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

Just because a cartridge is capable of killing elk does not mean anything larger is excessive or unnecessary. You can put in a lot of hours to get a shot on a big, public land bull. Maybe that shot is a hard quartering angle in the timber. You might not have time to move around and pick out a place to send a lesser bullet. That’s when the big boys earn their keep, but guys who hunt raghorns and cows in the open pretend they know it all.

The more you post, the more you show your reading comprehension is extremely low. Arguing with you would be an exercise in frustration and hilarity at the same time... if you really think you are so expert at this elk hunting thing and how big your bulls are, why don't you try proving to yourself that is true? Take a 30-06 or a 7-08 out and see if it will take down an elk as well as anything else. I'm sure an expert like you could easily kill an elk with a smaller cartridge than your 300 Weatherby .... or could you?

Bob

He said “equal or better.”

If you think elk hunting in AB is all flat-ground, “hump ‘em up and watch ‘em for miles”, then you’ve only experienced a very small part of elk hunting in the province.

Curious, have you hunted elk in AB, Jud? I know you’ve hunted MD here.

Please no Dick measuring contests!! Haha

Jordan, “your locale” being Calgary, never hunted elk there, though I could have. Seen a lot while huntin bucks in the prairies, Rocky Mountain front, foothills etc. is the boreal forest a top destination for bull elk?

Bob I’m not saying the rich guys are better hunters, elite etc. I’m saying they lay down hundreds of thousands of dollars per tag sometimes, they sure as hell ain’t slumming creeds, 08’s, 270’s etc. some of us are fortunate to hunt bulls every year, not waiting 5-20 years or more sometimes, the elk I hunt are hunted September through the middle of December, sometimes through March here by the house, just a guess but, going out on a limb here here, but they’re probably a shade more spooky than the limited entry elk, in states that don’t offer any general seasons, same could be said for Idaho, Montana and perhaps Wyoming, which has a lot of le elk units.

When my # comes up for trophy bulls in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, after 15 plus years of waiting, I’ll be toting my 338 or 300prc. Run whatcha brung!! 😘👍

Judman;
Good afternoon my friend, I hope Christmas was great for you and your family and that all are well.

Without a doubt I'm neither Jordan, nor anyone who can speak from any substantial personal experience about dropping elk, but here's a couple links to "get the juices flowing" on a frigid Monday if nothing else.

This one died east of Edmonton, so still in farm land for sure, but not super far south of the Canadian Shield or "bush" as we called it.



This is a Saskatchewan bull from just north of where I grew up and where we farmed before we drifted out here to BC. We knew there were big elk just north of us, but honestly I never began to fathom they got this big Jud...



The top one is a bow kill too by the way and I believe it was an '06 that the bottom fellow used, but that's just an "I think" and certainly not an "I know"....

Me, when I have an elk tag in my pocket - we're 6 point bulls only here - it's the same rifle I'll have when I'm chasing immature bull moose - 2 point or less on one side - which is a .308 Norma with 168gr TSX in it.

Mostly as I've been getting older and more rickety Jud, I'm paying way more attention to how far it is to where I can get the truck!

All the best to you all and Happy New Year.

Dwayne

Hell ya, couple hammers there Dewayne!! Thanks for sharin. Always scope out that herd on the west side of crows nest pass at that big coal mine on my way to Alberta.

You're holding out on us Dwayne!
Nice bulls, whomever those folks are!

My Coastal locale, which is a twin to Jud and Fred’s territory, has for as long as I’ve been in the woods hunting elk ~ magnum country for us native boys.

7mag, 7 STW, 300 Win, 300 Wby, 300 Rum, 338 Win, and the occasional 30-378 Wby.

Sure, there has been the 06, 270 Win, a few AI enhanced rigs along the way, with a slew of levers chambered in anything from a 30/30 thru 45/70 for dark timber.

Never mattered to me what another hunter carried. I found through my personal experiences hunting with a 7mag, and 300 Win, that I preferred the 300 Wby or RUM for Coastal elk.

🦫

Super bulls, Dwayne !

Hit em right...They’ll die.

🦫

Judman;
Thanks for the reply and you are most welcome on the photos.

That herd in Crownest and Sparwood... yah, I am familiar with that herd.....

For reasons that aren't clear to me whatsoever, my late father used to like to drive all night when he'd travel from BC back to where my brother was on the family farm in eastern Saskatchewan. Didn't matter what time of year either Jud, could be the dead of winter and after supper it'd be, "Well let's go Mom," and if I was along to drive, like I often did as Dad had a heart condition, it was also, "You want first shift Dwayne?"

It was AFTER supper Jud, about time for Dad's after supper nap, so naturally I'd always take first shift. Dad still liked to ask, maybe it was a ritual he enjoyed as he never seemed to tire of it...

So about by Lethbridge the snow has slowed down enough and Dad is maybe awake enough and I am dead beat as it's 3:00AM or thereabout so Dad takes over.

While I feel like I've just drifted off, it's nearly 2 hours to Crowsnest Pass and I hear Mom say, "Don't hit that elk!" and then "Don't hit those two elk over there!", to which Dad replies both times - I swear Jud - "What elk mother?"...

Well......

I look out the window and so help me there's a cow close enough that she can lick the road salt off of the rig!!!

Since I'm wide awake now, I rather forcefully suggest I'd better negotiate the icy mountain roads and play dodge the road elk with their camperized Toyota van. Oh, I didn't mention that's what we were piloting that trip...

For years at our house that trip was the subject of many debates between Mom and Dad where they'd disagree on how many elk were on the road and how close we'd come to Dad hitting one.

It's a guess on my part Jud and admittedly I was sleeping through the initial part of the herd, but if we didn't see at least 100 elk ON THE ROAD and in the town of Sparwood then I'm misremembering that night.

We stopped in Fernie, I gassed up the van and grabbed a couple big Coca Colas and kept it between the lines until we were nearly home. I want to say I made it to Grandforks and Dad drove the rest of the way home.

Thanks for the memories and the chuckle this afternoon Jud. Christmas was actually often the time "the great elk herd debate" would take place.

Happy New Year again to you and yours.

Dwayne

Thank you pard, and you too.👍

Love that country

Looks like I answered my own question Jordan. I also find it interesting we have over 2x the elk as Alberta with a fraction of the land mass.. the stuff google teaches a guy. 😂😂👍

T Inman;
Good afternoon to you my cyber friend, I hope you had a good Christmas and you're keeping the fire well stocked!

Since I'm in the mood to tell stories and I've already taken the thread all the way through the ditch, have run over the fence and we're now into the rhubarb...

It goes like this more or less how I recall it T.

A couple of avid hunter types are getting something non hunting related from this older Ukrainian farmer who is just on the Manitoba side of where that Saskatchewan bull comes from. He's north of a town near us called Roblin, MB which boasted a Ford auto dealership AND a farm implement dealership thank you very much!!

Not bad for maybe 3000 people then?

Anyways there they are at this farmer's place buying something and he's digging through an old wooden granary moving huge elk antlers out of the way to find this part.

The guys are absolutely gobsmacked at the size of one of the racks and ask if he's ever had it measured?

He asks them just what they mean by "measured" and then says, "That's not the big one anyways"

Well, as it turns out T, it wasn't...

Took him awhile to figure out which granary that one was in, took awhile longer for them to talk him into letting them take it to get measured and at that time it was something like the #2 all time in Manitoba. The really funny thing was that he couldn't even recall which year he'd killed it but he did think it was big enough not to let the dogs chew it up, so that's why it was in the granary.

We had a whopping set of whitetail antlers in our basement when I was a kid that we'd hang wet clothes on.

The Ukrainian neighbor had shot it one season with his 94 and his wife gave him so much grief over shooting a buck instead of a nice tasty doe that he gave the antlers to Dad.

I recall Mike telling Dad, "Well you know how Angie can be and she just won't let this one go Fred!"

I have no idea where those antlers are anymore T, but they were pretty big as I recall.

Thanks for reading and all the best to you in the New Year.

Dwayne

Driving back from a moose hunt in the Peace River area a few years ago, we drove straight through (21 hours) to get home in a reasonable time with two moose in the back of the truck so we could get them processed. We came south through I believe it was Glacier Park - it was 2:30 AM and I wasn't real awake at the time- and we had to keep an eye out for elk constantly. Some of the biggest elk I've ever seen were eating away in the ditches of the highway barely paying any attention to the vehicles going by. I thought sure it would be like mule deer and they would jump out at the last second into the road so I was keeping a sharp eye as we went....any of them would have been wall hangers...

Jud,
Up until a couple years ago I carried my 338 WM for elk after my son took over my 300 H&H AI, but just for kicks and giggles had a 26 Nosler built for the cross canyon shooting I find is most common on these public land hunts any more. With all the pressure they get in the couple units we hunt in the Blue Mountains you have to be prepared for anything.
Shot a medium spike last year and dropped him in his tracks, but won't know if this will be my full time elk cartridge yet until I knock a few more down and see how they do. When the only tags we can draw any more are spike only tags I'm pretty much stuck with what I can shoot at. Kills me to watch huge bulls wandering away while I am still looking for a spike to fill my tag....

Tried to hunt the coast range a few years and between practrically drowning from all the rain during elk season and getting run over by crowds of hunters I gave it up and started to hunt East in the mountains exclusively.... hills are pretty big but I'm getting too old to climb down into those canyons any more so I let the younger guys go down and I wait on top for the elk to come up....

Bob

Haha! Outstanding stories. Let’s get some strawberries to go with the rhubarb.

Copy that Bob. Gonna go eastside rifle next year, if no tags are drawn I’ll be stuck huntin spikes as well, which I won’t. Got a pile of “bull” points and several “ big bull” so I’ll roll the dice. Headed up to BC for moose, so unless I draw a bull tag I won’t take vacation to hunt spikes. The whelen or my 338 will be headed north for moose. 👍