What thoughts and limits have you put on your elk rifle/bullet set-up if any?
Unless I'm shooting a large diameter flat point bullet or a patched round ball, I insist on expansion. I limit myself to whatever distance the bullet I've selected, fired from the platform I've selected, reliably expands. I've used some lead core pointy-point bullets that can't be counted on below about 2200 fps impact speed. Others expand down to about 1800 fps. The new Nosler Long Range Accubonds are supposed to expand clear down to 1300 fps. I also limit myself to whatever distance I think I can reliably hit a big grapefruit. That leaves enough margin of error for a couple things to go slightly wrong and still give a clean killing shot.
Taken together, those eliminate a lot of shots for me that I hear about other people taking just as a matter of course. The best long-ish range rifle I ever owned would give me a 4 inch group at 600 yard shooting prone if I wasn't fighting wind and mirage. For now that's my absolute limit. I don't currently own anything I'd shoot that far with.
With a handgun or muzzleloader I limit myself to about 75 yards. I'm not shooting past that. With a straight walled case, say .45-70 or the like, I might go to 150 yards if the gun delivers grapefruit sized groups at that range.
The only specific number I use as a rule of thumb is requiring a .270 or higher SD on any jacketed bullet I expect to expand.
Tom
