My Dad and Uncle both used .300 Savages, and I hunted with my Dad's M99 for 17 years. Though I never took an elk, it was an honest 300 yard deer cartridge, reliable and hard-hitting. I would not be reluctant to take one elk hunting if I had a load with a good bullet and didn't try to stretch the range too much. I think there were more .300 Savages than any other cartridge in the farming community in which I grew up. In the 1960s and 1970s bolt actions were just not that popular among the farming/ranching folks. People thought the .300 Savage far more effective than a .30-30, and having used both, I agree.
Dad used to say that a man with a .300 Savage and a McCormick-Deering M could farm the whole country in the summer, and kill anything in Montana that walked in the fall. I tend to agree.
