• Rifle with scope and sling must be under 8lbs
• At least .30 caliber
• No porting, brakes, or other superfluous hardware
• Non-glare stainless steel in a good pillar bedded synthetic stock
• 22” barrels—except in the magnums that need a 24” barrel for velocity
• Simple trigger group, bolt and safety designs
• Shoot flat enough that 2” high at 100 ensures that holding high hair at 300 yds will put it in the vitals
• Iron back up sights
• Scope with an objective no larger than 40mms held with field detachable mounts (scabbard friendly)
• Shoot premium bullets under 1.5” throughout the entire temperature range that can be encountered
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I'd agree on much of this, but not all.
Few of my elk rifles have weighted under 8 pounds field ready, but I never felt 8.5 to 9.5 was too much. So the ideal would possible be 8 pounds and less, but most men would not like a 30 cal over a 30-06 in a light gun and practice is the key, (improving marksmanship) not gear.
Stainless? In Idaho where I killed many elk, I would have loved stainless. In Oregon or Washington too. But I don;'t own a stainless rifle, and I have not even thought I needed one for my hunting in Wyoming or Montana. Again, if the ideal is being reached for, stainless would be nice, but not necessary.
Flat shooting: Again something that will not work against you in any way, but is way overrated for first time elk hunters. I don't know how many elk I have killed in the last 46 years exactly and I could not count the ones I have seen killed by friends and clients. My longest shot ever on any elk was about 400 yards. I did use a 270 on that elk, but if I had been holding my 375, or my 9,3X57, or 9.3X74R, or my 308 or any of my 30-06s I am sure the results would have been a dead elk all the same. The tripe you see on TV is mostly just that. In the total of elk I have killed of seen killed I have seen about 10 shots over 500 yards and I have seen about 8 more farther then 500 and NONE of them were necessary. All the 500+ shots could easily have been made at closer ranges, but the bragging rights of the hunters became important to them, and they wanted to shoot at those ranges.
Of all the elk I have killed in my 46 years of hunting them I'd guess I have killed 1/3 of them with my 375H&H. The other 2/3 were spread out from cartridges from 270 Winchester, 270 Short mag, 7X57 Mauser, 30-06, 308 Winchester, 300 Win Mag, 308 Norma mag, 300 H&H mag, 8X57 Mauser, 338-06, 338 Win mag, 348 Winchester, 9.3X74R, 44 magnum handguns, 454 Casull handgun, 62 caliber flintlock and I am probably forgetting a few as I write this list. Some are flat shooting and many are not. Other then my flintlock and one time with a 44 mag revolver , I have never had the mind set that what I had in my hands didn't shoot flat enough. And in those 2 times I still killed elk, one when I got a bit closer with the 62 cal flintier, and once when I had another elk get closer to me when I was hunting with my Ruger Super Blackhawk. So even those 2 times, I still got an elk.
If you are going to buy a new elk rifle I would say a flat shooter is just fine, but it's not as much an advantage as some would have you believe.
Premium Bullets.
Usually a good idea, but remember it's the hole the bullet makes, not the bullet itself that does the killing. Many Cup-and Core bullets work very well on even large bulls, but if you don't have 1st person knowledge of a particular bullet at a certain velocity, falling back to the premium bullet is not a bad thing to do. A Winchester Power Point may do just as good as a Nosler AccuBond, but the AccuBond will never do worse then the Power Point.. I don't always use "Premium Bullets", for 3 reasons.
#1. Such a bullet may not be needed.
This is usually true in calibers of 338 and larger. Not always however. I have killed a lot of game with a 9.3X74R and 13 of them were killed with 270 grain .366 bullets from Speer and ALL of them have come apart more then I'd like with one shattering so badly it went only 5" deep into the spine of a small white-tail buck (shot from above). Again, is is an argument for bonded-core, partition and sold Expanding bullet (if shot at ranges to insure impact at 2000 FPS and higher) If in doubt, and if you can get them, use premium bullets. So that leads me to reason #2.
#2. I can't get a suitable premium bullets for the gun I am using.
Sometimes they are available, but at such a price that rifle practice is not doable for anyone other then the very wealthy. (Somehow I have not found my name in the list of the most wealthy yet) I have seen this with my 6.5X54 Mann/Scho. My rifle will not feed spitzer bullet at any seating depth, being one of the old receivers that depends of the radius of the bullet nose to feed. So I have to use round nose bullets. The only ones I can find that work are the Hornady 160 grain RN, and a few imports from Norma and PPU. Same can be said for the .310 and .311 bore rifles so I can't get Nosler to make a partition in that size. Sales would not be high enough to sell them I guess.
#3. Velocity may not be high enough to make a premium bullet work any better and maybe not as good as a standard bullet. I have seen this with many rifles and about all handguns and muzzleloaders. If your impact velocity is going to be 1800 FPS and slower you'll often see cup-and Core or Cast bullets do BETTER then premium bullet. In this list you will find the 30-30, the 30-40 Krag with 180, 200 or 220 grains, the 303 Brit with 200 to 220 grain bullets, the 444 Marlin, the 44 mag, the 45-70, the 375 Winchester, the 38-55, the 35 Remington, 308 Winchester and 30-06 firing the heaviest bullet they handle well, 9.3X57 Mauser and a bunch more cartridges.
What I would say is that if someone were to use the list above they would not be disappointed as long as they can shoot that rifle well. If recoil of a 30 or larger caliber is enough to cause the buyer to flinch I would say it's best to go up 1-1.5 pounds, but overall the list is good. As you can see from my post, I don't think it's necessarily perfect, but it's close enough that a gun-buyer would not get a sub-standard hunting tool if he followed it.
