Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 375 H&H for elk thoughts....

memtb, why do you exclude the old 270 Gr Hornady Spire Point from long shots? In my experience the 270 Spire Point was better at longer ranges then it is at close range. When I used that bullet in Idaho for several elk I found the bullet would do very well putting elk on the ground "right now" but I always found bullet fragments where you can see how it was coming apart. I got exits, but the wounds and the meat on the off-side usually had some lead and copper pieces in it. Not so with the round nose bullet.
I have used both the spire point and the round nose and found the round nose to work better and even be a bit more accurate then it's pointy brother, but the spire point was good for carrying out to longer distances and held together once it got past 200 yards.

As a 375H&H fan I'd love to hear your experiences too.

I don't know how many elk I have killed exactly, but I am betting of that number, about 1/2 were killed with my 375 and the other half were killed with a mix of the following firearms: Four 270s, two 308s, one 300 Savage, two 30-06s, one 8X57, one 7MM Mag, one 7X57, one 300 Win Mag, one 308 Norma Mag, one 30-378 mag, two 300 H&H mags, two 44 Mag hand guns, one 454 Casull, one 416 Taylor, one 58 cal cap-lock Hawken and one 62 cal Flintlock. As I write this those are the ones I can remember off hand but I may have missed one or two also.

From my kills and a whole lot more that I have seen killed as a guide or just hunting with friends, I have come to appreciate a hole that goes clear through and exits, no matter the angle of the elk. What I have learned is that bullet construction becomes more important the faster a bullet is shot, and/or the smaller the bullet is in weight. Once you get to the 375H&H the problems with weird bullet paths and non-exits seemed to vanish completely.

While I do like large rifles, I am 100% convinced that anything from a 243 and up is a good for elk if they have "elk bullets" in them. I have personally seen 5 kills with 243s on elk and 2 were at over 400 yards, in which all 5 left exits. All were shot with Partitions and Barnes X bullets. One moose I saw killed with a Winchester Factory 100 grain 243 was heart shot and died within about 6 seconds. But when I helped my friend dress it out and cut it up for packing we found the bullet lost most of it's weight (38 grains was what we got back) and penetration was only about 14". Sure it killed the moose, but I would not recommend that bullet for such hunting. We used to kill cattle in the slaughter house with a 22 lr, but that doesn't mean a 22 LR would be good for hunting game up to 1600 pounds.

Anyway....like you I found the old Hornady's to be superbly accurate in my 1st barrel, and the RN was about 25% more accurate then the spire point. but both could keep all 4 shots inside a target about the size of a chicken egg at 200 yards without fail.
As I said in my earlier post, the 270- grain Spire Point, the 235 grain Speer and the 300 grain Sierra would all come apart to some degree, and the Sierra's shed their jackets most of the time. (In fact they did every time I used them) In a 270, 7MM or 30 cal the same degree of disintegration by percentage might have given me a problem, but with the 375 it's large and powerful enough that even the "bad bullets" work very well. For elk and anything smaller, I think it would be impossible to find a bullet that was not good enough in a 375H&H. Bad one are good. Good ones are outstanding.

I do not recommend the 375H&H as an elk gun for someone to go buy before they come out here to hunt elk. I tell them to use the rifle they have and shoot the best. The man is 98% of the equation. In hardware, look to bullets far more then you should look to rifles and "calibers".

But if they have a 375H&H already, and can shoot it well, they will never have a complaint about how well it will kill elk................or about any other N. American animal too. From rock-chucks and coyotes to moose and buffalo.