Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting ADEQUATE ELK CARTRIDGES

He also wrote the 30-30 is a poor deer cartridge a few years back. I wish AH would have less of him and use more JB.

Well, it worked for Elmer Keith didn't it? He is a legend and he was on a major power trip.

I can top that! I "harvested"a SKUNK with a combine way back in about 1954. Sure was glad it was near the end of the season as that machine still smelled of skunk that next spring!

Royce,

To my knowledge we have never met. But, you seem to think you know a lot about me. Just how many elk is it that you believe I have shot?

Bryce

Bryce (I'm assuming youe Bryce Towsley), I'm in the process of trying to move to northern VT. I currently live in PA. I really want to live in Vermont bad and have taken two Moose in Danville, one just last year. My only worry is that when I hunt deer up there I never see any. I generally hunt deer in Steam Mill Brook WMA or Danville. My question is, is there any good deer hunting in VT or is it just basically a "deer desert" like it appears to me? I'm no tracker like the Benoits and stand hunting doesn't seem to work for me up there. Any advice would be appreciated.

Dick,

I still don't see why you're so worked up over Bryce's article? Various writers have written basically the same stuff going back as far as I can tell since a hunters poll was taken in Washington State back in the 30s where the .30-06 was voted the overwhelming most popular cartridge in use for elk. With the Weatherby introduction of his magnums during WW2, the trend appeared set towards the 270Win with a 130bullet being discussed as on the lighter end, the '06 being the most popular, and flat shooting magnums being the choice on the top-end. My 1955 annual confirms this with the 270Win on the bottom, '06 in the middle, and the Weatherby 300 on the top-end. With the later invent of the 7mm, 300, and 338mags, to the best of my knowledge, every poll ever taken by Zwoll at the end of the last century had the top five elk cartridges as being those five with the 270 on the lighter end and the magnums on the top-end. The '06 seems to continue as the benchmark popular standard. Even all of my older reloading manuals when discussing the 270Win make recommendations to use the 150grain bullet when hunting elk as the 130 is on the light end. It is nothing new.

I did not take Bryce's article as saying that you cannot use a 30-30, or cannot use a longbow for that matter. I just took it as his opinions based on his experience of having enough gun. He clearly did a good job with the article as it has stirred up much debate on the topic and has encouraged quite a few to seek out and read his article.

I'd not get too wrapped around the axle over the article and I'd not take it as a long drawn out "treatise" that personally attacks anyone's beloved .30WCF or simple longbow.

Best:)

If I were looking for quality deer hunting I would not waste any time in northern Vermont. Or the rest of the state for that matter. Right now the populations in the northeast kingdom are extremely low. I don�t see that getting better soon, given the current land and wildlife management policies. It�s a shame. It�s my home state and I love to hunt here. In the past I spent a great deal of time in the Northeast Kingdom and I still make a couple of trips up to hunt every year, but not for deer anymore. Even in Rutland County where I live, a place that dominated deer hunting in VT for years, it�s hard to find a legal buck to shoot. We are a state with a long history of foolish and political deer management policies. Now with the land management moving more and more to a �hands off� position the habitat is suffering. The winter habitat is key here and our deer yards are all growing past productivity and logging practices for years have failed to create new winter habitat. The land simply can not sustain a decent deer population. On top of that the buck to do ratio is badly out of whack. It�s not good.
Sorry to bring bad news, but Vermont in many ways is a shallow shell of its former self and deer hunting is but one of many aspects of that.
On the other hand, if you have any other questions feel free to drop me an email through my website. www.brycetowsley.com. I am a native Vermonter and will be happy to answer what I can.

Thanks Bryce I appreciate your input.I was hoping I was just hunting the wrong places in northern VT but it sounds like that's just how it is. Sorry to all for hijacking the thread. In the spirit of stating on topic I wouldn't use any less than the .30-06 Husqvarna I use on Moose for Elk. And I'd be very tempted to get a .35 Whelen if I was going to make a habit of Elk hunting. Like Ruark said, "use enough gun".

For elk, my mantra is "use the most gun you can shoot well" and I think that's a fair statement. Not that (say) a .338 is necessary, but IF a person can shoot it well, I have yet to see a compelling argument for why (say) a .270 is a better elk rifle.

I have no idea nor do I care, but if you wish to hang your hat on the BS of FPE then you are not very bright about the subject of rating cartridge lethality

Or a compelling argument for more shooting practice.

Well as expected you have already turned to personal insults in your argument. This is why you don�t see me here much.

FYI, you missed the entire point anyway, perhaps I need smaller words?

Well anytime someone espouses anything magnum or anything big bore for hunting the "you can kill anything with a .22 whatever" come out of the woodwork. I hear it on every forum on the internet. "The Eskimos shoot Polar Bear with 22 Hornets" or "the natives get Moose with .22 shorts". Well maybe I'm exaggerating a little but the point stands. There is a lot of pride involved in taking a given game animal with a cartridge that is too small. And you only need to brag about the kills on the talk forum anyway right? The Elk that gets away from the .243 to the shoulder can be swept under the rug. Nobody was there to see it anyway. Oh, and I almost forgot; "the 30-30 is the best cartridge for everything from woodchucks to Grizzly bear" and "the .45-70 is an Elephant rifle". I think I have covered most of the internet misinformation. If I was a new hunter and only learned from reading talk forums I'd have avoided the .30-06 cartridge like the plague. After all, it's too powerful for everything in North America. The .243 is about right though. LOL.

Bryce
Actually, we have met- One time at a Sportsman Show in Vermont, and we talked briefly. Of course, I don't expect you to remember that.
Here is what I think you haven't shot many elk- I read your columns for many years when you were the editor of Vermont Sportsman and were still working for the telephone company. At that time, I don't believe you had done much, if any elk hunting. Years later, I read an article by you describing the travails you encountered on an elk hunt that was one of your first elk hunts. In that article you did not say how many elk you had taken. If you have taken two elk a year since then, that is still not many elk, to my way of thinking.
Why don't you tell us how many elk you have taken, and if it is more than a reasonable person would call "not many", I will offer my most sincere apologies. Don't know how to be more fair than that.

Sincerely

Fred Royce

Well,Jeff, we could always start with several thousand dead elk....and I will bet it kills way more than the 338 on an annual basis......

With all this debate, I was curious about these trends in elk cartridges, so I visited the RMEF official site to review the surveys. Wayne van Zwoll has conducted polls and written on elk cartridges in articles for RMEF for at least 20 years now. Just to recap his article on Elk Hunters Speak with the numbers from his 2006, 2007, and 2008 surveys, the top five cartridges used to kill the most elk are in this order:

Top dog was the .30-06, followed by the 300 Win. Mag., followed by the 7mm Rem. Mag., followed by the 338 Win. Mag., followed by the 270 Win., followed by the 300 Wby. Mag.

Very interesting as Zwoll�s data seems to reflect and confirm a pattern that has been steady since the intro of the Weatherby during WW2.

I think Jeff is exactly right. When I began hunting elk as a youngster in the early seventies I vividly remember the advice I received from my dad and several of his hunting buddies, "it's not so much the rifle as it is the rifleman". As I recall, every one of these experienced hunters used one rifle and one rifle only year after year. To a man, when I asked why they picked their particular rifle they all said something to the effect of, " I shoot it well and it packs enough punch.

The rifles that these fellows successfully used were varied but all were effective nonetheless. The list of calibers is as follows: 30-06, 270 Win., 264 Win. mag.,
25-06, 30-40 Krag, 308 Win., 7X57, 348 Win., 8X57, 300 Win. mag. and 300 Wby.

I've know some great hunters in my time, most of witch could care less what you come into camp shooting as long as you can shoot it well. I can tell ya when guys like huntsman22, DrHJH, Elkhunter76, walk into the field whats in their hand will kill elk and they can find elk, early/late season it don't matter. I'll bet they all have their favorite cal and the odds are there all diffrent.

How anyone can say any caliber is the best is just their guess.
I've kill something like 10 elk with a 270, I've never said it's the best just that it will kill elk afectively, they were just as dead as the ones I've kill with 375 H&H, 358 norma mags, 30-06 and a handful of other.

I've killed 3 elk and a couple bears with 100 grain muzzies(1 inch blades) from and an Alpine bow over the last 30 years so don't worry so much fellas about caliber worry more about placement of the holes.

For what it's worth, my personal minimum in terms of "adequate" is a 7mm-08. I have hunted elk with one, and though I didn't kill one I wasn't feeling unarmed out there.

There's going to be dozens of viable cartridges that are "less" than a 7-08 that I'm pretty sure will kill an elk... but for an any-elk, any-conditions, tag-I-care-about "minimum adequate rifle", there's mine.

It's also the minimum I'd give my kid if she comes elk hunting with me.