Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Nearly Perfect Elk Rifle....Caliber

furlessbalz be jealous.........

Yeah, but if you're building a custom I'm pretty sure you still have to tell your smith what chambering you want.

If I were building from scratch today, I'd go 280.

Although all of cartridges mentioned will kill elk if everything goes just right and have so. However, I prefer to view it in the worst light. By the time I've gotten myself in elk country, I've already got quite a bit of time and money invested. What if the only shot I have is not anywhere close to what I would prefer for a good, clean kill. That's why I always take plenty of gun to elk country. I'm talking a minimum of a 300 something mag just in case. I generally use a 300 Weatherby or a 338 Win Mag. When I hunted Vermajo back in the late 80's, if you hunted with anything less than a 300 mag of some sort and the bull ran off, that was your $7000 hunt. If you were using a 300 mag or bigger and he ran off, you got to keep hunting till you got your bull. I agree with their policy.
Phil

Elk rifles are also our sheep rifles. Bighorn Sheep , mule deer and Mountain goat . Being overgunned is not an option for me.
Just pick a .270 wcf, .280 or a 30/06. Carbine style, light and compact. You won't see many sheep hunters packing the heavies.

Yup, that has pretty much been my criteria since I started elk hunting a long time ago. I didn't want to have a cartridge that would work if everything was perfect- I wanted something that worked when everything went wrong.. so far, the 338WM has pretty much filled that role just about perfectly for close and far, as well as my son's 300 Weatherby.... I'm starting to question my new direction of going with a 26 Nosler but I haven't had a chance to kill anything with it yet, so the verdict is out until I get the opportunity...

[ When I hunted Vermajo back in the late 80's, if you hunted with anything less than a 300 mag of some sort and the bull ran off, that was your $7000 hunt. [/quote]

Where I hunted in South Africa, Namibia and every Exotics ranch in Texas; you wound it you bought it, found or not! In Sa, the smallest we used was a 300WM and 180 Barnes. In Texas, I used small calibers ( 220 Swift & 6x47mm) when recovering from surgery, but made "dang sure" I could kill them! ha Most of the time it was .257 Weatherby, 6.5/284, I even used a 338 RUM/180NAB on an Aoudad hunt! ha.I c these "Money Hunts"...its serious business when you pull the trigger! ha

Now now...

Dem be big wabbits...

DF

And those rabbits bite back.

The New mexico dept. of fish & game needs to capture and relocate those dangerous wabbits..... maybe Texas would take them?

There is no 180 gr 7mm ELD-M equivalent in the 308 caliber.

Going to send them up to Montana to take care of them grizzly bears.

Ah hell the Hutterites will sell them at the farmers market....

30-06 is the bread and butter for elk cartridge. Elk aren't really that hard to kill if you hit them in the boiler room.
I'd also have no problem taking my Flat bill 6.5CM with LRX, or you wish I was gay 270 with TTSX . Andr if I really want to anchor them, I can take the african worthy 9.3x62. But the older I get (lol .. Im only 40) and years of hunting and killing elk, I realize you don't need the big super duper magnums unless you're really going long range.

You'd bite, too, if there was some crazy redneck chasing you around the desert with a .460...



DF

I have a 6.5x55. I carry a 300 win mag for Elk. Have you ever had a big Elk run off a few hundred yards? When that few hundred yards is down into some hell hole you now need to disassemble the Elk in. Load it on your back and claw your way back up to that nice flat ridge it had been standing on. If all I had was the 6.5x55, I would kill Elk with it. I have Elk rifles, So I use them to kill Elk.

According to Monty Python. You just need a "Holy Hand Grenade"

Oh I know! Jus funnin him.