Your friend is definately good to go out to 200 yards.

You can NOT use foot lbs of energy to tell the whole story for big, relatively slow bullets. Foot lbs is a mathmatical formula devised to mainly assess smaller, faster bullets. It is weighted very heavily toward speed (it squares the speed)

A guy who has killed a lot more game than I, you or your friend (Jim Shockey) has repeatedly made this comment (paraphrased): "100 gr of powder and a 300 gr well constructed bullet has plenty of energy to take any game in north america." He uses the 300 gr nosler partition And remember, with that bullet, you are going to be creating a 3/4 inch hole in that elk!

A better formula for comparing big slow bullets is the Taylor index: http://www.loadammo.com/Topics/July02.htm Have your friend read this, it is very interesting.

Using the Taylor formula, at 100 yards you will get a value of 32.6 and at 200 you will get almost 27. This index recommends at least 20 for elk

My elk load is 95 gr of BH 209 and a 350 gr Hornady FPB. That load has a Taylor index value of 31.3 at 100 yards and 27 at 200 yards, but a ft/lbs of only 900 (at 200). I have no doubts in this load having enough power. Just hope I can shoot straight!