Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors old cow elk zero, 308 tomato state one

The bad news is that I'm through hunting for this season. The first good news is that I used a 45 caliber bronze brush to clean the chamber of the 308 tomato stake that failed to eject a few days ago, pulled the stock and oiled the surfaces that slide over each other, took it to the range and shot two groups that were 1 3/8" and 1 9/16" with Remington 150 gr. Corlokts. Everything was real smooth. The Winchester silvertips I used to dirty the bore shot a 3 1/2" group stung vertically after the bore fouling shot. I did ring a 300 yard 8 or 10" gong with shot number 5 of the silvertips.
On to the best news. Another younger friend had the day off. Bret had to return his gas field job yesterday. John works construction and had a break today. We saw elk everywhere from first light. We couldn't get up on the first two groups but then saw a few on the top of a ridge pretty close. We walked about a hundred yards towards them and dropped down into shooting positions. I told John to pick one then shoot as soon as I did. I shot, he didn't. We heard the "whack" of the bullet and the old girl turned around. I sent another one her way and she went over the ridge. It was a pretty steep climb up the ridge she was on so John said for me to get the four wheeler and circle around to as close to her as I could get and he'd go up the ridge after her. John got there first. She was lying down with her head up and he finished her with a shot to the head. I had aimed high on the shoulder and the bullet had hit lower and back some hitting the stomach and liver. The rifle was zeroed 2 1/2" high at 100 yards. My cheap rangefinder said the distance was 311 yards. I don't trust it and the range may have been closer to 250.
Tomato stake and old girl elk.

It had a Wyoming Game and Fish collar. I took the collar and the ear tags to Game and Fish for their records. They'll email me info on where and when she was collared.

Happy hunter and soon to be elk roasts.

Old tomato stake. Note the duct tape on the sling to prevent a reoccurrence of the final disaster last Friday.

Closeup of vintage Weaver KV scope.

Unfortunately, when John shot it in the head he blew one of the ivories away. Here's the other one. Maybe Diamond Jim can make me a watch fob out of this one.

Now I have to get back to work on the remodel project. My wife has been real understanding the past month. I'll bet she's got a list of honey do's to last all winter now that I'm out of hunting licenses.
The manager of the ranch we are hunting on thinks I'm too decrepit to hunt alone so I'm really fortunate to have these younger guys go with me. I'm taking the Father of one of these guys hunting out there Friday. He's older than I am so we'll see how that goes. Using up all my licenses doesn't keep me from going out with guys who still have licenses. You guys can probably tell I like to hunt.
David