I thing it would depend on how far your planning on shooting and willing to carry. I have a Savage 110 338 FCP with a 26 inch barrel. Shooting @1000 yards is easy for this beast. I reload and shoot 285 ELD-M. Hornady released the 270 ELD-X with no load data so I called them for information. Was told to use the 285 grain load data but work up, but will have their data out soon. I purchased mine for target shooting though. Unless your shooting an elephant or similar, don’t think I would hunt with mine, but could change, which is why I’m working up loads for the 270 grain bullets. The 338 will decimate any animal you shoot so harvesting good meat may be lost. Think there are better calibers for hunting to produce a humane kill and better odds of retaining most meat from any kill. One of the reasons I have a 308. Just curious, what are you planning on hunting with the 338?