Do think a 165 grain Nosler Partition or Accubond out of a 30-06 is fine for elk? I'd like a single load for my 30-06 that can be used on anything from deer to elk and I think a 165 grain bullet would be a good weight for a wide range of game. And do you think a 165 grain Nosler Partition or Accubond would penetrate through an elk's shoulder?
What do you mean by "fine"? If you equate that to "ideal", then no. Adequate? Usually. I prefer 180s in the '06 for everything from tweety birds up. However, if my '06 had an noticeable accuracy preference for 165 grain accubonds or partitions, I'd use them.
Penetrating an elk's shoulder depends on a lot.
Is it a nice clean elk or did it just stand up out of the wallow with 2 inches of mud you have to shoot through before encountering hair and hide? What's the angle ... how much meat do you have to shoot through before hitting bone? How far away is it? In other words, how fast will the bullet be traveling when it hits bone and is it already mushroomed out or not?
Further, what do you mean by "shoulder"? The shoulder blade? Upper leg bone? Or the ball joint? Those are pretty different. Most of the shoulder blade, other than that big ridge, is no thicker than a rib bone and should be pretty easy to shoot through unless the angle is pretty glancing. The upper leg in the shoulder area is a lot tougher and the ball joint is tougher yet.
I'd rather aim for the opposite shoulder and shoot through the vitals FIRST rather than shoot through a hardened target and hope to have enough bullet left to make a clean kill second. Sometimes elk cooperate, sometimes not.
If they're cooperative, a .25-'06 or .257 Roberts will work really well. If they're not, hand me a .338. In between ... is in between.
Basically, what I'd suggest is know what the limits of your bullet are and stay within them. That usually makes dead things. Exceeding them usually leads to tracking. Unfortunately, with an "in between" option, nobody who is being honest with you can say "this always works". They can say they made it work 89 out of 89 tries, what they're not saying is they had enough judgement not to try the times it was going to fail.
Tom
