Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Your elk hunting rig

Yes and the more you frequent elk country, the more you act like the locals.

I have a custom Rem 700 300RUM since '99. It started out as a Rem custom shop AK wilderness rifle, and in 09 I had it rebuilt. It's little heavier, but has a fluted 27.5" lilja barrel. I've always shot 200 Accubonds, but yesterday I shot a .3" group with the 208 Amax. I recently put a Bushnell LRHS on it. I will walk as far as any elk hunter I know, and a 9lb rifle goes against the grain of most backpackers, but one thing I know is elk absolutely HATE my rifle choice. This year, will be no different if I don't kill one during archery season first.
Tack driving 208 Amax doing 3100+ .. look out.

I slum a 308 also...

Usually a .308 with TTSX or NP. Sometimes a 358Win with old style Silvertips.

Elk make a dandy excuse to go buy a bigger rifle!

i'll use anything from 264 to 375

Reminds me of a sig line I read here, "Joe Average is over scoped, over head stamped and under bulleted." Very true in my opinion.

The only reason I have a 300Win Mag is because I got a great buy on it, but I've been considering selling it on the classifieds and going with a Kimber Montana or Weatherby Ultra Light in 270Win.

My BIL goes to Saskatchewan every year for whitetail and the guides there frown on anything below a 300 Mag. I asked him if the deer wore body armor North of the border.

Any good caliber from 26 to 338 will work if you put the time in shooting it. The thing about elk hunting and mileage is not so much how far you walk mileage wise but elevation covered. I cover about 3 to 5 miles a day from my pickup, but it is what is in those 3 to 5 miles that makes it uncomfortable for most people. And it is all fun and games smelling the pine needles and watching the birds and generally enjoying the outdoors. Until you pull the trigger and realize you have just filled your tag. You are pumped up and all excited until you reach the animal and start trying to wrestle it around to get it tied to a tree so it does not continue rolling further down the hill. At that time you begin to look around at where you are at, how far you are from your pickup, what time of day it is and most of all how fricking big this animal really is. But at the end of the day or days when you have it all loaded in your rig and headed home exhausted, sore, wanting a shower and a comfortable bed you realize that you would not trade it for anything in the world. That is why we elk hunt.

Used a 10lb M70 300Win M on the first one and a Chainsaw to get the truck in there to get him out. The second a M700 ss in 300 Win Mag with 180 NPT's same as the first. He came out 4 trips on a Camp Trails freighter frame. The next 2 were taken with 225 gr NPT's out of a M77RS in 35 Whelen. 6x on the first 2 and a Vx 3 2.5x8 on the last 2. Last elk tag didn't produce an elk carried my old M700 7mm Rem mag loaded with old 175 NPT's but you can't shoot them if they aren't there when you are. 3-5 miles a day with no where the elev most guys have described. Times have changed and so have access rules where I hunt,got the last 2 out in 1 piece by myself with some legal but hard use of a 4wd and chainsaw for cutting downed trees. If a guy can use his truck to get back in I allways have lots of rope and a comealong or 2 with the truck. I bought that Freighter frame in 1979 and it still works for me. Has packed a lot of deer and antelope where that is the way you have to do it. The Cabelas Alaskan appears to be a clone of it. Where you put the bullet is still more important than what you use to put in the elk. I went to the 35 Whelen and 225 gr NPT's for less meat loss and it works well at that. Magnum Man

I either take a 7mm or 300 in a few different flavors.
I'm trying to get rid of my 300 RUM, but I just can't seem to do it yet.

Your are probably on target with that statement. Up until 4 years ago, I only used a 30-06 with 180g partitions.

I bought my first 300 RUM from a "visitor" after he realized that the longest shot he would take might be 125 yards

I spread it around, using a rifle to kill an elk then using another rifle on the next one. So far have used cartridges from .270 Winchester to .300 Weatherby, but will probably use some sort of 6.5 this coming season, or maybe a .25. My wife tends to stick to one rifle. She used the .270 until this past fall, when she used a .257 Roberts. So far they've all worked fine. The biggie is finding a rifle you want to pack around for a while in steep country, maybe in your hands when the elk are in the timber.

yes the various magazine articles have done an amazing job of convincing readers that elk hunting requires the ability to make 400yard and longer shots and that exceptionally flat trajectory is a huge benefit in selecting an elk rifle, when I started hunting elk the old geezers, that were my mentors almost insisted I buy a 760 rem pump in 30/06 and use 220 grain peters or remington ammo,and site in at 3.5" high at 100 yards, as they swore it was the ideal combo, even at 19 years old I questioned that advice after years of reading O,connor , wooters, etc. but after 45 years of hunting elk I can think of only two I shot that combo might have been less that capable of taking, almost without exception Ive killed elk well UNDER 300 yards.
since I was their guest on the first few hunts and THEY had been very successful for decades I grudgingly accepted their advice and looking back I could have saved a wheel barrow of cash if Id stuck to that original rifle, but then I had a great deal of fun , and gained a ton of experience,with a dozen rifles in the process over 45 plus years learning and accepting that fact too.
now I've found rifles and calibers I think work better, and Ive sure been amazed at what other guys have used very successfully to take elk, but I doubt the results would have changed if Id stuck with that one rifle,or swapped to a 270 win or anything in between up too a 458 winchester , but what fun would not trying out new rifles be?

I took a lot of "long range" game in the 80's and 90's without turrets or ballistic reticles by simply knowing trajectories and the size of the critters I was hunting. There are a whole hat load of standard cartridges that with a 225 to 250-yard zero (~ 3" high at a hundred) are 5-8" low at three hundred, 16-20" down at four. They are then down about 33-36" at five hundred yards.

Long shots without contentious winds were on calm, broadside venison whose average size made hold-over very doable. While a little retro-, this still works.

I agree 340. I still have the rifle ( 30-06) that I killed my first elk with almost 30 years ago. The reason why I bought it. Something new and shiny... even thought most of the elk I have taken were under 125 yards.... yes I am a closet gun slut

I have several elk hunting rigs including 300 Win Mag, 358 Win, 9.3x62 and recently acquired a 7mm-08. My two current favorites are:

Browning X-Bolt 300 Win Mag w/ Nikon 3-9x40 BDC using 180 grain NP PP
Ruger M77 358 Win w/2-7x33 Leuplold VX2 using 225 NP Sptizers

I do like the power and accuracy of the CZ 9.3 but it is a bit heavy for mountain hunting though still very useable (I'm an older hunter and weight counts). This year (my 5th elk hunt) I may try the Tikka T3 7mm-08. It has a Redfield 3-9x42 scope and I'm narrowing down the hand load. It will likely be either a 150 grain NP Spitzer or 145 grain Speer Grand Slam. I have yet to take an elk so hopefully this year will be different as we are trying for a 1st rifle season hunt in CO instead of our normal 2nd season hunts.

Sako 75 finnlight
300 win mag (180 gr. TSX)
Leupold vx3 (4.5 - 14 x 40) with varmint reticle
Good out to 600 yards. :-)

Took my first elk with a custom 270wby Mark V. Accurate, but heavy SOB, sold.

Then came an ULA 7RM, perfect but sold.
Then came a custom 700 in 7STW and a T3 superlite in 30-06. I have a little higher mag scopes than most, as we can only shoot 3 point or better bulls. And in the NW we have lots of rain/fog so seeing whether its a 2 or 3 pt 300 yards away is tough. I have a Z6i 2-12 on the stw and Z5 3.5-18 on the 30-06.

I'd call my terrain "foothills", but it sure as hell ain't flat. I walk between 4-7 miles on an average day.

I was witness to another elk rifle at work this past year, 3 bulls, all big ones, all taken well off the beaten path. It's a 12lb rifle chambered in .284. Ranges were 190, 530, and 1089m.

Non-traditional rifle, non-traditional results.

Rem 700 .270 shooting 140 gr Nosler Btip. 3-9x40 Lupy. All shots under 100 yds in heavy timber. Elk hate it.