Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting The 300 Wby Mag for elk- is there anything better?

I have both the .300 Wea. and .300 win. Yeats ago when I made my Win. I was thinking of a Wea.. But at that time the gunshop I dealt with build most of their Wea. WITHOUT any freebore.. My pal bought a beautiful custom Wea. from them, and when I read up on the loading data, with out the freebore, it was the twin of a .300 Win.. I have both and the Wea beats the Win. by about 100 fps.. Both are great elk rifles, but I have shot the Win much longer and much more.
When I first hunted elk, the Win. was just new in my collection.. I had hunted most of the 10 years before, with a custom .30-06.. I had great faith in it.. But on my first season, I had a good shot at a cow elk.. I put the crosshairs of the scope on her shoulder and squeezed... I missed.. To this day I do not know how I missed that shot.
A few days later I put a 165 gr. from my .300 right though the lungs of a huge cow.. Later that fall I shot a nice mule with the .300, from that point on, I had great faith in the .300.. My 06's have pretty much gathered dust since then..
Never owned a .308 except to take the barrel of to make something else.. I do have a nice little bolt action 300 Savage. But never took it elk hunting.. Went through a couple .338's but they lacked the flat shooting qualities of the .300's.. In the area I hunted elk at the time, that was important.. It was also in the prerange finder days.. I have since added a .340 to my safe.. I like it better than the .338, but I seldom shoot it much anymore.
It didn't kill any better than my .300..
Now with elk everywhere, and the meat not so important to our budget, I could use the 06, but when the chips are down, I usually take one of the .300's. They have never failed, and we have a great many memories..