Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting what your back-up ELK rifle and WHY?

It varies from year to year given some new acqusitions, but is always my second most accurate unit. About any caliber will do the job with good placement.

Back up is a 35 Whelen or 338 mag, primary 300WSM.

I have never taken a backup rifle and,luckily,I have never needed one.Iffin I break mine,I'll just be camp cook and shoot the ones that run through camp with my pistols.

A good friend broke the stock on his .338 last year and kept hunting to get a nice 6X6 but he said that .338 kicks like a mule in pistol form.

Jayco

I have never seen so many whelen fans in one place like i have on the campfire, nice! my go to rifle is a 30-378 wby, and back up is a rem 700 in 35 whelen, pushing 250 gr. speer's.

Naaa... no way! It'd just be a big push!

(through my ribcage or forehead, most likely!)

-jeff

My primary Elk rifle is my .35 Whelen (custom barrel) Sako AV Classic. My backup (never used) is the SMLE #4 .303 that we keep in camp as a "bear gun". My brother used it last year when he forgot to pack the bolt on his Sako 30-06. I had to laugh at him bringing along $1400 of useless rifle and scope, but that $50 .303 still works like it always did!

almost every year someone either forgets thier ammo,slips and damages or busts a scope or for some reason can,t use thier main rifle, we have used a 45/70 marlin,35 whelen and 358 BLR most years as a camp back-up rifle and curiously guys useing those rifles tend to get very good results, so much so that many guy go out after hunts and buy thier own 45/70 marlin,35 whelen and 358 BLR.
the better success rates probably due to the preception that those are all (MEDIUM RANGE) rifles, and generally have a 2.5X or at most a 4X scope mounted, and the guys not familiar with them tend to want to get in closer before firing on game....never a bad idea!

I used to get a lot of static about taking two guns to elk or deer camp, but like 340 mag said it does no good to be a couple of hundred miles from home and have 'ole Murphy show up and for one reason or another your rifle goes south and you don't have a backup. It happened to me last fall as my scope went South, but I had both the 300 Wea. Mag and the 7mm-08 in camp although I wasn't able to continue the hunt as my wife also literally went south when she tried to take out a cedar tree with her SUV.

With that said I always take a backup when hunting away from home as it's not only saved my hunt,but it's saved the hunt for others in my hunting camp.

I have noticed that only three people on this thread take a primary and secondary that shoot the same ammo. I would have thought this would be a more common practice.

and what fun would that be?

______________________
Notropis,
For myself, IF I do take a backup rifle and it's a different caliber..( .300 Savage & 6,5x55 Swede) the rifles are both sighted in for what I expect to be my max distance( 250 yards) and the bullets and loads will 'print' anywhere in that range so close to the different caliber that I don't have to 'think' about anything..Scopes, triggers, LOP etc are virtually identical.

I do agree that for some, having a 'clone' rifle as backup would be best tho..Jim

My primary rifle is a .340 weatherby, with a back-up of .338/378 KT built on a .378 weatherby action.

Well... I might be one of three, dunno how I phrased my first answer to this about 4 pages back <g>.

My primary is a .325 Kimber. My other primary MIGHT be a BLR in 325. It depends on where I'm headed.

Generally I don't like having two of the same caliber rifle around. It complicates reloading a bunch, and besides it's fun to dink with new stuff. Or different stuff at least. I've had two 7mm-08s, and two .358's, and it was a pain.

Having two .325's has kept me from getting too cute with minutia like overall length when reloading. I just load stuff to SAAMI specs, and if it shoots good in both rifles, great! If not, I'm more likely to try a different bullet or something than try to micromanage a load that might rock in one rifle and literally blow the other one up or something!

Anyway... just some thoughts...

-jeff

I certainly see the wisdom and fun of having rifles that shoot different ammo, especially if you may be hunting in a variety of terrains or for more than one species. After over 45 years of hunting whitetails, I will begin my elk hunting career this September and I plan on taking rifles of two different chamberings since I will also be going after antelope. I plan on driving to the hunting location and will, therefore, have plenty of room for rifles and ammo. If I were flying, however, I would have to consider weight restrictions more carefully and would probably go with one chambering and, perhaps, only bring one rifle.

At this time I plan on taking a .325WSM and a .270WSM. That is subject to change.

The backup for Eastern elk camp has been an '06 for quite some time. It has been used several times for what that is worth.

They are powerful enough for any elk, they tend to be lighter than the magnums a couple of us use, most of us still use an '06 for something like them and are familiar with the trajectory, they don't kick too much for any of us and finally because it uses a different cartridge I have a better chance of showing up with ammo for one of the rifles if a screwup happens.

I use a Savage in .30-06 for my primary elk rifle and use a Mrlin 336 in .35 Rem for my backup. Sometimes my .35 Rem is my primary rifle depending on where I am hunting. I get into some pretty thick stuff where the Marlin wins hands down.

I have a 338 Custom rifle and several backup rifles, but mostly I only pack in one rifle, it has iron sights in case the scope goes heywire..If I have enough pack horses then I'd probably take my 06 along...

Primary is my .338WM but my backup would have to be my Howa .270 I picked up last summer....it's deadly accurate.

I hunt elk less then two hour from home so I dont take a backup rifle, if I have a problem with a rifle then I just go home and get another one. On some out of state hunts I bring along a backup rifle but I dont have a set in stone primary or backup elk rifle.

Primary Elk Rifle: 308 win

Backup Elk Rifle: 308 win (BLR)

Third Elk rifle: 308 win.

I see a trend . . . . . . .

BMT