By Dave Hurteau

The Final Four is finally here! On one hand, you have Michigan State vs. Butler and West Virginia vs. Duke. On the other, it’s .270 WSM vs. .270 Win. and .30-06 vs. .308. And it’s all going down over the same weekend—almost like we planned it that way.

What we didn’t plan is to have all chalk in our Final Four. (I originally started this post with a rant about all this chalk.*) But, on the upside, what we do have is a true battle of the big guns (except that they are cartridges, not guns), in terms of seeding (all one- and two-seeds), popularity (no surprise there), bullet diameter (everything under .277 inches is out), and firepower (with two of the three most-powerful original rounds still in). So we should have a couple of barn-burners. Here are the contenders, as originally seeded:

By Dave Hurteau

Now things should get interesting.

It’s been clear sailing for the top seeds so far, as the .30-06 (1), .308 (2), 7mm-08 (3), and .30-30 (4) all advanced easily in the first round of Division II. Now, with only eight cartridges left standing, the matchups get far more compelling.

By Dave Hurteau

Last night, the NCAA college basketball Sweet Sixteen tipped off with Syracuse vs. Butler. Today, our own sweet sixteen gets started with .270 WSM vs. .260 Rem.

I am talking about the March Madness of whitetail cartridges. The Final Four of deer rounds. Bullet bracketology. (Okay, bullet-case-powder-and-primer bracketology, but you get the idea.)

We start with16 contenders for the title of Best Whitetail Round, which have been split into two divisions and seeded by SHOT Business contributing editor Christopher Cogley. We chose Mr. Cogley to help us because he is highly qualified and so I have someone to throw under the bus if necessary. His seeded selections (which you are free to take issue with, as my @$$ is covered) are:

By Philip Bourjaily

For this, my last post of the 00s, I had been trying for a while – and failing --  to think of an end-of-the-decade blog post. My “Eureka” moment came while cleaning up after cooking our Christmas goose. I heard the “tink” of metal falling into the kitchen sink. When I fished the misshapen pellet pictured above out of the sink I realized Hevi Shot is the most significant invention in shotgunning of the past 10 years.