Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting What was toted around in your 2013 elk camp ???

Elk camp this year:

243 win. Friend has shot 30+ elk with his .243 including a cow this year.

7-08 that was used to kill 5 elk this year.

6.5/284 one elk shot with it this year.

7 RM one elk shot with it this year.

30/06 (x3) one elk shot with it this year.

I THINK MANY OF US BASE OUR RIFLE CHOICE ON OUR OWN EXPERIENCE AND THAT OF OTHERS WE HUNT WITH, for about 6 years MIKE who was one of the regulars in our elk hunting camp used a 7mm mag with 160 grain nosler bullets , one year he slipped and fell bending his scope on a hunt the first day and as a result was forced to borrow the camp back up rifle. A rifle which that year was a remington 7600 35 whelen loaded with 250 grain speers.
you would have thought he was being forced to bring the ugliest girl in the state to the prom,the way he looked at that rifle.
well that is until he was forced into using it, and shot a nice 4 point per side elk a couple days later, that elk was shot at about 180 yards and dropped like a sack of rocks when hit!, the result was that MIKE was VERY impressed, and bought a similar slide action 35 whelen, and has hunted with it every year since! as mike said
"the 7mm kills elk, the 35 whelen FLATTENS them"
now I,m sure a good deal of this is perception , as most of the elk MIKE shot previously with the 7mm mag ran a bit then piled up, and the first couple elk he hit with the 35 caliber dropped like damp towels,both rifles work, yet the perception was that the 35 seemed to get the job done far in excess of the ballistic tables suggested power level.

I carried a first model Newton rifle in 256 Newton loaded with 140gr partitions for a few trips until I figured out the ejector wasn't working right.



Ended up killing the elk with a first Model Newton chambered in 30 Newton loaded with 200gr partitions. (Same rifle but this was last years elk)



My partner used a Model 54 Schultz & Larsen in 7x61 Sharpe and Hart

someone earlier said that it seems people tend to use the bigger rifles in camp....well, in the western states the locals that go year after year, prefer the magnums because you know you may only get one chance every few years and it may be alot farther off then in the black timber...just saying to those .223 proponents out there that have a haystack on private property in states where its legal