Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Are premium bullets needed for elk?

I’m continually baffled by guys that have killed a lot of elk but continue to preach about “dark timber” and the shot that’d get away because of a bullet.

Ever seen a Texas heart shot bull with a Berger? It’ll require a finisher, but you won’t need to do any tracking.

Let me guess, Next up will be target bullets cause too much meat damage on ass shots.

I've taken that shot but not on an elk. It was a Dall ram, my only chance for a shot as it was about to to disappear over a rise, on the last evening I could shoot one. Which was day 9 of a twelve day trip because it was a three-day "hike" out if we were packing a sheep and our gear.

Which is a long way of saying, anyone who wants to give me grief for taking that shot, save the keyboard strokes, I wasn't gonna pass up a my only chance for a shot.

It was 280 yards, the rifle was a .260 Remington, and the bullet was a 123 grain Scenar. Hit the ram in the hip, broke that and the femur and the ram dropped like a rock.

And yep, it did damage some meat but the little "target bullet" performed as well as I could've hoped.

Yep Roosevelt’s are badass, I’ve killed lots of em, got my “crown “ bull couple years ago. Another musket bull.

Casey,

Not sure if I'm reading you right but GMU61 is full of long range shooting opportunities on the late hunt. Truman from Delta killed over 18 bulls last count in GMU62 with his 700ADL 06 out to 400yds iirc.

I don’t think anywhere has the type of vegetation, sheer amount of thick shiit we got with the exception of SE Alaska

Question: were any elk killed before the arrival of premium bullets?

No.

That’s back when everyone pissed any moaned about Schidt Bullets and poor performance so other Bullets were built to piss and moan about their price. It’s a snake eating it’s tail

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Plus, if you kill the first elk you shoot......the hunts over. With standard bullets......ya get to shoot more elk! memtb

MtnHtr,

That 700lb + bull I mentioned? It was GMU61, third season, 1990, and about 15 years later lasered at 480 yds. No rangefinder, no ballistic reticle, no dialing. But I practiced out to 500 yds. That's the exception though, not the rule. I've killed three elk starting from that same spot in GMU61. The other two ended up less than 100 yds.

And I was going to bring this up. There are a LOT of places where I can glass elk, but they are 1000yds, or miles away, or somewhere in-between. By the time a guy makes his way over there and gets to see the elk again they are up close. In the canyon I shot that bull, the other side is so far away my rangefinder won't range it from rim to rim--not my KILO 2000, not my new Leica 2800.

The late seasons on the Plateau are more likely to encounter longish shots because the elk are more likely down in the oakbrush and PJ, but they are also more likely to be on private land. But with the dry, warm falls the past 20 years more times than not they have not been down as low most years (last two falls being an exception).

I wish I could think of the guy's name, but he was out of Delta and in the 80's and 90's when the 4th season was an OTC tag he killed some impressive bulls in GMU 62 west of Delta off the Delta-Nucla Rd. He worked with a friend of mine at the Meadow Gold processing plant.

In the 49 years I've been hunting elk, I've killed two elk 400 yds or more, two elk 300 yds or more. I've killed roughly 25 elk at less than a 100 yds, the rest somewhere in-between. The funny thing is since I started carrying a rangefinder 10+ years ago the only time I've ever used it was pronghorn hunting, and that's only when a rangefinder will reliably laser nonreflective fuzzy brown antelope on fuzzy brown prairie hillsides--which isn't all that often. But the veracity of rangefinders in long range shooting is a whole 'nother subject.

lol....... I think there's a lot of guys who unintentionally subscribe to that school of thought!

Yes they were, and I’d guess there’s more killed every year with standard C&C bullets than premiums today.

Yes.
I've killed plenty of elk back in the day with factory Core-Lokts and Sierras. The advantage to premium bullets are a guy uses less bullets to achieve the same result. In the end the cost per bullet probably evens out between the two........

That also applies to a lot of guys who take 400+ yard shots.

This is where the conversation gets sideways I think.

We have elk country that getting a 50 yard shot is going to be difficult, and we have elk country that is fairly open to wide open and everything in between. What one uses in one area, might not be what one would pick as ideal for the other. I would assume most every state is the same, and people base their opinions on what they see the most. You put me in the jungles of the PNW and I’d be lost for a while on how to kill an elk.

We’ve killed elk with the .243 pretty handily, but not sure I’d use it in the conditions you see up there, conversely, I’d see the .338 a bit much to put up with in the areas we’ve used the .243.

One thing I have noticed is, everyone’s elk spot is thicker, deeper, farther and steeper than the next guys.

Obviously none of this is directed at you, or anyone really.

Yes there is a lot more. The question is do they find the dead elk before I find it a few days or few years later.

My 90 year old dad killed his first elk in 1956 and he still hunts and kills elk today. He has always carried a 30-06 and to my knowledge has always used 180g factory Core-Lokts RN. Starting about 50 years ago he began shooting elk in the neck because they fell down on the spot. Why did he start shooting elk in the neck?--Because he got tired of chasing them and shooting at 'em multiple times. Relying on shooting an elk in the neck every time is not something I would recommend, but nor am I gonna argue with a 90 year old man......

Our experiences are quit a bit different it seems. Have been around quit a few elk kills and have not seen the loss you’ve seen, definitely not saying there is not loss, but not to the extremes you’re implying. Try to spend a lot of time in elk country during the winters and am not seeing the numbers of dead heads you’re seeing either.

Is a 155 Lapua Scenar from a puny little .308 considered a "premium"?

The elk keep tipping over.

Case,

You're pretty much spot on with my experience there. 30/06 150gr GMX, CNS at 308yds off the shooting stix. Saw alot of bulls btw, this was second best I saw.



I'll add I ran into one the Weimer ranch hands afterwards in town and he said they had a tough time filling tags.

SLM,
I have a pair of 243's that have accounted for 14 elk, all of them with 100g NPt's. That combo kills elk as readily as any other cartridge I've seen, although I would think twice about a Portuguese Brain Shot.

And yes, a guy can find elk out in the open but as I wrote previously, elk will head to refuge once they have been pressured. Most hunters today are not prepared to hunt elk up close. The internet doesn't preach it, and equipment seems to dictate something different.

When I first started guiding one outfitter I worked for drew a lot of hunters out of the upper midwest. Those guys were mostly older than me and knew how to still hunt in the timber. As JB mentioned in one of his GG books, as whitetail populations exploded hunters learned to take a stand and let the deer come to them. By the 90's nobody I guided was prepared--mentally or with their equipment--to jump shoot an elk coming or going to the spot where we were going to "hunt". A lot of clients missed a lot of opportunities at elk.

And I don't mean to suggest unrecovered elk are laying everywhere I look. My parents live in GMU 61 from May thru Oct/Nov at 9k ft. Our property is adjacent to NF on two sides. I spend a LOT of time up there hiking and messing around, and that is why I find a lot of dead elk. My buddy who found the 365 bull mentioned previously also has a place up there and he spends a lot of time up there too. I don't find dead elk on the winter range, I usually find the elk in the fall when they have been dead a short time. Indeed, I killed my bear sitting over a unrecovered archery bull a 30 minute walk from the back door of our cabin on Oct 5th. I figured the bull had been dead around 2 weeks when I found him. Could've been a blackpowder kill though.