I have a Weaver 3.5-15x50 Tactical on mine, FFP and MOA. I know European guys and military types just love miliradians, but I can call distances pretty accurately in yards, so MOA just works better for me. At the distances where the difference between MOA and inches per hundred yards actually makes a difference, I'm right at the edge of max distance for a 308 anyway. Plus, 1/4 MOA is a finer adjustment than 0.1 mil.

When we move out west in a couple years, I'll get a 338 Lapua and top it with a NightForce

V.Veritas said:

Berger bullets in action and postmortem examination:
https://www.ballisticstudies.com/Knowledgebase/Wound+Database/7mm+-+Berger+VLD.html

7mm Rem Mag - go to the bottom of the page for VLD bullets review:
https://www.ballisticstudies.com/Knowledgebase/7mm+Remington+Magnum.html

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Yeah, that about sums it up.

sgt_zim said:

I have a Weaver 3.5-15x50 Tactical on mine, FFP and MOA. I know European guys and military types just love miliradians, but I can call distances pretty accurately in yards, so MOA just works better for me. At the distances where the difference between MOA and inches per hundred yards actually makes a difference, I'm right at the edge of max distance for a 308 anyway. Plus, 1/4 MOA is a finer adjustment than 0.1 mil.

When we move out west in a couple years, I'll get a 338 Lapua and top it with a NightForce

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Just a heads up on the NF and a suggestion to do some research. There's been serious problems on some of their high end scopes. LR, good luck can be had with the Sightrons and Vortex GE. For hunting, I prefer the NXS zero stop versions.

hog,
i have not tried the target bergers with the heavier jacket on game.
i did however take 1000 rds of 308 loaded with hornady 168 match boat tails on a goat cull and fired the lot.
they tended to pencil through the light framed animals, and luckily were 30 cal rather than say 6mm, offering a bigger hole.
they tended to blow up on hitting hard parts.
next test was 1000 of 130 gn speer hollow points hoping for better expansion.
they did not start to be good killers until out near 300 yds, as they blew up too much.
likewise the 100 gn 25 in 25/06 (one of the first batch of rem 700s to come to aust) and the same bullet in 270 win.
with conventional bullets, you need a different bullet at close range than at long range, more so in higher velocity rifles.
there are bullets that will work well at high AND lower velocities, as long as you don't go too slow.
for lighter game i now use nosler partitions.
the reason is that the front blows like a berger, but there is still some back to keep going if you hit a bone.
this is the strangth of the partition more so than as a bullet for bigger game.
they make a bigger gun more suitable for smaller game than the opposite.
if i were ever to get to africa, all things considered i would not want to limit my shots by bullet choice.
this would put swift, northfork, and barnes at the top of the list.
i have not used northfork, but concepually the look good.
bill hober from swift told me to drive his bullets hard and try to hit bone.
the barnesx has proven to take the 7mag and 7stw to another level.
swift aframes have taken yearling camels side on in the ribs and big bulls quartering on the point of the shoulder with equal aplomb in 9.3mm.
also killed goats (light) and donkeys (heavier and tough) from 280 rem and 7stw better and more consistently than any bullet.
bruce.

I have both Sightron and vortex, can’t go wrong with either. The Sightron seems to be a little more heavy duty IMHO.

TNDave said:

I have both Sightron and vortex, can’t go wrong with either. The Sightron seems to be a little more heavy duty IMHO.

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I have a Vortex 4-12x40 on my 6.5x55. Honestly, 4X is too much at low power, with not nearly enough FOV for where I hunt, and for the distances I'm going to be shooting what I hand load. It's good glass, but just too much.

Quaticman said:

What are your thoughts on using the good old 7 Rem Mag

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It will do a good job!