I was 14 when I killed my first bull elk. At last shooting light (maybe a touch later, I was a high schooler) I caught a glimpse of some critters standing in the middle of the long meadow my mom and I were driving through. My rifle was a 270 which I helped my dad build on a commercial Mauser action (I did most of the stock whittling). The load was an unknown to me amount of old T870 powder topped with a 160 Partition. At 75 yds the 1st shot hit him through the chest behind the left front leg, he jumped in the air and began to run in an arc back toward the timber. After the first 20 yards he did not look as if he was gonna slow down like a mulie normally would and I began to perceive I might loose him. So being the young whipper I was I proceeded to unload the rest of the magazine into him, the 2nd shot entered the ribs and plowed through to the front of his right shoulder, the 3rd shot clipped his right rear knee and pushed through the stomach and diaphragm and lodged below where the 2nd shot entered, the 4th and 5th shots all enter his chest on the right side and drove through to the meat of the left shoulder and were found under the hide. 5 shots in about 8 seconds, and he disappeared at the edge of the timber. I finally got a flashlight to work and we found him. The next morning I recovered 4 of the 5 bullets just under the hide and the only bones broken were ribs. The shots were all taken from 75 to 120 yds. Bullets were traveling about 2700 fps as that was about as much as you could get from that powder. All bullets performed as they were intended, nice mushrooms and they retained 35-50% of their weight, if only I had hit solid bone with one of them.
