CARTRIDGE FAMILIES


  • The Cartridge Families poster visually simplifies the vastness and complexities of hunting cartridges available in the US. The world’s vast array of cartridges can actually be broken down into basic family groupings. Each family group share the same parent case…although the parent case has probably been modified to achieve a new or different result. Cartridges within the family can easily be organized from least to greatest in caliber, velocity, power, and recoil. By knowing the parent case (size and features), it is simple to determine the overall power potential of a given cartridge in addition to where it lies when comparing it with cartridges of other parent cases.

    This poster takes six of the most well-known and influential hunting cartridges displayed at 200% scale so its easy to identify the shared case. These 6 cartridges are the 223 Remington, 30-30 Win, 308 Win, 30-06 Springfield, 300 Winchester Magnum and the 378 Weatherby Magnum. We then picked four or five popular cartridges (at 100% scale) and arranged them from least potent to greatest within that cartridge family.

    See the Details section for some ideas of when understanding parent case and family groupings might be useful in your shooting pursuits

  • As long as you know a cartridge's parent case you can easily identify what family a cartridge belongs to and where that cartridge fits in the family (ie necked down with a smaller/lighter bullet or necked up with a larger/heavier bullet).

    A usage example might be a hunter that is confident in a 308 Winchester/Short Action Rifle is looking for a larger caliber cartridge with a heavier bullet for increased stopping power on bigger game. If minimizing recoil or sticking with a short action rifle is a priority, (before jumping to a belted magnum) starting with a 308 sized cartridge may be in their best interest.

    Another example could be hunting elk but any recoil greater than a 308 Win is unacceptable. A 7mm-08 or 260 Remington are built on the same case as the 308 and have similar powder charges.

    Furthermore many shooters are unaware that a 458 and 338 Win Mag share the same case as a 7mm Rem Mag.

     

    • Size: 24" wide x 34” tall
    • 32 photographed cartridges
    • Full color images - all Life Size (within 4/1000 of an inch)
    • Heavy duty - 100lb poster paper with High Gloss finish.