I was the 4th generation in my family to have been born in Denver, but other than my Uncle, I think that I was the first hunter. My Uncle had a rifle and maybe went out in the woods a few times "hunting" for deer, but I don't think he ever killed one.
I started hunting when I was in college in the mid '60s and went with one of my roommates in NW Colorado. The first year my roommate loaned me a Winchester .32 Special and I shot my first deer. The next year I borrowed my Uncle's .30-40 Krag and I killed my frist elk, a 5x5 bull, and I was hooked.
My summer jobs through college were with the Forest Service in Steamboat Spgs, CO, and the year after I got my first elk I decided that I needed my own centerfire hunting rifle. Two of the guys that I worked with had grown up in the Steamboat area and had hunted most of their life, so I asked them what rifle I should get. They both said to get a bolt action .270 Win or .30-06. They said that only the dudes from Denver shot .300 Winchesters when they came to the mountains once a year to hunt elk.
So I bought a Herter's .30-06 barrelled action and semi inleted stock, put them together that summer, and I then had my elk and everything else rifle for the next 10 years. That rifle easily put 8 elk in my freezer, including a 375" 6x6 bull who's shoulder mount is still the centerpiece of one wall in my house.
A couple of years after I moved from Colorado to Montana, my new hunting partner here gave me a .30 Gibbs case. I thought that case looked so cool that I carried it around in my pocket for several months, and finally had a gunsmith in Kalispell re-chamber my .30-06 to .30 Gibbs. Ballistice of that cartridge approached the ballistics of the .300 Win, so I then hunted with a rifle similar to the rifles that the dudes from Denver used. For the next 20 some years that rifle kept my freezers full of elk, moose, and other wild game meat. Then a case forming apparent overload pretty much ended the life of that rifle.
Ever since the '60s I've admired and wanted to have a Weatherby rifle. I shaped and finished the stock of my Herter's .30-06 and four other rifles to look similar to the Weatherby Mark V design. Then in 2009 I had a 7 mm Rem mag, but I wanted another .30 caliber elk rifle, so I finally bought a Weatherby rifle, a Vanguard chambered in .300 Wby which quickly became my favorite rifle.
I've never been on a guided elk hunt, but I have gone on a dozen international hunts that were guided, so I know the thinking that people that don't live in elk country have about what rifle or cartridge they should bring on their maybe once in a lifetime elk hunt. I've taken my .300 Wby on half of my international hunts.
I've also noticed that the farther away from elk country a hunter lives the bigger the cartridge he thinks he needs.
The biggest rifle/cartridge that I have is a .375 RUM that I built in 2005 for an African cape buffalo hunt. I've taken it on two African hunts and an Alaskan brown bear hunt, but for at least 15 years it has been a safe queen. My second most powerful rifle is my .300 Wby that I've used to kill two bull elk within 1/4 mile of my house.
