These days, purchasing hand-loaded bullets for an Elk Hunt is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The .375 Ruger is a “one rifle for the world” kind of gun, and my Ruger African shoots more accurately than any rifle I own with a broad range of bullets.\u00a0 I don’t have a 300 Win Mag rifle in my safe either, as the .375 covers it well.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Even some veteran hunting folks have a tough time mentally (fear) when they think of the heavy felt recoil from some so-called Magnum rifles, but with a state-of-the-art recoil pad that reduces the recoil up to 50%, they tame well.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has been established, as a guide, that delivered energy to kill elk be in the neighborhood of 1500 ft-lbs. Here we easily exceed that terminal\/delivered energy with the .375 Ruger.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have two boxes of .375 bullets in my cupboard for hunting elk. I have Nosler 260 grain AccuBond bullets and Speer 235 grain Hot-Core semi-spitzer bullets seen below. I think both are good choices. But is one just a bit better?\u00a0 Sure, I might try some other bullets before my hunt this next fall if they can be purchased,\u00a0 but here is some data on these choices.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Both are sub-MOA accurate at 100 yards. My goal is to harvest a bull elk with ranges near 300 to 400 yards. The 260 grain Nosler AccuBond has a muzzle velocity of 2800+ fps and at 400 yards (7000 ft altitude).\u00a0 Its terminal velocity on elk is 2178 fps and 400 yard energy is 2740 ft-lbs with a 90 degree wind deflection of 17 inches. It drops 16.5 inches with a 250 yard zero.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Speer 235 grain Hot Core has a muzzle velocity of 3000 fps and at 400 yards its terminal velocity is 2064 fps and 400 yard energy is 2224 ft-lbs with a 90 degree wind deflection of 17 inches. I drops 16.5 inches with a 250 yard zero. Same drop and wind deflection as the Nosler.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ballistic data confirms that the Nosler AccuBond has 516 ft-lbs more terminal energy than the Speer bullet. At over 2700 ft-lbs of delivered energy the Nosler will easily open-up and mushroom yet still penetrate likely with a substantial exit wound on a broadside shot. I am a proponent of exit wounds for blood trailing. <\/span><\/p>\n

Note: I did book an elk hunt and later cancelled after making several calls to many experts and doing a Satellite image review with Google Earth Pro. It was a featureless flat dessert landscape and I wanted more photogenic landscape with hills and trees for the many thousands of dollars it would cost.\u00a0 I’ll keep looking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Good Hunting!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9Copyright 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

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These days, purchasing hand-loaded bullets for an Elk Hunt is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The .375 Ruger is a “one rifle for the world” kind of gun, and my Ruger African shoots more accurately than any … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,23,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-game-hunting","category-hunting-thoughts","category-reloading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2W3VS-2Ao","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9944"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9964,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9944\/revisions\/9964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nhrifleman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}