[Slidellkid]

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against a magnum. The big 7 and the 300 are great killers (my preference would be the 7 as it's a little more comfortable to shoot) but they aren't nearly as fun to shoot as the 7mm-08. My brother has lost exactly one deer with his 7mm-08. 85% of his kills drop in their tracks or run less than 25 yards. Occasionally with a lung hit he might have one travel 40 yards.

It's not always the caliber that causes a deer to be lost. Lots of guys get really shook up when shooting at deer and hit them in all sorts of bad places. A larger caliber really won't help much if you hit them wrong. Also, if you use the wrong kind of bullets you can have real problems. My brother shot a few with the Hornady SST's and they didn't perform nearly as well as the Core Lokts. The deer that have traveled the farthest on him were shot with the Hornady SST's and that is why is stopped using them. He bought some partitions this year because they were on sale for $12.00 a box but I told him I had had very bad experiences with them in years past. Well, he killed a nice 8 point on August 15 (opening day in SC) and dropped the deer in his tracks. He's pretty sure he clipped the spine, so I guess that would be expected. He did mention that the exit hole was much smaller with the partitions than it was with the Core Lokts. He's going to shoot a couple through the lungs and see what kind of performance he gets out of the partitions. My experience with them was not good and both my ex-wife and I had deer running a very long ways with very good hits, so I personnally would not recommend a partition though lots of guys swear by them. There was also a study done in SC with over 400 deer kills that proves that deer shot with deep penetrating bullets like the partition cause deer to run farther. I will see if I can look that one up on the web again.