peeshooter,
Gee, lemme see. I have not only taken bull elk with the .300 Winchester Magnum, but the two other most popular .300 magnums, the WSM and Weatherby, at ranges from 75 to 400 yards. Have also use used the .300 Winchester to take around a dozen species of big game in four western states and five other countries, including New Zealand, Mexico, Canada and a couple in Africa. My primary "scope test" rifle is a Heym SR-21 in .300 Winchester Magnum, which averages under 1/2" for 3-shot groups at 100 yards, using a load combining H1000 with the 210-grain Berger VLD at around 2950 fps. This provides enough accuracy AND recoil to soon reveal any scope defects.
But I have also observed a lot of other people shooting .300 magnums. Among the most revealing observations was a month-long hunt in South Africa, where I, plus a dozen other hunters (in two "shifts" of two weeks each), took close to 200 animals. Several of the other guys brought .300 magnums as either their "light" or "heavy" rifles, mostly Winchesters but also one WSM. A couple shot them well throughout the hunt, but others ended up started to flinch, mostly because they were taking far more animals than on a typical North American hunt. A couple recognized the problem and switched to their lighter rifle, but one only brought a relatively lightweight .300, and by the second week of his hunt was not shooting well at all.
In fact, the last animal he shot was a kudu bull at 200 yards, which ran off leaving a sparse blood trail, which soon ended, and even a couple of excellent trackers could not find the bull. It was discovered a week later, after the hunter had already flown back to the U.S., by smell. It had been hit through the lower jaw, and died of thirst.
I brought a 7x57 and 9.3x62 as my primary rifles, but also used a .300 Winchester Magnum belonging to one of my hunting partners to test a new bullet, taking animals from springbok to gemsbok out to 400 yards. Also used a .22-250 and another .300 Winchester belonging to one of the PH's to take some more game, partly because he was very intrigued by the performance of the new bullet. He wanted to recover one, and until that point none had stopped inside an animal. So we looked for a blue wildebeest standing in the right position to shoot it in the big shoulder joint as it stood quartering to us. Luckily, wildebeest often end up in that position, and when one did I put the bullet in the middle of the joint, and we found it under the hide at the rear of the ribcage on the opposite side,
But my experience is that the majority of hunters cannot shoot .300s very well, even without going on an extended safari. That is not just my opinion, but that of the late Finn Aagaard, who co-owned a safari company in Kenya before moving to Texas to guide in 1977, after Kenya banned big game hunting. I knew Finn pretty well, and he said only about a third of his clients who brought .300 magnums (most the .300 Winchester) could consistently kill big game cleanly. My rancher friend John Stuver, who is also a long-time Montana outfitter and guide, puts the percentage even lower. He says only about 20% of his clients who bring .300s can shoot well enough to cleanly kill pronghorn and mule deer at 200 yards.
So no, I am not naive or arrogant enough to believe that because I can shoot .300 magnums well, that everybody else can.
