quote TOM "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. smile"
This +10 is worth all the other advice together, vitals 1st, bones second, never failed me yet when I had to make an angled shot on an animal that needs to be anchored on the spot. Magnum man
Last edited by Magnum_Man; 09/16/14.
