This was shot with my full stock 8MM at 107 yards. The barrel is a pre-war military barrel I cut off and turned to a 1920s sporter contour.
PC070001 by
Steve Zihn, on Flickr
PC070002 by
Steve Zihn, on Flickr
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA by
Steve Zihn, on Flickr
It works just fine even on bull elk.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA by
Steve Zihn, on Flickr
Deer and antelope also fall fast to this little rifle.
If you want more power than the 8X57 gives, you might try a 9.3X57 or a 9.3X62.
If you want more range and flatter trajectory I'd recommend a 270 or 280.
The super magnums all come at a price. And in my experience (which is considerable) I have not seen that any of them offer any real world advantage to shells we have had for 50-80 years.
And ER Shaw doesn't show the 9.3 bore on their web site, but they do make them. I bought 7 of them about 2 months ago from ER Shaw. The 9.3X57 I am making for myself has one in it. To see it go to the The Hunt forum. That rifle is in process now.
I have an ER Shaw barrel in one of my 270s and also in my 375H&H, and both of them shoot as well as any $600 dollar barrel I have ever used on any gun even though the Shaw barrels cost about 1/4 as much. All bullets touching is the norm for these 2 rifles and many of those bullets overlap.
Spending $400 to $700 on a barrel doesn't mean lesser priced barrels are not just as accurate.
If you get a Shaw or a Green Mountain barrel and it shoots "only 1 MOA" both companies will say that's within spec. If you spend $600 on another makers barrel and you want 1/2 groups, and their barrel only shoots 1 MOA, they
might work with you on supplying a new barrel, but only after some hoop-jumping" to see that it really is a barrel issue and not a load issue, stock issue, scope issue or shooter issue. When and if they replace the barrel you may get a better one, and probably would get a better one.
However my experience with barrels (as a gunsmith for nearly 1/2 century) is that for $600 I can buy 4 barrels from ER Shaw and as a rule about
75% of their barrels shoot as well as any barrel you can buy at any price. So if you have an 75% chance
with each barrel and you were to buy 4 of them, do you think you may get one that is good enough?
I think so.
Price is not always an indicator of quality, and in barrels I can say it's never an indicator.