The "light kicking" rifles/rounds I have killed elk with are the 270 Winchester, 300 Savage, 8MM Mauser (loaded to only 2400 FPS) 308 Winchester with 150 grain bullets. One that was very effective, well beyond it's stats on paper, was the 44 magnum. All my elk kills with the 44 magnums were from handguns and all but one were shot with cast bullets, with the one exception being a Hornady 265 grain bullet that was actually made for the 444 Marlin, but worked well in my 44 revolver. I have to conclude that the results from carbines would be as good or better, and a 44 from a carbine is not a hard kicker for the most part.

The hardest kicking rifles I ever killed elk with are my 416 Taylor, 45-70 (loaded to top power levels from a marlin 95) my 375H&H.
The one that has seemed to be the fastest to put elk on the ground was the 375 H&H but it's odd to me that the other that gave me the most "bang-flops" of the whole group was a 270 Winchester loaded with 150 and 160 grain bullets. (Nosler Partitions and the old thick jacketed Remington Core-Lokt from the early 70s

We have a tendency to believe power and recoil go hand in hand (for the most part that's true) and we think the harder kicking rifles and rounds will drop game faster, but over 50 years of killing game in several states and several countries has shown me that is not really true.

Brass shells don't kill. Amount of powder doesn't kill. Recoil doesn't kill. Even the bullet doesn't actually kill. The bullet is the tool that makes the wound, the bullet HOLE---- and it's the bullet HOLE that kills.

A bullet that get clear through even when breaking bones and does the damage it should is the key to a killing wound and the fact is that the ones I have killed with 270s (probably about 30-35) and all fallen at the shot or within a second of so afterwards.

I have killed a good number of elk with 300 magnums, 7MM magnums and a few with a 338 mag and using good bullets all were very good for elk but the truth is that not one of them put the elk on the ground any faster then my 270s. Why? I don't actually know---- but that's what I have seen. When using what I call "so-so" bullets, or bad elk bullets, my 7 mags and all my 300s were not AS effective or satisfactory as my 270s let alone any better.

Last edited by szihn; 09/10/22.