Hi, as i said above, which hunting rigs do you use for your hunting? what optic is mounted on them?

I use .308 for everything medium to big size. i bought a really nice bergara b14 hunter in .308 with a Kahles 4-12x40 on it and i use ot for roe deer, red deer, chamois and wild hogs.  I basically have only one hunting rifled rifle, zeroed with one cartridge at 200 meters, for all these animals. I found a cartridge that i really like and i standardized with it. The cartridge i fell in love with is geco 170 grains SP: it's affordable, accurate and has good terminal ballistic. Of course, being a quite heavy projectile, its trajectory is not the flattest but i rarely shoot past 300 meters and i shoot at this distance only when the conditions are good and i know the distance to the target. Hunting small games with rifled guns is illegal in Italy but if i could i'd use my CZ 452 hb or my Chiappa little badger, both in .22 lr. I don't hunt birds anymore, i used a 12 gauge for that. I use my Franchi affinity 12 gauge for pigs when i need a semiauto for moving targets inside 50 meters.

As far as telemeters/binoculars/spotting scopes? do you have any? if yes, expand!

thank you guys, stay safe.

.308 will do everything ask of it.

My Win mod 70 Alaskan 300 WM is my “out west gun”, topped with a 4x12 Zeiss conquest.  I’ve used Barnes 180 grain vor-tx from black tail deer up to elk.  I like that copper allows me to hunt in many leaf free areas.
Pic with an old leupold vx3 on it.
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My “back east” deer guns are a tikka 243 and a Winchester mod 70 featherweight in 30-06, both with Leupold 3x9.  I use the 243 more for coyotes than deer.

My slug gun is an old rem 870 wing master with iron sights, here in America there are many areas restricted to shotgun only.
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My shotguns for fowling span are mostly lower end Beretta 686 SP’s and Browning 725’s.  I shoot mostly 20 ga but will use a 12 ga on the odd occasion.
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My favorite is a 357 mag revolver.
Easy to carry!

If I take a rifle and I'm hunting thick cover, I like the Winchester model 94 with a 4 power scope.

If I'm hunting open ground, I like Ruger M77 in 25-06 with a Leopold vari x scope.

I hunt deer.

thanks for the reply! interesting.
I have 2 questions:
1)why did you swap the leupold VXIII for the zeiss?
2) why 20 over 12 gauge?

do you hunt deer with 357 revolver? does it drop them reliably? the win 94 is a classic, i have one and love it mut i wouldn't hunt with it if i could choose, especially because i don't want to ruin it.

The Zeiss had a little better light gathering capability, a little better glass, and was a little better built in terms of ruggedness.  This is a gun I take way off the beaten path and it needs to hold zero if I take a tumble down a rock slope.

20 ga packs the same punch with lead that a 12 ga packs for upland game birds.  A 7/8’ or 1oz 20 ga load vs a 1 1/4 12 ga load has no real down range difference when it comes to a dead bird.  The only advantage to 12 ga is the ability to load hotter and heavier loads for steel shot.  But most of the areas I hunt I can use lead.  The advantage comes in weight and handling of the gun. My 20 ga’s range from 6 lbs even to 6.9 lbs.  Compare that to my lightest 12 ga at 7.1 lbs.  it doesn’t seem like much weight but it makes a huge difference getting on target when you have walked 10+ miles in a day.  Also, most entry level Browning and Beretta 12 ga receivers are very chunky, they don’t handle especially well in terms of a quick mount, you really don’t get into nice handling fowling 12 ga over unders until you hit the $4k mark.  A 20 ga receiver is sleek and handles like a much more expensive gun.

Ive got a pair of Sako A7's in 308. Both with Swarovski's on them.

Ive taken deer, mnt goat, boar, elk and bear with my 308, Im in for the long haul at this point.

I’ve harvested many, many dozens of whitetails, mule deer & pronghorn antelope using a Rem 700 Mountain Rifle in .280 Remington, so that’s my “go to” hunting rifle for several decades, using Nosler 140 Gr Ballistic Tip & IMR 4350. I’ve had great results with it.

But I’ve taken several whitetails & mulies with a .41 mag S&W revolver and a small 6 pt whitetail buck at close range with a 10mm Colt Delta Elite thru the lungs. In recent years, a couple of medium sized bucks with a 6.5 Grendel AR. In my remaining yrs I’ll probably stay with the Grendel AR.

When they legalized straight walled centerfire below the rifle zone I built up a .50 Beowulf. Been hunting with it exclusively for 6 or 7 years now. Best whitetail brush gun I’ve ever had and I’ll never buy another box of slugs.

Prior to that, I favored fudd rifles. I like a .270 out of a M70 or an older M700.

thanks, i never tried a 20 gauge and i tought my 12 gauge was pretty light and handy. Maybe in the future i'll give 20 gauge a try.

Do you use different cartridges for the animals you listed?

interesting. Why do you prefer ballistic tips over let's say a soft point? and how the 280 compares to the 308? we don't use the 280 much in italy. Actually i never saw a rifle chambered in this caliber here.

thanks for the input. Which ammo do you use in your .50 beowulf? also, hot the .50 beowulf compares to the main hunting calibers? I don't think they sell anything in .50 beowulf here in italy. Or at least i never saw one. The great majority of medium and big game hunters here use .308, 243 win, 270 win, 30-06, 7 mm rem mag, 300 win mag or 22-250. Someimes i have seen 30-30 carbines, 44 mag autoloaders and 7.62x39 AKs or SKSs for collective hog hunt.

Yes it will. I think of it like archery... 75 yards or less.

first off, if you shoot and kill deer at 75 yards with the bow reliably, you are really a good archer.

As far as the pistol, what loads do you use? JHP, SP or FMJ? as far as i know american white tail deer weight between 70 and 150 kilos, right? so they are way bigger than a roe deer and also than fallow deer. i wouldn't be so confident to drop it with a 357 mag at 75 yards. If you hit the shoulder with a 357 pistol at that distance the projectile will reliably pass through it with enough energy left to make great lung damage? I would probably use FMJ just to ensure the right penetration but then you loose a lot of lung destruction capability. i have a 357 revolver and yes, i'd use it against almost any animal, also boars, for defense. I wouldn't rely on it for actively hunting a medium game at 75 yards, tough. I mean, i'm sure it's lethal and i'm sure there is a great chance to drop the animal with a single well placed shot, don't misunderstand me, i would just want to reduce the chance to not find or just wound the animal a little more. I am not experienced at bow hunting at all (i just shot bows for fun sometimes) but i assume that a 75 yards shot with a bow is much more dfficult than with an handgun, especially if on a rest and with a scope.

I think hunting with revolvers is really cool, you are lucky to be able to do it. Do you have a scope on your hunting .357 reolver? Which brand and model is it?

Thanks!

@OverScoped

.280 Rem is VERY similar to .270 Win.

I reload, I just like the bullet selection of .284 bullets vs .277 bullets.

Ballistic tip; I’ve had great performance thru the ribs, lungs are like Jello, due to hydrostatic shock, they rarely go more than a few steps. I’ve made several spine shots, base of neck/shoulder or base of skull/neck, they don’t take another step. If I were to use the .280 on anything larger than deer, I’d use a Partition bullet.

I also take deer with a 14” Thompson Center Contender chambered in 7-30 Waters. I use a 7mm 140 gr soft nose in it.

I like cartridges that aren’t “mainstream”; .41 mag, 7-30 Waters, .280 Rem, etc, as long as they perform well. In the 70’s I lived where there wasn’t a lot of deer, I used a .25-06 to take out a lot of coyotes.

7-30 Waters is pretty similar to 30-30, right? never heard of the .25-06

The 7-30 Waters is a 30-30 case.  Form the neck down to 7mm, straighten the case walls out a little bit, and fill out the shoulder a bit and the 30-30 case is now a 7-30 waters...

25-06...    There are a whole bunch of cases based on the 30-06.  In virtually every situation its merely a matter of reducing or increasing the neck size to accommodate a different diameter bullet.  In some cases there are differences in shoulder angle, but generally speaking most of these are pretty much similar (in a gross, general sort of way). Some are wildcats, some have become adopted as factory calibers.  

Smallest to largest:  6mm-06 (wildcat), 25-06 (factory), 6.5mm-06 (wldcat), 270 Winchester (factory), 280 Remington (factory), 280 Ackley Improved (was wildcat, recently factory), 30-06, 30-06 Ackley Improved (wld cat), 8mm-06 (wildcat), 338-06 A square (another once-wildcat now sorta factory), 35 Whelen (factory), 375 Whelen (aka 375-06, wildcat).

Basically, if you look at that list, its pretty self explanatory:  At some time, someone, somewhere, has resized a 30-06 case to take pretty much every single bullet diameter commonly made.  Some don't make a lot of sense:  There probably is someone who has tried a .22-06, but its a stupid idea.  As would be a .17-06.  Too much powder, too small a bore. But in most cases, from 25 cal to 35 cal, there is a respectable cartridge based on the 30-06 case.  

This is also very true of the shorter 308 Win case.  From .22 to .35, its been re-necked.  You get .243 Win, 6mm Rem, 260 Rem, 7mm-08, 308, 338 Federal, 358 Win.    Yes, some of these aren't technically based on the 308 Win (and instead use a 30 TC case).  Others like 22-250 and 257 are based on earlier 7x57.  After a while, tracing the lineage of a particular cartridge becomes a little bit byzantine and twisted.  If we ignore the tiny little stuff like introduction dates and truly minor differences,  one could argue that there is a whole family of cartridges based on a 308 Win-like parent case that run  .22 to 358'

I generally use the 335HP ammo that Alexander Arms sells. It’s well suited to thin skinned game like deer. It’s devastating inside of 125yds, but has significant drop after that. Shots over 80yds are pretty rare where I do the majority of my hunting so to that end it is perfect. I can say that it bloodshots far less meat that my .270 does.

wow, thanks for the explaination. I had never dug into less known calibers and i bet almost anyone of this calibers has an application where it is superior to the others in some way. The 308 is probably a great compromise. It is still powerful enough to take down most animals and is not so overpowered also for smaller games like roe deer. With the super wide selection of bullets it is really versatile i think.

nice. It seems like a great alternative to the good old 12 gauge i use for collective hunting on hogs.

For medium size game the 243 win is one sweet cartridge.  Have a beautiful Ruger Hawkeye that is eight for eight deer with four different people behind the gun.  The gun has no recoil and is a dream to shoot.

Think about a 95 or 100 gr bullet going 3,100 feet per second - very flat shooting as well.

Are Berettas easy to come by in Italy?

Stay safe!

Red

Nice, i have always been fascinated by the .243, i think it's perfect for roe deer. Berettas are very easy to find here, we have also a lot of police and military trade in guns!

Best Study of effective  game killing

Best place to get some good info.

Red

Remington first gen 700ti in 30-06.

My go-to hunting rifle is an old 700ADL .30-06 with an even older Leupold VariX-II 3-9x40. Shooting 165 grain BallisticTips (Fed. Premium load) its downed everything I've shot with it inside of 3 wobbly steps. I usually hunt open sagebrush country so I guess it's my "out west" gun but I live here and still dont know what that means. Its zeroed 3" high at 100 yards, 400 yards is a chip shot with that gun. I have confidence with it well past that range.

.243 Winchester, 7mm-08, 30-06, and .338 WM.  Leupold 2-7x33 on all of them.  Depending on if I'm hunting pronghorn, deer, or elk. The .243 is a Remington 700 ADL, the 7mm-08 is a Tikka Super Light, the 30-06 is a 700 BDL, and the .338 WM is a 700 Classic.  I've killed a few whitetails with a 1905 Mannlicher chambered in .308 with iron sights.

.30-06 HS Precision with a Leupold 3.5x10 for hunting Whitetail Deer.

Other firearms:
Benelli 12 gauge "Tactical" with ghost ring sights for Wild Turkey and Shotgun Only towns (with slugs).

Benelli 20 gauge for Ruffed Grouse.  The Benelli 20 weighs less than 6 pounds and you do a lot of walking for every shot you get to take on grouse.

I am an optics snob and mostly hunt in very thick stuff here in the Northeastern US- exit pupil (light gathering) is important as a cedar swamp is a dark place even at noon.  I rely on Zeiss 7x42BGAT binoculars for most of my hunting season, but also carry Vortex 6x32 Vipers and sometimes a spotting scope in good weather (I use a Televue TV60 scope with interchangeable lenses as a spotter).  The scope is not waterproof, so it only comes out on sunny days when I am glassing longer range areas looking for deer crossing points.  I can glass a clear cut, railroad track, or powerline cut that way and then move to where the deer are.

I sometimes handgun hunt with a Dan Wesson .44, a .500 Linebaugh or a 10mm Glock.

A .308 would serve me just as well as my .30-06.

this evening i have somethin to read. Thanks!

inter
interesting. At what ranges do you usually hunt?

your longest shot?

so you only have fixed power scopes? have you ever found that 6x or 7x is too much magnification in some circumstances?

On game a touch past 500, the dope chart taped to the stock says it drops 38" at that range and I was a bit low but still in the vitals. At random targets out in the pasture I think 700, 600 for sure.

Oops, I meant a 3.5x to 10x variable power scope.

I have only turned my scope magnification up to 6x once for a long range shot (by my standards- 420 measured yards).

I could get by with a fixed 4x scope for a vast amount of the hunting I regularly do.  We have some open shots in the Northeast, but they are pretty rare.  Most deer here are shot at less than 150 yards, and a vast majority under 100 yards.

Whitetail deer range from the tip of southern Florida and down into Mexico all the way up to mid-latitudes in Canada.  The variation of habitat is amazing and ranges everything from a cacti filled desert, to a alligator infested Louisiana Bayou, a farm in Kansas all the way to thick cedar swamps of Maine and Ontario.  There is no "typical" Whitetail range- you find them where you find them.

The trophy class bucks tend to be in the northern extremes of the whitetail range, and in places where they have phenomenal farm crops to feed on.

Moose and Elk hunting are also important game species in the US.  Moose hunting in the Northeast is done by lottery- you have a chance to get a license, but not a great chance.  Elk are out West in the Rockies and range from New Mexico up to Canada.  I have never hunted either species so I don't know squat about them.  I run into moose all the time while deer hunting, and a big bull moose is absolutely enormous.

Moose, incidentally, are delicious.

For Deer and Hog, I'm using a Weatherby Vanguard in 30.06 with a 3x9 scope and using 150gr remington core-lokt. Most shots are 250-300 yards.

The following is my hunting battery along with my favorite overall rifles!

For small game I use a Beretta A400 Xtreme Unico in 12 Gauge

For varmints I use a Savage 12 LRP in 6.5 Creedmoor which also doubles as a target gun for me

For medium/large non-dangerous game I use a Winchester Model 70 Super Grade in 7mm Remington Magnum

For more dangerous large game like moose or bear if I ever decide to go that route, a Ruger No. 1H Tropical in 416 Remington Magnum.  A real hammer of Thor for any American game animals.

If I'm hunting medium/large game in thick woods then I use my Winchester 1886 in 45-70 Govt

Most shots around here are less than 200 yards, it's thick.  I've made a few 300-400 yard shots in Wyoming.

i hunt since i was 18 and i don't understand why you would use relatively low magnifications like 6x at 300-400 yards. As long as you have a steady shooting position why wouldn't you dial up to the max magnification? i use 12x on my 4-12x pretty often when i shoot past 150 yards. I know that 6x can be enough at these distances but, if you have a 3.5-10 why you son't use 10x? i know it doesn't make the rifle more accurate but you can choose more precisely where to exactly place the shot. It can be useful if the animal is not perfectly sideways or if it is in the shadow in a very sunny day, etc.. Probably the fact that i usually shoot animals smaller than white tails (roe deer and chamois) is a factor that make me prefer a little bit more magnification but i still don't see why you shouldn't dial in a bit more. Thanks!
@Cheesebeast

i killed a boar with a A400 12 gauge, very nice handy rifle. the 416 seems ti be a beast, i saw a video of it.

Howdy ssimo, I like the greater field of view with lower magnifications as most of time I am hunting in thick forested areas where shots often come quickly (or not at all).  I never know when the deer will pop out into view, and leaving the scope at 4x gives me some frame of reference as to the distance the deer is at.  I sight my rifle in to maximum point blank range (the bullet will strike at the top of the vital area on a deer at close range, at the bottom of the vitals at a known maximum (say, 300 yards).  

I don't spend a lot of time stand (static position) hunting, and I know I would get more deer if I did.  I like to "still hunt" which is move as quietly as possible through the woods.  This explains why my chances at a deer are often bayonet range and the deer are moving fast.

I guess I use more magnification for the exceptions to the way I usually hunt.  I cranked up my scope to 10x once to find a hole in the brush to shoot through.  I still managed to put a nice hole in a thumb sized stick and miss that deer completely.

I do use higher power scopes for varmint hunting.  I shoot coyotes, fox and woodchucks (probably similar to your alpine marmots) with a 4.5x by 14x scope on a heavy barreled AR-15 chambered in 5.56mm.  I keep and tan the skins for the fox and sometimes coyotes, so I have to be careful where I place the bullets as they are full metal jacket.  

Here in the US the obsession among deer hunters is to bag a trophy Whitetail.  The Boone & Crockett club was founded by Theodore Roosevelt and they keep the record books of trophies.  It was an interesting and effective observation on the psyche of hunters- by 1900 people were worried that the Whitetail would actually go extinct in the US.  With closed seasons and the added incentive of bragging rights for bagging a huge Whitetail, numbers of deer rebounded.  When you can only legally shoot one deer, you want it to be the "best".  You naturally pass up "lesser" deer (well, at least when the season is still young and you don't feel the pressure yet).

I have only had a few chances to bag a "Boonie".  I have utterly failed in this, but it doesn't erase from me the experience to at least observe a few monsters.  I froze once because I couldn't decide in an instant if it was a deer or a moose.  That deer haunts my dreams.

Anyhoo, happy hunting.

The 416 calibers are some of my favorites.  They are true all-purpose safari rounds, IMO.  The Rem Mag is my absolute favorite.  It is cheap compared to the 416 Rigby, and hits just as hard.  The Rigby can be loaded hotter due to the case capacity, but if you don't reload they're complete equals with regard to factory ammo, although the Rem can still be loaded pretty damn hot.  They really are the best of both worlds: closer in velocity to the 375 H&H, but they hit with similar power to most of the .458 caliber rounds and they actually penetrate better than the .458 calibers, too.

It depends on what I'm hunting, how I'm hunting it and whether or not I'm actually hunting vs supervising the kiddos

If I'm hunting I'm typically using a Remington 700.  My general purpose rifles are a 7mm-08 topped a Kahles AH or 300 WSM wearing a Leupold VXIII.  If I'm sitting over a field I'm using a Sendero chambered for 300 WM wearing a Zeiss Conquest.

If I'm guiding the kiddos I'm typically carrying an AR chambered in 223, 6.5 Grendel or 458 SOCOM depending on my mood.  Scopes are Vortex PST, Trijicon Accupoint and Zeiss Conquest.

I use a  custom Remington 700 in 300 rum,  for the hunting I do, it just works..my LR load is a 230 berger at 3220fps...I have a close range bear/moose load that uses a Barnes 200 grain LRX at 3150fps... I have taken everything from fox/wolverine/wolves/caribou/moose/bears with it...it is my one gun does everything tool...
 I have several spotting scopes, a vortex Diamondback 20-60-65, a Vortex razor 27-60-85,  Vortex Diamondback 12-50 binocs, a kilo 2400 RF, and a Leupold RX-5 trophy scale RF ...Back when I was able to really be mobile I carried the smaller lighter gear, now that I am all stove up, it is the heavy gear close to the transports.....I have harvested animals from 10 foot to 720 yards...
  I have shot quite a bit out past 600 yards including grizzly, caribou, wolves, fox, moose...In several places we hunt, you won't get a close in shot, especially on moose, caribou and grizzly...In our group we use everything from 6.5CM, 30-06, 300WM, 375 H&H, and 300RUM...have had other calibers, pretty much any common one over they years, but this has been the steady group the last 10 years or so..the 6.5CM is the newest, and my buddy  specifically got it for caribou and running the winter trapline, he still uses his 375 for bear and moose....


28" Bartlein barrel, MPA BA chassis, 4.5-27-56 razor scope...
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still hunting is my favourite way to hunt, too. thanks for the insight, it seems we use the magnification in the same way, at the end :)

i see. interesting, thanks. Never tried the 35, it looks a nice round for medium and big game hunting

7 thousands joules. My god what a beast

what an awesome landscape.

It's even better when you can see the animals ....

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what a beautiful animal