Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Are premium bullets needed for elk?

MtnHtr,

That 700lb + bull I mentioned? It was GMU61, third season, 1990, and about 15 years later lasered at 480 yds. No rangefinder, no ballistic reticle, no dialing. But I practiced out to 500 yds. That's the exception though, not the rule. I've killed three elk starting from that same spot in GMU61. The other two ended up less than 100 yds.

And I was going to bring this up. There are a LOT of places where I can glass elk, but they are 1000yds, or miles away, or somewhere in-between. By the time a guy makes his way over there and gets to see the elk again they are up close. In the canyon I shot that bull, the other side is so far away my rangefinder won't range it from rim to rim--not my KILO 2000, not my new Leica 2800.

The late seasons on the Plateau are more likely to encounter longish shots because the elk are more likely down in the oakbrush and PJ, but they are also more likely to be on private land. But with the dry, warm falls the past 20 years more times than not they have not been down as low most years (last two falls being an exception).

I wish I could think of the guy's name, but he was out of Delta and in the 80's and 90's when the 4th season was an OTC tag he killed some impressive bulls in GMU 62 west of Delta off the Delta-Nucla Rd. He worked with a friend of mine at the Meadow Gold processing plant.

In the 49 years I've been hunting elk, I've killed two elk 400 yds or more, two elk 300 yds or more. I've killed roughly 25 elk at less than a 100 yds, the rest somewhere in-between. The funny thing is since I started carrying a rangefinder 10+ years ago the only time I've ever used it was pronghorn hunting, and that's only when a rangefinder will reliably laser nonreflective fuzzy brown antelope on fuzzy brown prairie hillsides--which isn't all that often. But the veracity of rangefinders in long range shooting is a whole 'nother subject.