I have a buddy that had a 300 win mag that kicked like muley hunter (have to see a pic of him to understand that statement), he put a muzzle brake on it and now it kicks like a .243. But it is loud as hell now. I have only killed 1 elk and that is the one on my avatar, i had my ruger 7mm rem mag with handloaded 150 gr nosler partitions, it was a 75 yrd shot and he only went one direction and that was straight down.