I’m Recoil Shy. Is the 6.5 Creedmoor a Good Elk Round?

A reader submitted a query to our weekly On The Gun publication (which you’ll sign up for here) about how to deal with recoil and cartridge choice.

He described how he’s grow to be recoil shy when utilizing his previous Savage 99 in .308 Win. Regardless of equipping it with a recoil pad, his skill to shoot it precisely has diminished through the years to the purpose the place he doesn’t really feel snug searching with it. Even worse, he confesses he not enjoys capturing it in any respect.

Our reader has since switched to an older Marlin .30/30 Winchester that belonged to his father-in-law, which he shoots nicely, and a heavy-barreled H&R Extremely Slug Hunter (sadly not produced) for searching a shotgun-only zone in Minnesota. Each have reliably put venison in his freezer.

Regardless of the demonstrably better recoil of the 12-gauge slug gun, in comparison with his Savage 99, he finds it simpler to handle, and wonders whether or not there’s something he can do to beat the discomfort along with his once-beloved .308.

“Is there any recommendation for methods to deal with recoil?” he requested. “What can I do to return to utilizing my .308? Do you assume will probably be attainable?”

He then poses a follow-up query. After a lot analysis, he’s come to understand the virtues of the 6.5 Creedmoor, though he’s by no means shot one. At 68 years previous, he isn’t trying to develop his gun assortment, however he is considering getting a rifle that he would possibly later go all the way down to his son, who might use it for deer and bigger sport.

“Is the 6.5 Creed ample for elk searching? From what I’ve learn, it looks as if it’s marginal for a harder animal like an elk. I’m slightly torn about what to do.”

Each are glorious questions.

Understanding Felt Recoil

You’ll be able to plug numbers right into a formula to calculate a rifle’s free recoil. After placing within the bullet weight, muzzle velocity, weight of the firearm, and weight of the powder cost within the cartridge, the equation will spit out a recoil worth in foot-pounds.

The above are examples of the relative recoil power of some frequent cartridges. These have been all calculated primarily based on a 7-pound rifle. As you may see, there’s fairly a distinction between the .30/30 and .308 Win. Every little thing else being equal, the .30/30 generates simply 67 p.c of the recoil {that a} .308 Win. does.

However these numbers don’t inform the entire story. How we expertise recoil is influenced mightily by how a firearm is configured.  

For example, an efficient recoil pad takes the recoil impulse and, because of its squishy development, distributes it over an extended length to cut back the felt recoil. A muzzle brake will redirect the gasses from the muzzle blast in order that among the drive is expended in a path aside from straight again. This additionally lessens the recoil we expertise. Even higher, if these muzzle gasses are directed upward they are going to scale back the muzzle leap — that means the inventory received’t journey upward into the shooter’s face, which exacerbates felt recoil.

A suppressor will be as efficient (or extra so) than a brake. It comprises and slows down the velocity with which the gasses escape the muzzle (spreading the drive over a better size of time). However extra importantly, it reduces the shock of the muzzle blast which a brake exaggerates. That shockwave of sound has an outsized impression on how we expertise recoil. Although a brake reduces the bodily drive our shoulder experiences, the violent sound it creates triggers an instinctual flinch.

How a inventory is formed has an impression on felt recoil as nicely. Shares with a whole lot of drop on the heel, which the Savage 99 has, will are inclined to pivot up into the shooter’s face and really feel extra jumpy than a inventory with a straight comb. (The numerous drop at heel is supposed to align the shooter’s eyes with the rifle’s iron sights, so whenever you put a scope on one and must raise your head excessive above the inventory, that always makes the recoil really feel extra extreme.)

Managing Recoil

Changing into extra delicate to recoil through the years will not be unusual. Biologically, we’re wired to flinch — the explosive blast, the ear-splitting sound, and the rifle’s slap and kick are all issues our lizard mind instinctively (and understandably) seeks to keep away from.

One can handle felt recoil with higher capturing approach, however that solely goes to this point. Protecting the recoil pad in agency contact with the shoulder, not urgent our cheek into the inventory with extreme drive, holding the inventory firmly on the grip and fore-end, and squaring our shoulders to the recoil pad will assist a shooter handle recoil. Amongst different issues, these pointers hold the beating the shooter’s face experiences to a minimal.

Taming the Savage 99

Now it is likely to be attainable for our correspondent to enhance the manners of his Mannequin 99 to the purpose the place capturing it turns into a pleasure once more. He can attempt to mount a scope decrease on the receiver (or change to one thing like the brand new Vortex Viper Micro red dot). He can add a raised cheek piece to the butt inventory for a greater face-to-gun match. Or he might attempt to equip it with a muzzle system, or try so as to add weight to the rifle with lead plugs within the inventory.

These proposed cures would all assist, however whether or not they’d tip the scales and convey the rifle again into his good graces is an open query. My guess is that the connection can’t be repaired.

Being Recoil Shy

There isn’t a scarcity of ballistic he-men prowling the Web and social media. These paragons of masculinity advocate for giant cartridges for giant sport — recoil sensitivity be damned. To their mind-set, the stout kick generated by a .30-caliber magnum is the value of admission for dependable terminal ballistics on elk, bear, moose, and different sport larger than a whitetail.

They conjure eventualities the place an unfavorable shot angle, mud-encrusted cover, or stout shoulder bone can solely be ethically overcome with .300 Win. Magazine. or its ilk.

The truth that a shooter received’t have the ability to shoot as nicely with one among these filling-rattling rounds — when it comes to poorer shot placement, an incapacity to see the place the bullet hit (or missed) as a result of shedding the sight image underneath recoil, or issue getting again on the right track rapidly for a follow-up shot — doesn’t matter to this crowd.

However not all of us have been destined to scale Mount Machismo. Happily for the pissants amongst us, a correct understanding of recent terminal ballistics provides motive for encouragement.

On Killing Energy

Solely two issues kill an animal. First, you may destroy the central nervous system (CNS) with a shot to the mind or backbone, successfully turning the lights off. Or you may induce blood loss — exsanguination is the flamboyant time period — which deprives the CNS of oxygen, once more flipping the sunshine change.

In case your bullet causes sufficient tissue injury and hemorrhaging to compromise the CNS, it has completed its job. Each different metric takes a again seat to this, together with bullet diameter, foot-pounds of impression power, retained bullet weight, and so forth. Tissue injury is king.

Bullets are designed to upset reliably throughout a variety of impression velocities. If a bullet strikes its goal going too quick or is constructed too frivolously, it could possibly probably grenade on impression, leading to a ghastly however non-fatal wound. Or if it hits the animal too slowly — say 1,600 fps or slower, although this fully relies on the precise bullet — it won’t develop or upset nicely sufficient to trigger the wanted tissue injury.

Happily, most of in the present day’s searching bullets have a forgiving velocity envelope, and the engineering behind them is light-years forward of what our fathers and grandfathers had obtainable. So smaller bullets, usually with excessive ballistic coefficients, can create glorious tissue injury even at longer ranges.

Two seasons in the past, for example, I killed two bull elk, one with a .300 Win. Magazine. (178-grain ELD-X) and the opposite with a 6.5 PRC (143-grain ELD-X). Each pictures have been over 600 yards, and each animals died the place they stood. I recovered the projectiles underneath the cover on the offside of every animal.

Not solely did these bullets carry out precisely as designed, they did so in an almost equivalent method on very related (broadside) pictures. They expanded nicely at a decrease impression velocity (because of the shot distance), penetrated deeply, and retained most of their weight.

Discover the expanded diameter of the bullets. The .308-caliber bullet from the .300 Win. Magazine. measured simply two-and-a-half hundredths of an inch greater than the .264-caliber bullet from the 6.5 PRC. And but you’ll have individuals swear up and down that these cartridges are in two completely different lessons — one a manly magnum, and the opposite a man-bun particular.

In actual fact, by each metric, their terminal efficiency was equivalent — penetration, weight retention, bullet enlargement, and killing effectiveness. The one distinction is in felt recoil and shootability — the place the 6.5 PRC has a determined benefit. And for what it’s value, the bull killed by the 6.5 PRC was a lot bigger than the 6×6 elk I took with the .300 Win. Magazine.

We’ve seen this dynamic play out repeatedly, the place good bullets from milder cartridges, just like the infamous 6.5 Creedmoor, are completely lethal on huge sport, together with elk, moose, and bear.

The “Powerful” Animal Label

Are elk and moose robust sport animals? Definitely. However there’s a mythology that’s been constructed up round them that overstates how onerous they’re to kill.

This final fall I encountered two wounded elk. One was a bull that was shot opening day within the backcountry the place my buddy, Cody, and I had arrange. That morning at first gentle we heard a fusillade of pictures, which is all the time a nasty signal. This was from a gaggle of guided hunters that had handed our camp on horseback in the dead of night.

We gave that group a large berth, not desirous to disturb their hunt, however mid-morning as we have been working our manner up a ridge, I noticed a wounded bull. He’d clearly been hit a number of instances and was standing in a rocky outcropping attempting to cover from us.

We backed away from the poor creature, and I made a collection of cellphone calls and was capable of get involved with the information and inform him the place his consumer’s bull was situated.

Later that afternoon they completed him off, and the subsequent day we met up with them as they have been packing its quarters off the mountain.

It was the person’s first elk, and he was past grateful that we not solely discovered his bull, however that we didn’t tag it ourselves. He was from the Midwest and had bought a .300 Weatherby for this hunt. He shot from about 300 yards away however regardless of the Weatherby’s “authority” and popularity as an enormous sport spherical, his substandard shot placement didn’t kill it.

Now, when an elk is shot by a .300 magnum and it both will get away or is wounded like that, the hunters chalk it as much as how “robust” an elk is. But when somebody did the identical factor with a 6.5 Creedmoor, everybody is aware of that it’s as a result of that isn’t sufficient gun!

You see the place I’m going with this. The magnum crowd has a self-validating bias that their .300s are perfect for elk, and that ought to it come up brief, that’s as a result of the animal is so robust – fairly than inserting the blame the place it ought to go, which is that their shot choice and marksmanship expertise are less than snuff and little question made worse by their alternative in heavy-recoiling firearm.

I’m not saying {that a} 6.5 Creedmoor on this circumstance is an ideal resolution — you may nonetheless make a crappy shot with one and wound an animal — however I’ve little doubt that our Midwestern hunter would have seemingly been higher served capturing a milder cartridge, with a correct bullet, that he might management higher. It actually wouldn’t have carried out any worse.

Learn Subsequent: Best Elk Hunting Rifles

As for moose, whereas they’re massive animals, they aren’t notably troublesome to kill. The numerous I’ve killed through the years have dropped simply with a .338 Federal, 6.5 PRC, .30/06, .280 Remington, .308 Win., .450 Marlin, and even a .300 Extremely Magazine. Virtually all offered follow-up pictures (aside from those who dropped immediately out of sight) as they don’t bolt as rapidly as, say, a whitetail will.

Out of doors Life senior workers author Tyler Freel, who has hunted moose yearly for his grownup life, concurs. Whereas he doesn’t declare it’s the final moose spherical, he had no downside killing a bull final 12 months with a 22 ARC. With a correct bullet, even a spherical in that class will settle a bull moose’s hash.

The purpose is that magnums don’t purchase you a lot (or something) when it comes to killing energy over a smaller spherical. A awful hit is a awful hit, and the truth that you’re utilizing a spherical with “magnum” in its title received’t persuade the animal to run out. Shot placement and bullet choice are the important thing, and there’s little question {that a} milder spherical, which you’ll follow with extra and shoot higher, has some crucial benefits.

6.5 Creedmoor and Elk

So, sure, the 6.5 Creedmoor is a high quality elk cartridge. I’ve killed many elk and different massive animals (together with African sport like big eland, better kudu, waterbuck, and different stout critters) with the spherical, as have many different competent hunters.

Are you able to wound and lose an animal with a 6.5 Creedmoor? You wager. It’s occurred loads of instances. However I doubt a lot of these animals would have been anchored if the hunter had been utilizing a magnum. And I’m assured that many extra animals have been misplaced as a result of the hunter was utilizing a gun bigger than they have been capable of shoot proficiently, fairly than one thing extra of their wheelhouse.

(As an apart, lengthy earlier than the Creedmoor got here on the scene, when individuals would ask me what rifle they need to tackle their first elk hunt or journey to Africa, I’d inform them to make use of the deer rifle they’re snug with. It’s nonetheless sound recommendation.)

Learn Subsequent: Best 6.5 Creedmoor Rifles

In Conclusion

So, whereas I believe the reader who requested the questions that prompted this screed has completed the appropriate factor to modify to his .30/30 for deer and retire his Savage 99, I additionally assist the thought of him investing in a high quality 6.5 Creedmoor. If his son, who he plans to finally give it to, practices with it diligently he can go west on his first elk hunt assured within the information that he’s wielding a succesful and lethal rifle equal to the duty.

 

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