Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting effectiveness of smaller calibers on north american game

243....100gr Partition.....First elk for the boy, the tenth elk for that 243. That was a few years ago, he's now added two more elk to his bragging rights with that rifle and load.



Fist part of the equation is to shoot them in the front half, the second part is to use enough bullet. Cartridge chosen doesn't mean as much.

My family owns/owned land in Colorado's GMU 61 and 62 for the past 45+ years My parents built their retirement cabin in GMU 61 almost 20 years ago and live there (off grid) from May till early Nov. NF borders two sides of both properties.

Over the years I've probably found 25-30 dead, unrecovered elk in or around our properties. For the ones that weren't too rotten to investigate, the majority appeared to be shot in the front half. I've done a quick "bullet necropsy" on two of those elk (much to my young son's disgust on the last one) to see what happened. In both cases it was poor penetration--the bullets made it to the first lung and quit. Too much expansion with one, on the other elk the bullet came apart and didn't penetrate very far.

Dry, poor tracking conditions, the elk runs 400-700 yds in thickish timber, all adds up to an unrecovered elk.

Although we have lots of good bullets out there these days, and I've had the opportunity to observe lots of bullets--including Noz's other excellent offerings--kill elk, I haven't seen a bullet outperform a Partition when it comes to consistently deep penetration across the widest range of velocities. Of course, the Accubond and Ballistic Tip do tend to shoot smaller groups than the Pt........

Casey