So I just got back from an elk hunt in Wyoming where I carried my old standby, a .300 Wby 24" barrel with 3x18 Leupold VX-6HD. I have killed elk in 4 states and about 20 head of African Plains game with it and love the gun. I practice regularly out to 450 yards (as far as I can get where I can practice here in Michigan. I took a pretty good 6x5 bull.
The problem was that this was a new area to me and found myself not glassing and looking at elk in a distance and planning a stalk, but instead all the hunting was in timber, mostly navigating around and crawling over blown down timber. Only time I could have even shot 200 was in the valley's on the way in to each morning's hunt but the elk were not in the valley's...they were up on the mountain tops in the timber/blowdown.
So I was prepared to kill my elk out to 450 yards but ended up killing him at 30. Blew a hole through both shoulders with the .300 Wby pushing the old 180 grain Jack Carter Trophy Bonded Bearclaws at just under 3000 FPS
Point of all this introduction is that I plan to hunt this area again and another that is similar and when I do I don't want to carry a 24" in barrel I want to carry a 22" barrel gun. And I don't need to be shooting 450 yards so instead of my big optic on a 30mm tube I will be using a Leupold VX3 2x-8X 1" tube that I have laying in the safe doing nothing that weighs 2/3 (or less) what the scope on my .300 Wby weighs. I want something that will punch a big hole in an elk at less than 200 yards (of course the first time I hunt with my new gun I will see a monster 6x6 at 400 yards LOL)
I have a Pre-64 Model 70 (1952) in 30-06 that I am thinking about making my "timber elk" gun. I want to carrely less weight and shorter barrel am planning on putting it in a Brown Precision Stock and putting a Krieger 22" barrel on it. I want a cartridge that functions effiencently in a 22" barrel that is bigger than the .30-06.
I am considering having it rebarreled to:
.338-06
.338-06 A-Square
.338-06 AI
.35 Whelen
Am I missing anything that I should be considering?
What would you build?
Last edited by Termin8r; 10/06/21.
