So, hunters for the past few hundred years have killed elk with a .54 round ball but a 300gr SST won't do them in???

If they are that tough, how the heck do you eat them???

You might want to try the 300gr Barnes MZ, I know they are tough as all get out...But if your dad's gun likes those 300SST with 90grs of Pyrodex, I'd stick with it...

I've killed a dozen or so whitetails with the 250SST and never had to track one...My load was 90grs of Pyrodex R-S...

My first choice would be a 275grn Lehigh. My second choice would be a 275grn Parker Ballistic Extreme.

Isn't it a matter of degrees, or perhaps good, better, best, or some such thing. Given total freedom, would you choose to use the sst on Elk over a partition, or the Barnes MZ you suggested? Myself, i have killed 5 whitetail with 300g sst. That was enough for me. It was obvious, doing the post mortem, that there are better bullets available. Since switching bullets, i have killed deer with 300g xtp, 300g Nosler, and 270g Gold Dot. The all seemed to work better than the sst...............................using the sst resulted in 5 hit deer; 5 dead deer.

You know them real pretty bulls you see them boys kill on TV, and you see pictures of here and there. What you do if you want to be able to chew the round steaks, is you grind them into burger, and enjoy the flavor. Now, a spike bull or most cows will provide round steaks you can chew. Our son has advised several of his friends that happen to kill a nice bull, to only have steaks made out of the back strap, and have the rest of the animal ground into hamburger. The ones that heed his advice, thank him; the ones that don't, always say they wished they would have listened.

Thanks for the information guys!

I am definately not arguing the fact that conicals would be a better idea for elk. We are just in a bit of a time crunch. He had the same model gun I do, and when he went to tighten the stock screw, it stripped out. He was able to find a ML barrel for his shotgun that day, and ordered it.

We tried loading the Great Plains, but they were WAAAAAYYYY too tight. We had some 300 grain SST's and they loaded and shot well. I think he bought another box of the SST's so that he had some extra.

I will look around some more and see what we can find for bullets. The deer season opens September 10th, elk the 16th, so we are running out of time for experimentation.

I am also a fan of "if the deer died, then how did the bullet NOT work?" question.

We'll see what we can come across of the mentioned bullets, and how dead set he is and comfortable he is with the SST's. Though it may not be the "best" choice out there, I would rather have any bullet through the lungs than a good bullet in the gut. Elk can run a LLLOONNGGGGGG ways.

Later,

Marcial

The copper coating on the FPB does nothing for strength, just covers the lead. The lead is a lead alloy that is tougher than pure lead, so it takes more force to fragment it, but it will fragment. After taking two cows with the FPB (one through the elbow bone) I would have no hesitation using it on a bull.

That said, sabots are probably a better choice all around. The nosler partition in 300 grain is an elk killer. Know of no one who has anything bad to say about its terminal performance. Barnes bullets are another excellent choice (either as a sabot or as a Thor).