Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Smallish bore rifles on elk?

Wait a minute Matt!! You're kill elk with a 260 with SGK's no less!! A puny little caliber like that and SGK's bounce of an elk!! LOL!!!

Matt i'm actually looking at the 260 now but i'm still flip flopping between the 260 and 7mm08

That's a great pic!

Dober

That [bleep] looks like he was shot off'n alfalfa pile, or "the back 40".

Can't say I've had a one like that.

I have a mental image of a guy bustin' his shin on the coffee table whilst trying to get to the back door and put his slippers on to ready for the shot.

I'm green with envy... especially when it comes to gettin' 'em out

Thanks Mark, that was probably the last elk that Buffy shared with me,

I have a mental image of a guy bustin' his shin on the coffee table whilst trying to get to the back door and put his slippers on to ready for the shot.

I'm green with envy... especially when it comes to gettin' 'em out

BobinNH, you're right on there.

Lighter bullets loose their energy and momentum faster than similar heavier bullets with the same Ballistic Coefficent, so, on equal shots, they will not penetrate as deep as the heavier bullets.

IMO a 600 yd shot at a bull elk with a .243 Win is too far away, regardless of the rifle or scope. The energy and momentum just isn't there to reliably make a clean kill on an animal the size of an elk. I respect the animals too much to try stunt shots like that.

Several years ago, a friend and I had our .22-250s at our local gun range, and for fun we were shooting at the 450 yd Ram silouette steel targets. We could hear our .22 cal bullets ring the steel, but none of the targets would fall over. When we switched to our .270 and .30 cal rifles, the Rams fell with every hit.

I've been lucky enough to have lived most of my life in elk country. It costs me little more than the price of a resident, geezer elk tag to kill an elk. I also have up to a 4 1/2 month rifle hunting season for elk. Any year that I don't kill and elk is basically because I choose not to shoot one (like this year). This is a lot different than the non-resident hunter that only has a week or so to hunt elk and will pay from several thousand to over $25,000 to hunt elk.

At those prices, you want to kill your elk quickly, and not waste your hunting days trying to find a wounded animal. This is where the heavier bullets and larger calibers are beneficial. Although I have killed elk with smaller calibers (and even a sharp stick!), I feel that a good .30 caliber bullet at 3000 or more fps will hunanely kill an elk for any shot that I want to take.

And Bob, I don't know how you came up with "BuffyBear" in your previous post, but here's a pic of me and Buffy Bear, my best friend for 14 1/2 years, and a bull that I shot (with my .30 Gibbs and a 180 gr Partition) on the hill behind my home a few years ago.