I've pondered the "control group size" issue quite a bit and for myself at least honestly admit that personal bias and selective memory weigh as heavilly as cold hard data. To give a for instance...I've been extremely privileged through circumstance of my work to be able to hunt literally around the world. My favored firearm when I'm away from home and packing just one to use for whatever I may encounter wherever I may be is the 7mm Rem Mag. I have my reasons for arriving at this choice and plan on starting a thread on it one day, but for now let's just go with it as my choice, right or wrong. A while back I took a contract in Cameroon and was immediately contacted by a fellow I knew in oilfield services over there to be sure and bring a rifle (like who wouldn't? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />) with primary quarry being 4 different variety of duiker. I naturally packed my 7 mag stoked with 140 partitions. As circumstance would have it I was presented the opportunity to take a giant eland and with no fuss, no bother popped him at 120 or so yards and he simply sat down on his haunches and flopped over dead as a rock. Now you can imagine I've selectively "cherry picked" and used this story many times to extoll the virtues of the 7 mag. The fact that this is the one and only eland I've ever shot and only 50% of the sum total I've even seen shot has rarely interfered with my learned argument! Now deer, I've well over 100 of many types including the "North American Deer Slam" plus red, roe, fallow, sika and sambar. I can promise you I've NEVER used the 90 lb Alabama doe that traveled over 150 yards after being shot with the very same rifle and load as the eland as the typical whitetail performance of my favorite round!
Specific to elk, as I've written before we have property that has granted hundreds of depredation tags in my lifetime, allowing the opportunity to witness one bigazzed pile of elk get shot. Funny thing is, depending on how I'd care to spin it I could say I've seen more elk run off after being hit with the 30-06 than with any other round - just like I could say I've seen more knocked to the dirt by the '06, all simply because I've seen more in TOTAL shot with this round. I really honestly believe that on any elk I've seen shot that at that exact time, on that exact critter with the exact shot with the exact bullet type there would've been no real difference in the result between any number of cartridges.
(edited to correct several spelling errors I'll blame on the aftereffect of sparkling wine gone flat...)
