Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Berger bullets for elk?

First line of your first post seems to sum it up pretty well.

Good thing you added 62 more posts and a few thousand words to the discussion. You keep grinding this hard and you are going to run out of axe.



While I hope the brand new LRX works well it is amusing to me that you are praising a bullet that has essentially zero real world use on elk. I would be willing to bet you have shot exactly the same number of elk with the LRX as you have with the VLD.



There really is no path to an elks heart through the paunch that does not also include his butt. This type of shot is based in myth.

There are a number of things wrong with trying to target the heart on from the back of the animal. The proper target is the pelvic structure to immobilize the animal and a finishing shot to the chest.

This shot is much easier to accomplish because the target area is readily visible and if done properly there is much less meat lost.

VLDs work very well for this shot and Kris killed this bull last year using this technique.



That being said it really is a bad idea to shoot trophy elk from the rear because it is much harder to judge how big or exactly which bull in a bunch.

This was the bull we were after. Low left of the 4.



This was the situation after the wolves bumped the bulls.





Unless that VLD blew 70 inches of bone off his head we shot the wrong bull. I took 29% of the blame because I told him the last bull was the biggest.



Moral of the story is shooting elk from the back is a bad plan in most situations but VLDs work just fine if you feel the need.



Bob,

You will have to try VLDs someday to truly understand the "magic". VLDs kill so quick that time actually backs up a few seconds.

I am going to throw this out and say in my experience VLDs tend to open slower at close range than at long range. I think this is because the heat softens the lead core and that takes a little distance.

I killed 2 elk last year at relatively close range (100 yd bull and 135 yd cow) and the VLD worked great. Both were shoulder shot. Used the .243 Win/105gr VLD on the bull.