Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Big Seven for Elk

Hell, ask me & I'd say that the .280 Rem is probably the best rifle for all North American big game. If Remington were to put a belt on it & call it a magnum, it'd be a bigger seller. It's all about the belt and magnum attached to it. Otherwise, it's hardly suited for vermin.

Reading this thread is entertaining.

Start a 165 or 180 from a 30/06;use it for elk,and you are a sensible guy and a solid citizen who thinks straight and has all your shidt together.....likely you are a Consrvative, don't beat your wife and kids and are emotionally stable.The fellas who use a standard case of 308 dimensions necked to various smaller sizes occupy higher moral ground and look down their noses at anyone burning more powder...

You are such a wizard in the field that you can calculate drop and wind drift like Einstein,remain cool in the face of impending doom,and never, ever make mistakes in the field.A paragon of the rifle and hunting prowess.

Burn a lot more powder,make a 30 caliber bullet go really fast,get kicked more, in a heavier rifle,and you are a wise and astute rifleman whose manhood is secure because you can manage long strings of the drubbing and are an Iron Man who can lug 9-10 pounds of rifle up the mountain....makes sense to me! I did it plenty!

But, reduce bullet weight a few grains, add 6-10 grains of capacity over a 30/06 case,add a belt,and start slightly lighter and sleeker bullets at higher velocity for flatter trajectory and improved wind drift...all in a lighter rifle of more tolerable recoil,and suddenly you are:

-Compensating for a lack of intellectual acumen.

-Can't judge distance much beyond the length of their arm.

-Are incapable of dealing with more than 10-15 inches of bullet drop.

- Are a speed freak.

-Compensating for a lack of rifle related skills by buying equipment.(I suppose the same could be said for anyone who moves to a 308 or 30/06 from a 30-30 or 45-70).

- Are too weak and frail to manage more recoil or rifle weight than a gorilla on steroids.

- Are from the Dreaded City and couldn't find and kill a little old whitetail in the cornfields and little wood lots of Wild Missouri, like the Country Boys with a 30/06. (Set aside for the moment that the City Boys may have seen,passed on, and killed more bull elk in more places than the Country Boys have done in their dreams, or while flipping through the pages of Field & Stream).

- Are compensating for so many personal disorders (ranging from birth defects,lack of confidence,low testosterone, too much testosterone,insecurity,abuse as a child)that their treatment would cause a clinical psychiatrist to blink...


I sometimes wonder what Les Bowman, Warren Page, and Bob Hagel would have thought about all this.

(Especially Bowman who guided legions of elk hunters and watched the 300 Weatherby clients wound more elk than those shooting 270's,concluded the average clown could not manage 300 Weatherby recoil, so invented a cartridge called the 7mm Remington Magnum that gave more poop and shot flatter than the 270 or 30/06, recoiled less than the 300's and killed elk at long range with impunity; that his clients COULD shoot,and field tested it with his clients on everything from elk and moose to grizzly for several years before Remington brought it out. No City Boy, he, who did all this up in Cody. But he could never know as much as the Country Boys on the CF,now, could he?)

These guys were among the the earliest users of the various 7mm magnums and killed piles of elk with them.Probably a lot more than the Country Boys on 24 CF....but WTH did they know? Not much I guess compared to the wizards on here...

But Page, Hagel, and Bowman never posted anything on the CF.

Amusing.

Thanks for this great read. Straight to the point.

Mashburn all up and ready for this year, you says?

Ready: Ready!

Glad to hear, if not surprised one bit.

They killed a LOT of elk. Les Bowman wrote that during one season in the late 1950's his outfit packed 90 horse loads of elk out of the WY backcountry.

If I were to build an elk specific rifle it would most likely be a 7MM Remington or 7MM Mashburn set up for 160-175 grain bullets.

Love the belt.....funny.......does it come with a matching purse?

No mention here, but I thoroughly enjoyed John Wooters' accounts of his 7mm Remmy using 175gn bullets. (partition)

He seemed, pleased.

Bob - enjoyed your write-up but the clucking & dancing chickens here on the CF are getting to you again, you better get out and hunt - soon!

I have two elk tags this year and will be packing a 54 cal Hawkins in 3 weeks and my new (gasp!) 7mm Wby (in a 700)during rifle seaon in October.

Though I backed the 7 Wby load down a ways, that 160 partition leaving at 3100 fps is like a freakin' laser up here at 10,000'. Very impressive!

Good huntin' to you

Bob: insightful, entertaining, and even educational piece of writing. You are one of the reasons I don't write this site off.

Bring on the big 7! Size does matter. There's a short action, a std action, and a std magnum, just like condoms. Do you guys know what is written at the base of the Trojan Magnum condom?











I didn't think so.

Made in Texas, size regular?

Bob enjoyed your post about the 7.. Also the references to the older writers: Bowman, Hagel, and Page.. While the .300's are my favorite, I must agree that many using them are not capable of good accuracy with them.. I still favor mine for much of my big game hunting.. But I also have a couple 7mm mags. in the safe should I find the recoil of the big .30's more than I want to deal with at some time in the future..(Say if I live to be 90!!)

Met Hagel several times.. Never met Page or Bowman.. In my younger years I was a fan of all three at one time or another.
Still have some old articles or books buy all three..

I do remember Bowman talking of not only the 7mm mag as a good elk killer, but he also had a couple .338's they used on western game.. He mostly used the 200 grain factory.. Hagel of course was a long time .33 caliber guy from his association with Elmer..
In addition to Hagel's love of the 7mm mag. He also favored the .340 in his later years.. I believe the 210 Nosler was a favorite.. I talked with him just after he killed one of his last elk, maybe his last, he had taken it with the old Mashburn.. It was a cow for meat..

Due to his writing, I tried the 7 mags.. and later the .340.. It is great to hear from others who remember those "old timers".. Writing was a different game in those days..

I have probably killed more elk with the 7 Rem mag than any other cartridge just because I keep circling back around to it after playing around with other stuff.



Sorry it isn't a more elegant photo, but I could not get him twisted around until I got some help.

I never have killed an elk with a 30-06, but none of the ones I have shot with a 7 RM would have survived the experiment had I tried. Or a .270, for that matter.

Yes it will be. I got 3124 fps with the 160 Partition from my Remington SPS 7 mag using Reloder 33 powder. It is 75 grains, which is just under max for the 175. The 160 could even go a little higher with that powder, but I used 175 data due to the fact that Alliant had no data for the 160s and Re 33. The 175s were clocking 3025 with the 75-grain load. This was just some experimenting that I did, as my go-to load has been Re 25 at 3006 fps. All loads shot around a half inch. The 160 Partition is death on elk.

Well played, well played! A tip of my hat to you, sir.

I like the shot. It is less posed and more real. And that beauty of a lefty bolt gun is the star!

+1. I was looking for the right words and your post pretty much says what I was thinking..

I'll be carrying a Rem 700 loaded with 150 Nosler BT's. Elk and mule deer should be in trouble.

Guys: Kudos to all!

My favorite personal (present)elk rifles both look like Utah 7/08's,except the bolt handle is on the other side. I presently have two,one chambered 7 Rem Mag and the other 7mm Mashburn Super.I don't know how many more elk hunts I have left but with a tag one of these will get the call.

I try to stay objective about rifle cartridges because they are what they are and do what they do,and nothing more or less.

I am also the last person to argue that the 300 magnums and 338's are anything but fantastic elk cartridges,since I have used the various 300's on them myself,and seen the 338's used quite a bit.

I have even been in one outfitted elk camp where it was strongly recommended (but not mandated) that the hunter bring a 300 magnum minimum because ( it was said)that in their experience heavy, tough 30 caliber bullets simply break heavy bone better, penetrate, deeper, and chop bigger wound channels in big bulls than anything lighter (including the various 7mm's).Magnum velocities made long range work easier.

I didn't argue the point since I was using a 300 Weatherby with 200 gr Partitions at the time,but felt the advice was a bit over the top. But digging around a lot of bull elk carcasses pretty much confirmed what they said. I still feel in general that the various 300 magnums with good heavy bullets deserve to be lumped in with the medium bores (in the old days it was not uncommon to see the 300 Weatherby lumped in with the 375 H&H as a cartridge for heavy African plains game).

A lot of this is bullet dependent.But the 7mm magnums work good because the heavy 7mm bullets(say 150-180 gr) nudge into the weight range of medium 30 caliber bullets. Cases with more capacity than the 30/06 start them out at about the same velocity that smaller cases do with lighter bullets;and the good construction of todays bullets insures good penetration and enough integrity and weight to penetrate and break up bone along the way.

Most of this is accomplished with somewhat lighter powder charges than the 300's which, along with slightly lighter bullets, gets you kicked a bit less,which means you can build a somewhat lighter rifle.

These days I shoot a couple of 7mm mags regularly; I also get to shoot a pal's 300 Weatherby.My 7mm's are both lighter;the 300 Weatherby requires a lot more attention and a firmer grip to maintain control than either of my 7mm's.Last session with his 300 Weatherby involved about a box of ammo in an afternoon and I had about had it after that session...

Hunkering down and torching off powder charges in the mid-80's behind 200 gr bullets at 3100 fps from a blown out 300 is ok for a few shots, but I'll take a charge of 73 gr with a 175 from the Mashburn for about the same velocity...this may be age related.

None of this is "magic",nor "ego", nor expectations of miraculous effect,the presence or absence of belts(another silly notion) or (silliest of all)where you happen to have been born or live...it's pure physics at the "sending" end, and the "receiving" end,and nothing more.

Mad in Texas is great. I just wish more Texans could figure out how to use the damn things.