[/quote]That location is exactly where my elk experiance happened and your 30-06 200gr Nosler experiance prompted me to try it out. Often things are really close range or one can shoot across canyons and clear cuts. Now i have grizzlies showing up on the trail cam and found buried moose carcass and some other activity. They arent behind every bush but some areas are extremely thick and i prefer my 338RCM or 30-06 in some of those areas but so far ive no incident and like it as such.
A few years ago i lived on a ranch outside a place called Big Timber. There were mule deer and antelope plenty. I suspose a 25 might be ideal on that place that was open with breaks and bluffs. I[/quote]
I can see why you're not a lighter cartridge fan, though my wife hunted elk in local grizzly country a few years, due to getting picked for an early season "damage" permit. I could have carried a rifle, but chose instead to pack a handgun and a can of bear spray.
She used her .257 Roberts to take a cow, maybe half an hour before the end of legal light, which worked fine. But it was a mile downhill from the road where we'd parked the pickup, and it took us until 10:00 at night to get the last load to the pickup. It occurred to me somewhere in there that a .257 might be a little on the light side for grizzly defense, though I suspect it might have worked with the 100-grain Barnes TTSX's she used.
Know the Big Timber area pretty well, and these days wouldn't be surprised to run into a grizzly around there.
But I also don't only hunt right around home. The .257 (or a .243, or whatever) is a highly effective cartridge for most hunting.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
