Originally Posted by homers brother

Did I say it was the BEST CHOICE? If your response to everything you don't want to believe is to infer that they're lying? Holy cow, what unadulterated arrogance.

You need a .300 WSM so that you can shoot elk at 300 yards? Fine. I don't. First, there isn't a park in the areas I hunt that's 300 yards long to begin with. Maybe down on the rancher's pasture, but not up on the National Forest unless you're shooting 1500 yards across the canyons. Most of the time, we're in the timber, and shots there might go 75 yards. A .30-06 works just fine for me today, now that I have a choice in what rifle I take to the field. The bottom line though is YOU DON'T KNOW. You just don't. I don't care that your (CO) season's only a week long, mine (WY) isn't. You don't hunt with me, and you never will, not if you were the last "hunting buddy" on the planet. You'd be wise to stop judging people and their experiences based upon your own.

It's time for you to start accepting that there are other people out there in the field and we might hunt differently than you do. It doesn't make you wrong, but it certainly doesn't make you right, either.

34 years ago this fall I went into the Weminuche for the first time after elk. Everyone told me I needed a bigger rifle than a .243. That is, everyone but my game wardens and mentors (Herb Browning and Glen Eyre - may they RIP). If this forum had been available back then and I'd listened to someone the likes of you, that experience would never have happened. I didn't bag an elk that first season, but I was hooked, and I bagged three elk with that very same rifle while I was in college.

I don't agree with using a .223 to hunt deer, but now that it's legal in Wyoming to do so, I feel a stronger responsibility to get someone into the woods if that's the only rifle they have, than I do to bash them for not having a bigger rifle. I'm not going to judge them because they're using a small rifle, I'm going to expect them to be responsible with it and to use it well, to learn the skills and fieldcraft necessary, because hunting isn't about what rifle you're shooting to begin with. If they're sitting on the couch watching football instead because I told them "it wasn't enough gun" - then I've failed. We've ALL failed.

Awhile back you'd posted about the forum going downhill. Why? Take a look in the mirror. It's people who sit in judgment of others like you've been doing since I've been reading your posts. It's one thing to refute something based on science, it's another altogether to do so on the basis of opinion. No one else uses enough gun (opinion). Only you know what happens when someone else buys a firearm (opinion). Only you know when the forum is going downhill (opinion). Only you know. And that's the problem.

You want to continue the personal attack from here? I backed out of our last conversation because it detracted from the OP's original question. Unless you've bagged an elk with a .243, this thread isn't about you, so it's time for you to either calm down or go away.