My wife Eileen Clarke already made her choice. She used her custom Kilimanjaro (formerly Serengeti) .308 Winchester to take a mature cow at around 200-250 yards on an early elk-damage hunt on a local ranch. The scope was a Leupold 3.5-10x40 VX-III, the load a 130 Barnes TTSX at around 2900 fps. The angle was just about broadside, and at the shot the cow staggered, obviously done for, and went down in 25-30 yards. Eileen put the bullet just about exactly halfway up the chest, just behind the shoulders. (Yes, they were the front shoulders.) We recovered the bullet under the hide on the far side, and interestingly enough it lost more weight than any of the other Barnes X's we've recovered over the years. All its petals were gone, and it weighed 80.5 grains, 62% weight retention, yet killed the elk very quickly. (By the way, she took another cow on a damage hunt a couple years ago, again using a TTSX--a 100-grain from her NULA .257 Roberts. That cow dropped right where it was hit, probably because the bullet ticked the bottom of the spinal column, while also going through both lungs.)

My primary elk hunt this fall will be in the Ennis, Montana area in mid-November. Will be using another .308, a Mossberg Patriot with a 1-6x Eotech scope, and 165-grain Tipped Trophy Bondeds handloaded to about 2750 fps. But also have a local cow tag and may try to fill it too. Have several other rifles ready to go, ranging from 6.5 Creedmoor to .30-06, including my 26 Nosler. Who knows?

“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck