Congrats Bob. I just moved back to Iowa from Colorado and miss elk hunting but sure like the whitetail. Thanks for the post.

Great job. Way to stick out the weather.

nice bull! what part of co? looks like beautiful country where we elk hunt in colorado theres nothing but sage brush.

What caliber do you use for that distance ?

Unit 75, SW Colorado, San Juan mountains.

.30-06 shooting 180 grain CoreLokt bullets. The distance was and is uncertain. My partners said 200 yards; I thought 300 yards or more. I really don't know what the range was, but without any objective evidence to alter my original gut feeling I'm going to stick with my original guess. I will say that at least one of my partners has a lot more experience hunting up in those mountains than I do, so that would tend to add weight to his judgment of 200 yards. I don't have any vested interest in claiming a longer range. I do not aspire to be a long range hunter. I do not lay claim to being an above average marksman. I would prefer to take a 100 yard shot to a 200 yard shot; I would prefer to take a 50 yard shot to a 100 yard shot. I did aim high -- aiming at the nose of the bull -- with the idea that at 300 or 300+ yards the bullet would fall below line of sight about 8 inches or 10 inches. Maybe the bull was angled down hill into the draw that he fell into when dead and there really wasn't much drop between the nose of the bull and the middle of the chest where the bullet impacted?

By the way, that elk was hit with a single shot and did not go very far in distance or very long in time before dropping. He walked maybe 5 feet to 10 feet and maybe stayed up for 10 seconds. My guess is that he was 500 LBS live weight. Not a giant bull but not a midget either.