Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Favorite bullet for 308 win

As far as the the Nosler B/T, I use the 165 grain in my 309-JDJ This TC shoots great, TC has a 14" Shilen barrel.
I've used it on two deer.

That's a load I'll have to try. 2800 fps/168 gr. out of a 308 is smoking.

155 Lapua Scenar...

I have worst luck with bullets, i tell ya. Tried a 180 grain partition on a hog hunt out of an 3006. Shot a 150 lb. hog at 30 yards or so. The partition failed to pass through hog. It dropped on spot but was squealing. I walked up snd placed another bullet behind shoulder which failed to penetrate completely. I stopped using them after that.

Dancing Bear, it's Interesting you should mention the 150 grain Winchester Power Point.

Many year ago when I was shooting a lot of 30-06 and 308 in M-1 Garand, M-14 and FALs I bought (if memory is correct)16,000 of them from Black Hills. I found them to shoot to the calibrations of the issue sights and they were about 2X and in some guns 3X more accurate then most FMJ Ball ammo. I did kill a few deer with them, but mostly I simply loaded ammo for my match and fun shooting for all my 30 cal military rifles. I am almost out of them now.
But 5 years ago I was with my wife and a few of our friends on an elk hunt and I had thrown in my Mossberg MVP rifle as an "extra' so we'd have one more gun in camp. As it turned out we got into an area where the elk were not moving and in our hunting we'd seen them over on the far horizons from our position, so we all decided to move the camp over about 5 miles, but you had to "go around" to get to the place we wanted to set up the new camp so we threw all the stuff into out 3 trucks and drove around the mountains to get over on the other side. We all had gun cases for our main rifles and for a stupid and non-thinking reason, we put them into the trucks first and laid all the camp gear over the folded tents and drove over. We thought we'd be there in less then an hour. The MVP with it's long magazine didn't firt a case and has a plywood stock, so I never bother to case it and it ended up on the top of the pile, last thing thrown in before we left to relocate the camp.
Well guess what......... We get about half way there and jump out a heard of elk about 75 in number and all the rifles except the MVP are buried on the bottom of the pile. The MVP uses the same magazines as an M14 and those old M14 mags were all loaded with my ammo from the old days with 150 grain Win P.Ps. So I and my wife jump out of the rig and get after them. I drop my 2 cows and hand the rifle off to her, she kills her remaining cow for that year, and we give the rifle to our friends who go after the elk and cut them off about 1/2 mile up and they kill their elk (20 rounds in that mag was a blessing that time because all the extra ammo was also on the bottom of the pile in the 4Runner)
We filled every elk tag we had in about 5 minutes.

As a rule, in my experience 150 grain lead core 30-06s, 300 mags and 308s do not exit elk. Well most of the WW points did. I butchered all those elk myself and I recovered only 2 bullets. I have them on my mantel piece right now. One weighs 131 grains and one weight 129 grains, and BOTH of those 2 bullet broke large bone which is why I assume they didn't exit. The total of hits on those 5 elk were 9 rounds and of the 9, 7 went clear through and exited. WAY better performance then I expected from a 150 grain lead core bullet on elk. And with recovered weights of 131 and 129 grains, I have to say the performance of those 2 bullets was the full equal of any Partition I ever used. Not bad for bullet that cost me only about 6 cents each in the days I bought them.

I started hunting elk with my Dad before it was even legal when I was 9 or 10, and I have killed a lot of them and I have seen about 5X more killed by other hunters than I have killed myself. I have seen a lot shot with 30-06s and quite a few with 308s and 300 mags. Yet for body shots with 150 grain leadcore 30 cal bullets I don't think I have EVER seen a Remington Corelokt, a Sierra, a Federal Power Shock, a Hornady or a Speer bullet exit an elk, but 7 of the 9 WW Power Points did. Up until that hunt I just assumed the PP bullets were about the same as everyone else's 150s. Of the 9 shots fired some were not perfectly placed, yet the penetration was so good that they still got through and hit vitals and left exits.

So I can't say this is definitive information, but it certainly was enough to get me to have a far higher degree of respect for the old plain vanilla 150 grain Power Point bullets made by Winchester.

Great account of events szihn . For myself it seems the 165 gr bullets seem to be a great fit in both the ‘08 & ‘06 . Like my usual preference I like bonded bullets on elk sized game.

150gr Partitions have been the proverbial huckleberry in our family’s .308 Savage 99F. Great combination for us

155 Scenar - Lapua

Regarding the 150 grain Power Point bullets on elk. Of the few elk I have killed only one never took a step. I used a .308 Win/150 grain PP on it and it exited. Hit the top of the heart. A shot that doesn't usually drop them that fast.

A young fellow I am teaching to hunt got a .300 Savage from a grandpa. He has a 7mm Rem mag too. Even so he wanted to take a deer with the .300 s. I found him 5 boxes of the 150 gr PP load. He will be well equipped.

Awesomeness in this thread so far! I love it !

Must be your review on Midway.

I use the 120gr 6.5 Barnes or Hammer mono to take elk cleanly. One of my hunting buddies uses a 308 with the Barnes 130gr mono at about 3100 fps. We both take our elk each season with no problem. These bullets always exit. Bullet technology changes. Any reasonable bullet properly placed works.

i use 150gr Partition Golds.Have yet to recover a single one.

George

I've been doing load development with these in my 308. I really like the concept of this bullet. My 280 really likes the 160 gr version and will be stuffed with them for a while (bought 500.....).

180g Norma Oryx.

We don't get very many elk down here in south Georgia :), but the Gamechanger has held up very well on large hogs, all purposely shot on the shoulder.. Very accurate bullet and it certainly passes muster down here. The Partition still remains just about perfect in my opinion

165 Nos AB here.

1 bull at ~20 yards, 1 black bear at 200 yards.

both double lunged.

I use 165BT's for deer + hogs. 165 AB's for elk. both hit same POI in my rifle with same powder, primer, brass combo's.

lots of good bullets available for the 308, but this is what shoots best in my rifle.

SGK is a great deer-hog bullet.

Just picked up a box of 165 Hornady GMX and will do some load development. No accubonds or ttsx in 165 were on shelf

Personally, I wouldn't use a mono over 150 gr's in the 308.