Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Is the .308 a 300yd. elk cartridge?

That author of the elk hunting book knows that almost all elk are taken with well placed shots well under 300 yards.

... I'm no great killer of elk, to say the least, but in my limited hunting experience the furthest I've killed a critter is about 125 yards.

However, I've burned a LOT of powder and gasoline and time and money and internet bytes, practicing and preparing for and researching and obsessing over longer shots! I'd guess that's pretty typical.

-jeff

That's interesting to see Jamisons' list using 1500ft/lbs.. Boddington, in his book "American Hunting Rifles" on page 311 states his opinion that 2000 ft/lbs is HIS minimum energy for elk. He does go on to state that "sensible minimums" were the .270Win., .280Rem and even the 7x57. So his distance using 2000ft/lbs would be a lot shorter.
However, he has backed off a bit in the last couple of years.

Placement, placement, placement.

Take a .308 Win and a well-placed bullet and its good well past 300 yards. Blow your shot and it won't matter what you use.

If you are honest and have a measured 300 yards, the 308 does not have enough energy to put down a moose-elk type game, notwithstanding a lucky brain shot. check the ballistics, they will tell you.

cdhunt,

Oh yeah, you're right, it's in the ballistics tables.

Would you believe I have had others try to convince me the .45/70 is barely suitable for deer because ballistics tables to them so? I guess no one ever exposed them to the fact that the .45/70 will take every animal that walks, elephants included!

God, how did our progenitors get by pre-magnum days? They had to be awfully darn dumb to think big game could be harvested with the likes of the .35 Remington and .300 Savage!

I guess I better sell my puny .308 Win and buy a .375 RUM before next muley season

Totally tongue in cheek obviously, thx for the morning chuckle.

Dober

Read my last signature line...

Splains it all...

Sounds like good, common-sense gun-gack to me!

Good for you, CH.

I would agree that setting parameters is a worthwhile endeavor. If someone understands ballistics enough to know that the parameters are arbitrary and why they are moveable, then they probably don't need the chart anyway.

However, I would have to disagree with your statement concerning bullet selection. The 308 will work with most any stout bullet owing to its lower velocity potential, while the 300 RUM might not.

"Is the .308 a 300yd. elk cartridge?"

Not if you miss. If the shooter does hit part it works just fine.

Ah, yep!

BMT

I was gonna mention that too, but ya beat me to it. More than half of the elk I've killed were under 100 yds in heavy timber. I'll take a .308 for that chore over a .300 ultra any day. I don't particularly care for shoulder jelly.

The longest shot I've ever made on a game animal--NM mulie @376 yds lazered--was with a .308. A bull elk would have been just as dead that day.

I knew a guy in MT that shot his elk every year with a 25-06--he had some impressive bulls hanging on his wall too--his wife used a 7x57. Go figure.

As Socrates advocated, reasoned debate produces knowledge. After reading through the well thought-out contributions here, I have grown to appreciate the .308 Win even more!

Guys, remember we're talking about using the 308 to 300 yds. and beyond. So I'll defend my post; the 308 is not bullet sensitive at close range but at long range I believe it can be. I personally would not choose a Fail Safe or X bullet if I thought velocity might drop below 2000 fps. Go and find the "What I found in the game I gutted thread", quite a few unexpanded bullets.

I'd give my 300 RUM the opposite consideration. I would not choose a rapid expanding bullet type if I invisioned a 50 yd shot. I admit, my experience is largely from reading but I maintain that bullet performance at 300 yds as launched by a 308 requires more consideration at 300 yds than my RUM. There's no wrong bullet for a cartridge at 300 yards that is rated for 600 yards like the RUM. Similarly, virtually any hunting bullet will work in the 308 at 150 yards whereas it may not at 300 yards. If I'm wrong you can blame the gunwriters.

gmack,

Okay, I see where you're coming from. You were worried about 300 yards and beyond; I was thinking 100 yards and closer.

I agree that most bullets need about 2000fps remaining velocity to perform well. That becomes their longest effective distance for consistent terminal results. However, I still worry far more about a bullet blowing up at close range/high velocity, as I think most game is shot well under 300 yards.

While I tend to agree in general, it�s definitely not true for fat bullets. A .45-70 pushing a 405g flat nose at 1330fps (Remington load) is surprisingly effective. A couple years ago I took a buck a d bull at 197 and 213 yards respectively, both with a .45-70 pushig a 350g bullet to 2183fps at the muzzle. Impact velocities calculate to be around 1592fps and 1539fps respectively.

The bullet passed completely through the buck on a quartering away shot. The bucked leaked buckets of blood in the fresh snow before laying down maybe 15 feet from where he was shot. The bull was hit broadside. The bullet passed through the left leg, entered the chest and came to rest on the far side. It obliterated a section of near-side leg bone obliterated a section of rib, and shattered a far-side rib. The bull never moved and after a few seconds toppled over sideways. The recovered bullet was fully expanded.

That said, when using little bullets like a .308� I generally prefer at least 2000fps on impact.

Gun writers make money by writing about guns. The .308 Winchester is the commercial "branding" of the 7.62x51 NATO round. The .308/7.62x51 has been around since the early 50s and I suspect there are at least a millions words written about the cartridge over the past 50 years when one considers its history of military and civilian use.

What I find amazing is that over the next 50 years, there probably will be more than a million words written about .308 and very little will actually say anything that has not be said before. There may be new bullets and powders and combinations and rifles, but the cartridge will still do nothing more or less than send a .30 caliber projectile out of the barrel of a firearm. Most of the writing, like most of gun writing, will be the endless rehashing of opinions.

If a shooter does his (or her) job, the .308 will kill elk consistently at 300 yards. These elk will be just as dead as if killed by a larger or smaller rile. If a .30 caliber bullet is properly placed and functions according to design, I suspect there will not be a meangingful difference in the kill percentage between the .308 and higher velocity .30 caliber cartridges. In other words, if you hit an elk in exactly the same place in the kill zone with a .30 caliber projectile, an additional few hundreds FPS on impact will not lead to any statistically significant difference in the kill percentage. Of course, this is an opinion because I have not shot a statistically significant number of elk at exactly 300 yards in exactly the same place.

What I find really amazing is that some folks can talk about rifles and cartridges for days on end when, in the over all scheme of things, a rifle is only a very small part of hunter performance or hunting success. For every animal killed by virtue of a bigger rifle I suspect there are 100 that are not killed cleanly by "operator failure." This includes a lack of practice or "flinch" by hunters using magnums with uncomfortable loadings in unfamiliar firearms. At the end of the day, the choice of a rifle and cartridge is mostly a matter of preference. Empirical lines drawn in the sand about velocity or foot pounds of energy are mostly just opinions in spreadsheet form. You might as well try to draw up a chart showing the numericial differences between love, lust and a passing infatuation.

I understand firearms can be a hobby just like baseball and that otherwise sane grown men can argue with intense passion over things like who was the better pitcher: Tom Seaver or Sandy Koufax (insert any other two Hall of Famers at your leisure). And some of these guys can quote Seaver's or Koufax' strike out percentages with men in scoring in position in night time away games against teams with four or more left handed batters. At the end of the day, there's no way to "prove" Koufax was better than Seaver (or vice versa) just as there's no way to prove the .308 is a 300-yard-elk cartridge. It is simply a conversation for folks who like baseball, or rifles, or elk hunting without any possibility of an outcome... not that that's bad, but it is what it is.

Yup.

You realize of course that sensible posts like yours should be required reading for some folks.

OTOH, you're takin' all the fun out of tossing gun gack around the internet!

And Koufax blew Seaver out of the water!

So "new" and "the truth" and "a myth" are relative???? I'm so confused. I may have to go join up with MD's "other brother Darrel" for some sage advice before I fire another shot.