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Old 02-17-2017, 06:39 AM
huntingfamily huntingfamily is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Elkaholic338 View Post
Having taken over a dozen bulls and having seen more than twice that many additional kills, I will say that you can kill them with nearly anything, as referenced in the What can't a .22 do thread, you can kill almost anything with a .22 even an elephant as evidenced by Capstick if you can believe it.
As far as elk are concerned though, I find that they have a will to live like no other ungulate available to us to hunt, and while we would always like to have perfect shot placement, and should be trying to make sure of it, things don't always go perfect. This is why I advocate shooting the rifle that provides the most ft. lbs. of energy at the distance you are comfortable shooting that you can still handle the recoil of. we have taken 2 bulls that had bullets lodged in them, one a .277 and one a .350 that should have taken the elk as they were shoulder shots, but the .350 hit right on the ridge of the scapula and did not make it through, and the .277 hit the humerus and failed to penetrate. While I do not know the circumstances of these shots, as far as distance etc. I still feel that a little more power should have equaled dead elk.
My recommendation for elk would start with a 300WM and go up from there but I have shot them with 30-06 as well. Dead is dead, but I think I owe it to the animal that I pursue to do my best to make sure that the death happens as fast as possible even when the shot doesn't quite go where you want because of a twig or the animal turns at the last second or whatever.
My go to for elk currently is my .338 RUM, which might be overkill, but like was said before me, overkill is underrated.
I'm going to save some time typing and say this is how my experiences hunting elk are summed up. Great post!
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