Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Minimum sectional density for elk?

For me its, .305 SD matched w/ a partition, a-frame or tsx-ttsx

I like a lot of penetration and a larger bore for elk where I hunt and my minimum is the 180 gr. Nosler in a 30-06 or perhaps a .308..I also like the 160 and 175 gr. noslers in the 7x57 as a minimum elk round..I have shot elk with the 25-35, 250 savage and 30-30 and they are fine broadside at 100 or so yards, but the smaller rounds do not normally give you a sufficient blood trail and a lot of animals are lost from not using enough gun..To each his own but I like the edge of a bigger gun myself, as long as you can handle the recoil...bullet construction is more important than caliber, I will give you that.

In fact, the TSX is the hard bullet I have been trying the last couple years on a limited basis. So far they seem to work fine in my 300 RUM, but I have not tried them much in non-magnum caliber rifles. The 150 TSX shoots very well in my Kimber 308, but I don't think I've killed anything with that combination yet (IIRC). But no bullet out there, premium or otherwise, will cause me to stop thinking and critiquing on-game performance. It's what I do. I don't live on anybody's kool-aid. About the only kool-aid I regularly drink are flavored 7x57, 30-06, and blue tape.