Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting The 300 Wby Mag for elk- is there anything better?

Yes, I hear ya. Give me a good rifle and lets go hunting. I'll be happy just being there.

Good lord Coyote Hunter. I'm just glad that I don't have to be around you in social situations. It would be really embarrassing.

Interesting calibers mentioned here but as for the best all around I'd have to vote 06. I'm still taking the 300RUM when that time comes around again.

Bob,

Mine, all properly hit, have dropped to the 35 Whelen (225 gr TSX), 338-06 (210 gr Partiton and 185 gr TSX), 375 H&H (260 gr Partition) and, most recently, the 270 Win (140 gr TSX). Looking back I cannot recall any observed difference in the time to death. None moved either not at all or a couple of steps or leaps.

Ed I know intuitively there has to be a difference offered by those bigger cartridges and bullets but when the ballistics are so closely lumped together among comparable cartridges, it can be hard to tell sometimes from the terminal effect on the animals.

I guess if we shot enough of them with enough bullets we might see a pattern emerge for stuff 30 and up. I have noticed that(for example) that 30 caliber bullets from magnum cases is right where there's more damage (trauma?) to animals than from smaller calibers...at least that's what my eyeballs showed me. From there the next step seems to be 375.

Elk are funny....phlegmatic,sort of, in their ability to take a hit giving no indication...then keel over dead. I can dig why some people use bigger stuff.

Yes . Whatever I choose to carry any given day.

Personally I feel that modern era mankind has had it rather easy with the convenience of modern weapons
centerfires & scopes (regardless of distance), and that the genuine/original ethos of "fair chase" and " spirit of the hunter"
has mostly died or diminished when we stopped thrusting spears into animals from a couple yds, it was such long standing
primitive methods which put us on much more even ground during the pursuit of wild game....alas we now live in the world of high modern convenience, but we have lost something valuable in the process.
Even when we look at war, some are engaged in it the detached modern way, say as a pilot dropping bombs from above quite remote from his target and the personal human factor, then we have those guys in the trenches who did savage do or die bayonet charges and saw and felt their human targets right up close & personal, often looking into their enemies eyes sometimes from just a few inches as they thrust the bayonet in again and again....Same war but two totally different experiences and demands on a human, the second one portraying mans most primitive/primordal instincts of survival and harking back to the times when humans killing humans(or wild animals), almost always demanded it be done up close and personal....todays technology allows todays hunters be much more detached resulting in less exposure to experiences of what I call "brutal intimacy" with nature during the act of killing game.

There is no specific crossover range - everyone has to draw their own line, which will most likely vary for each unique situation - and hunters still have plenty of opportunity to experience "brutal intimacy" gutting and dismembering an animal once it is on the ground.

The concept of "fair chase" is undoubtedly a fairly modern concept rather than an ancient one but in any case it has many different definitions as it, too, is an individual concept. You might get many people to agree on a fairly broad definition but when it comes to evaluating specific situations disagreements will certainly arise.

Over the years I've met people who had no concern for "fair chase" and nothing I would consider "spirit of the hunter" but rather just what was to me kind of a sick blood lust - a desire to kill with no respect at all for the quarry. One such person was a Baptist minister. On the other hand, I've met many more hunters who had great respect for the game they were hunting and whose goal was to harvest it as quickly and humanely as possible. The concepts of "fair chase" and "spirit of the hunter" are not dead but they are strangers to many people. In my rather small sampling of hunters, I would say they are in the minority.

I'm planning my first elk hunt, so there's my levl of expertise on elk, but the way I figure, they aren't much different than a kudu or a host of other similarly-sized African game which I have taken so here goes:

1. What cartridges do you consider "better" than the 300 Weatherby and why.

2. As to Karamojo Bell and the 7x57 on elephant, anybody who's read about his exploits knows this was not his preferred cartridge, he lost a lot of elephant with it and it is really not a relevant issue. The issue of a what constitutes 'Enough Gun' (to quote Taylor since we're quoting African PHs), and a 243 is really a stupid choice for kudu, unless of course we can go from the sublime to the ridiculous as there are verified exploits of elephants taken with a 22 LR (Capstick).

Suffice to say, JB covered it well, and the "hot placement over caliber" red-herring is just as ridiculous when one takes the "stunt shooting" angle which is exactly what going after an elk-size animal with a 243.



Cheers, j

jorge,

Bell's favorite elephant rifle was his custom 1903 Mannlicher-Schoenauer 6.5x54, which he plainly states somewhere in one of his books, but he gave it up because problems with the ammo, mostly split cases.

"Use Enough Gun" comes from a Ruark quote of Harry Selby, not Taylor.

A good friend's wife took her first three big game animals last year in Africa with a .243. Kudu wasn't on the list, and her first was an impala, but gemsbok and blue wildebeest (both generally considered tougher than kudu) also each fell to one 85-grain Nosler Partition.

I'm not going to debate whether of not a .300 wthby is better or worse than another round.

I've always stated that you need enough cartridge with the proper bullet to make a "CLEAN" harvest with a properly placed shot.

Some might argue that a .22-250 would qualify, while others would claim that you need a heavy magnum.

As ethical hunters, we owe it to the game to make a clean, one shot, game down harvest. If we miss the clean shot, and wound the animal, I would hope that we had a round with enough energy to at least drop the animal and have a follow up kill shot to take it, rather than following a poor blood trail for miles and lose an animal to infection or the coyotes.


JMHO


Jeff

John: I am quite sure of what you said regarding the 243. That said, I think it's not a wise move on game of that size. As to Bell, and by his own admission, he lost a lot of tuskers because of those small calibers and he readily admitted the advantage of the Nitro doubles for that application. j

?? Where did you read that Bell stated he lost many bulls using his 7x57..?..how can that be when Bell wrote the 7x57 worked admirably
on so many bulls? Bell purchased 6 Rigby 7x57 mausers, why would he do this if they were consistent duds on elephant?

btw: His favorite ele drilling kit before the 7x57, was his stubby Daniel Frazer .256 Mannlicher carbine....
which he purchased after his long barrelled Gibbs .256 Mannlicher.

this from Bell,

" Speaking personally, my greatest successes have been obtained
with the 7 mm. Rigby-Mauser or 276, with the old round-nosed solid,
..It seemed to show a remarkable aptitude for finding the brain of an elephant. "
-- Wanderings Of An Elephant Hunter., WDM Bell.



?? Where exactly did Bell supposedly make those two admissions...?

this from Bell,

" For the style of killing which appeals to me most the light calibres
are undoubtedly superior to the heavy. In this style you keep perfectly
cool and are never in a hurry. You never fire unless you can clearly see
your way to place the bullet in a vital spot. That done the calibre of the
bullet makes no difference. But to some men of different temperament
this style is not suited. They cannot or will not control the desire to shoot
almost on sight if close to the game. For these the largest bores are none
too big. If I belonged to this school I would have had built a much more
powerful weapon than the -600 bores. " -- WDM Bell, Wanderings OF AN Elephant Hunter.


" At one time I used a double -45 0-400. It was a beautiful weapon, but heavy.
Its drawbacks I found were : it was slow for the third and succeeding shots ; it was noisy ;
the cartridges weighed too much ; the strikers broke if a shade too hard or flattened and cut
the cap if a shade too soft ; the caps of the cartridges were quite unreliable ; and finally, if any
sand, grit or vegetation happened to fall on to the breech faces as you tore along you were done ;
you could not close it. Grit especially was liable to do this when following an elephant which had
had a mud bath, leaving the vegetation covered with it as he passed along. This would soon dry
and tumble off at the least touch."
-- WDM Bell, Wanderings of An elephant Hunter.

I specifically referred to the up & close personal act of killing a living beast,
not just chopping up the lifeless inert carcass like you would in a butcher shop,
two different things in my mind.

Whether I killed an animal at a few feet or 500 yards I've never felt much difference in the "brutal intimacy" of the act itself. Maybe that is because of the mindset I have about killing them in the first place, which is to respect the life I am attempting to take. Dismembering the animals, however, is always brutally intimate, whether it is doves or elk or something in-between.

More than a few times I have passed on extremely long or difficult shots and gone home empty-handed as a result. The longest of those shots were well beyond my capability and the most difficult have been as close as 100 yards. I do think that many people taking shots in such conditions have little or no respect for the animal itself. That isn't a problem of range so much as it is the mindset of the hunter.

YMMV

Once April Fools is over, dredging up another topic to flog seems to be the Soup du jour...

The joke's on you and your buddies.......

There is a reference to Bell in Terry Wieland's book. "Rifles for Africa" on page 71-73 as to the reasons why he chose and eventually dropped the 7X57 in favor of the 318, WR, 350 Rigby and eventually the 416. In the doubles, I was indeed mistaken, as I was thinking of Taylor and not Bell. But his quotes are there in Wieland's book as to the wounding and losing elephant, and the real reason as to why he initially hunted wit the 7X57.

Good post CH. A guy needs to know his limitations. If he doesn't, he needs to be practicing a whole hell of a lot more. A poor shot at short distance is just as bad as a poor shot at long range as far as I'm concerned. However, if you know you can make the shot (with 100% certainty), it doesn't matter what range or how far the shot is...