jerry d

The part about it "boring and more shooting than woodsmanship"

Muley Hunter

It was boring to me, and i'll give you an example of it being shooting and not hunting.

A handicapped retired sniper was taken hunting. Something he had never done before, but always wanted to do.

They got high on the mountain, and glassed an elk. The sniper laid prone, and shot the elk at 480yds with one shot.

The sniper had zero hunting skills, because he had never done it before. However, being a sniper, his shooting skills were way above average.

Now, what part of him killing that elk was hunting, and what part was shooting?

I give him all the credit in the world as a shooter. I give him none as a hunter.

That's why it was boring for me. I don't want to be a sniper. I want to hunt the animal at his own terms when all his senses can be used against me.

We all have out definition of how we view hunting, and it's challenges. We're not going to agree on them, and that's fine. Nobody is forced to hunt any method they don't like. Some think my method of still hunting is easy. Probably, because they got lucky, and walked into an animal and shot it. It's pretty well accepted as the hardest way to hunt in the hunting world, but it doesn't really matter.

I've noticed how touchy guys are who like long range hunting. They seem to find it hard to believe that someone wouldn't like their method of hunting. They developed the skills to do it, but lets be honest. Those skills are developed on the range. Shooting. Maybe some more skills are glassing. Snipers do that too.

My skills are developed in the mountains. I live at 8000ft in the Rockies. It's only 15 minutes to get to the area in the picture I posted. I scout and still hunt without a gun 300 days a year in the mountains. I don't need a gun to hunt. I can work on playing the wind, being quiet, and seeing and getting close to game, before they see me. I also work on tracking game in all kinds of ground conditions. I'll also work on shooting, but it's more on practicing taking fast and running shots.

Then of course you have hunters who are inbetween. They work the timber, but will also take long shots. Those won't usually be 500yd shots though.

So, we're all different. Pick your style, and get good at it. If someone doesn't agree with it. So what? How boring would we be if we all liked the same thing?

To the OP. If you plan on shooting an elk at 300-500yds? You better find a place to practice those distances a lot. You say you don't have any right now. I'd rather see you learn to get closer.

IOWAWHITETAILS

Muley
This Isnt About teaching someone how too hunt or shoot! I have good fundamentals and ethics when it comes too hunting whitetail! I Do different types of Hunting...Bow hunt whitetail on stand...Shotgun hunt still hunting or pushing....Late Muzzle load Hunt Usually Siting!! This Question as Gotten off topic, Im basically just seeing what everbody else rifle hunts with....thats all and when i spend over 4k on my new mexico elk hunt its not gonna matter if its At 500yds or 10yds ....its gonna be about the experience of hunting different game/country and Enjoying it...thanks

Muley Hunter

I thought this thread was about elk?

How did I know someone would post still hunting was easy.

sconnyhunter

This thread is about appropriate caliber choice for big game. Including Elk, as a main example.
Muley, you made it into something else. By extrapolating the original post to mean that the OP only wanted to shoot Elk at long range.

npaden

I'll vote .300 WSM stainless synthetic in anything other than Remington 700.

I have a Browning A-Bolt stainless stalker in 7mm Rem Mag and it has done everything I've asked of it for the last 5 years I've taken 4 bull elk, 4 mule deer bucks, 4 whitetail bucks, 2 antelope and over a dozen hogs with it without any problems. Shots have been from 50 to 300 yards. If I had it to do over again I would pick the .300 WSM for the shorter length as my 26" barrel end up getting caught in low hanging tree branches occasionally.

Pick the rifle that fits you. Tikka is good, Browning, Howa and Savage are too.

That's my 2 cents. Nathan

Muley Hunter

How many right answers does he need? There's probably a minimum of 20 calibers he can use on elk. I've taken the majority of mine with a 30-30, and lately a muzzleloader.

Just get a 30-06, and go hunt. It's not that complicated.

Now we've moved onto hunting methods. Well, we were, but I don't want to argue about it. I tried to word my post so it wouldn't turn into a debate, but that's not possible.

I'm done.

homers brother

RR - You might consider that we "suck at it" because it's a lucky day when we're able to find elk placidly grazing in a meadow 200 yards away. In reality, I'd just as well try looking through a brick wall as set up high and hope a shootable bull walks through the handful of quarter-acre bogs, beaver meadows, or burns below me, whether they're 100 or 1000 yards away.

Competing in PR legs of multi-gun, I don't exactly view long-range shooting as boring. Quite the opposite. However, the ONLY big game in my neck of the woods (or plains) that lends itself to that kind of shooting is pronghorn. But, given the choice of shooting a goat at 800-plus with my PR (I've hit 10" plates cold bore at greater) or outwitting him with a stalk into handgun or bow range? To each his own.

Back to the OP. Now that you've calmed down a shade (wise choice, that edit you made), I hope that you're redefining your emphasis here. There are a LOT of calibers suitable for elk. The minimum short-action cartridge I'd consider suitable is the 7mm-08. The minimum long-action cartridge I'd consider suitable is the .270. The calibers I would suggest as MOST popular for elk are the 7mm Remington Magnum, the .30-06, and the .300 Winchester Magnum. Performance-wise, and from experience, the Weatherby Vanguard is very hard to beat for the money, and I'm hearing the Series II is an improvement over the original.

If you're planning a NM hunt, I'd do some work in Google Earth and see what kind of terrain and vegetation you may encounter or if you've booked a guide, talk to them about the kind of shooting to expect. Issuing a blanket of "500 yards" without any other justification ("my guide says to expect...") opens the door to make the wrong choice for the right conditions.

My own DEDICATED (I don't use it for anything else) elk rifle is a Wal-Mart Weatherby Vanguard in .300 Weatherby that I picked up new for less than $400 (they're a couple hundred more now, I think?) topped by a 3-9x40mm Leupold VXII. Total investment with Leupold mounts and rings is still less than $1000.

However, I probably have twice the investment I've made in a rifle and scope in QUALITY boots, QUALITY pack, and QUALITY compact spotting scope and tripod. And then there's the time spent conditioning.... Elk hunting is considerably more involved than the just rifle.

jerry d

This IMO is about as good advice as you can get. HB gave you minimum and most popular calibers,if it were me i'd pick one in the middle.

Uncle Nicky

.300 Winchester Mag, either Remington or Savage bolt action, and the best scope you can afford (I like Leupold). This should get you in around $1,000 and kill any big-game animal in the U.S. (I'd get a little more firepower for a brown bear or grizzly).