Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Smallish bore rifles on elk?

Guy, I'm with Dogzapper on this totally! I love the 25/06 and if I were to have to use one the rest of my life for all big game hunting (that I'll likely do) well I'd be totally fine with it.

IME the 25/06 is one heck of a killing machine!

I'd like to get a Forbes rifle or rebarrel one of my 70's and wrap a Bansner around it and chamber it for 25/06. Pastor Dan from the Fire sold me 4 boxes of 117 Noz semi's and I'd load them and 7828 and get to filling arks.

The 100 Horn and 7828 is my all time accurate and killing machine load for the 25/06 and 257 Wby.

Long and the short, if the bullets directed properly then the critters going to Croak City Wyoming rather quickly...

Dober

Guy, knowing your background I'd have no problem with you hunting elk with a .25-06, but others might be tempted to shoot outside their range. The .25-06 is a great long range caliber for antelope and coyotes but not elk. A few years ago I drew a special elk tag and it caught me between gun trades. I didn't own anything in a .30. My hunting partner -- and a game warden captain -- suggested I use the .25-06 I owned at the time. I chose not to but only because I didn't want to pack it's bull barrel. I used my Guide Gun instead. But I'm sure the .25-06 would have done the job.

I do,but my minimum is .30 cal ie .308,30-06 and larger.

I'm sure that the Guide gun worked like a charm. However my experience on elk is different than yours and I do feel its a good long range caliber for elk. I've seen a lot of elk taken with the 25/06 and have a couple of buds who've taken a lot of elk with a 25/06 at long, short, close or whatever range.

What is it in your experience of taking elk with a 25/06 that has made you uneasy about it on elk at long range? Personally I feel it's pretty much in the same league as a .270 and that's for sure a fine elk round at any sane range...

Thx
Dober

My first time using a 264 win mag I had a shot skip off the ribs of an elk quartering away. The spotter saw a huge plume of hair and it knocked the bull down.
We couldn't believe it when he got back up.

caliber - I think the 264 was just fine. No blame there. Prolly could have happened with any caliber.
shot placement - Biggest factor no doubt. I have to own that. He was more than quartering away but yet I did have a shot into the upper ribs.
distance - I believe a contributing factor. 490 yds. My personal feeling is a lot of bullet energy lost.
bullet - possibly a factor. 140 gr Berger VLD.

Killed him the next morning at the exact same distance with a better placed shot. Same cartridge.




Took the hide off and found a big black and blue bruise above the ribs where the shot had glanced off. Photo is the kill shot. I should have photographed the external bruise.

Alamosa-I totally love the perro in your avitar!

Dober

Sorry Gravestone, I couldn't pass on that statement. Here's a pic of a target that I shot with my .270 Win and another with my .300 Weatherby. I know, there's 4 shots with the .270 and only 3 with the Bee, but my 2 sight check shots in South Africa and 2 more after I got back home (on different targets) were all in the same place as these 3. I love my .300 Weatherby!!


As for the original question on "Smallish bore rifles on elk?", I killed my second best 6pt bull with a single 117 gr Sierra GamdKing bullet from my .257 Ackley. He literally dropped dead in his tracks. I used to work with a guy that regularly killed his elk with his .25-06, and I was with him one year when he did. I have several other friends (including Scenarshooter, on this forum) who regularly kill their elk with their .22-250s and .220 Swifts.

As others have posted, shot placement with a bullet tough enough to reach the vitals trumps everything else.

Thanks. He goes everywhere with me.

Mark, my concern at long-range is simply bullet placement. If one is experienced with the cartridge and experienced at hunting elk I'm sure its fine, which is what I meant to say in referencing Guy's background.
john

That's nice shooting buffybr but i think that you're more of the "exception" rather than the the "rule". I've been at the range so many times where i see people struggling with a 300WM then pick-up their 308 and get nice groups.

I used to pack a 25-06 loaded with Nosler 120g Partitions. It knocked down a lot of cow and spike elk. I never tried it on a big bull, usually taking a bigger caliber on those hunts.

I broke the stock on that rifle one hunt slipping on ice and decided to try something different and bought a 270WSM that has killed a bunch of elk since I bought it in 2002 with 140g Barnes TSX bullets.

I love shooting the 25-06. And I think it is a heck of a antelope/mule deer gun, But I'm happy now shooting a little bigger slug in the 270WSM.

Guy,
Local family has had over 60+ head of elk hit the freezer via one of your favorite. The 25-06! If I had to guess I'd wager the bullet of choice is prolly a Hornady. I could be wrong. Regardless its a father and his two son's that pile up elk every year. Their biggest a 380+ bull. My son connected on a cow elk with a .260. Lead cow dead run 100yds broadside. BOOM! Dead! withing 3 steps she was on her chin. She flipped and rolled. Went 20yds. 260rem 140 NP. My son shoots clays at 400yds with his 25-06 and 115 partitions and hits come pretty easy. Very accurate rifle. He'd shoot at an elk to 500 giving the chance. Have seen the .260 and 260AI flatten extremely heavy bodied mule deer bucks(as big as they get) with ease.

I can't pass that statement up either.. Sounds like gravestone is talking out his azz.....

Les Bowman wrote in one of his articles way back in the 60's that most of the hunters coming out to hunt elk would be much better served by a 243 or 257 than they were the magnum rifles they were bringing with them.
Bob Milek championed the 257 and 25-06 as good elk guns.
True then true today.

I'm a much better 30-06 shooter today than I used to be. Thanks to the .260rem.

I shoot my 340 Wby just as accurately as my 25-06...if not more so. Both have killed elk with ease...Just took a mature cow elk last week via 340 Wby at close to or maybe exceeding 300 yards.

As a matter of fact i'm headed to Argentina in March for stag and fully intend on bringing my 25-06. I have no worries, though I do prefer a stout bullet.

The 25-06 is one of those rounds that kills better than it "should".

Last month I watch my best bud and his neighbor both down their 4x5 bulls with 6.5x284 and 140 VLD's. My buds was DRT at 275 yds and his neighbors was the same distance where the bull was very sick at the shot and hobbled about 40 yds before dropping.

Alan

I remember the '60s very well. Back then all the hype was velocity and hydrostatic shock. That was all you saw in the magazines. A lot of guys were shooting small-fasts with pretty lousy bullets, too.

Much of what was touted was BS, and some was accurate.

Not much has changed , look at all the BS in this thread posted by folks that don't have a ton of real experience.....
Best I can tell you is that back in the 60's it wasn't unusual to have 15 or 16 bulls, a couple of moose and a dozen deer on the meat poles by the end of the 3rd day of season. The biggest gun you might find in camp was an 06, unless someones army buddy from California or such showed up with some sort of belted magnum cartridge (they usually went home empty... always seemed to be a "problem" with the scope....) Lots of 243,250,257,270 an occasion 7x57 or 6.5 swede or a liberated 98 or carcano, and a couple of 30-40's. Not much for cripples (except the visitor with the bad scope)...
Put a sub thirty cal bullet thru an elks lungs it's gonna die, shoot it in the ass with a "suitable" cartridge, and it might die, but chances are it'll be quite awhile after you've gone home and bitched about bad bullet performance on the internet forums....

29 yrs back in Montana, I hit a big 6pt bull "Park" bull through the shoulders once and lungs 2x with the 180 NP from my 30-06 at 100 yds. He never even twitched. I thought I was missing him. He finally got rubbery legs when the 4th shot raked up through his left flank and stopped under the right brisket hide.

Alan