Rethinking The Elk Rifle

The sun had risen over the eastern ridge, but the valley below was still in shadow, the grass and sage laden with heavy frost. There had been two good bulls in that valley, but our best bugling hadn't enticed them to come our way. We could still see them moving in and out of the dark quakies, and they would answer, but I knew the jig was nearly up.

One more bull, trailing the herd, had answered from our rear. He had passed through the saddle above us and now was bugling from the thick aspen at the bottom of our ridge. We were in an area of northwestern Colorado where elk are plentiful but really good bulls are scarce, and I was almost certain this one was a smaller satellite bull.

Still, you never know. When the unseen bull stepped out of the aspen below into an open spot along the creek, we let out a collective gasp. He was another mature bull, headed toward us. When he was hidden by the slope, I shifted and got ready; seconds later, antler tips appeared right below me.

The bull stepped into view at maybe 25 yards, quartering up the ridge, and I shot him carefully on the point of the on shoulder. The bullet smashed that shoulder, passed through the top of the heart and exited behind the off shoulder. Despite this terrible blow, there was no visible sign of a hit; the bull whirled and dashed out of sight. He died in the creek at the bottom of the ridge.

A few weeks later I hunted on the famed Vermejo Park. It was unseasonably warm, windy, with no snow. We hunted hard and saw a lot of elk and a lot of bulls, but the biggest boys were off somewhere licking their antler wounds. But not all of them.

Late one morning we spotted a herd feeding in a finger of grass that ran up into timber, out of the wind. One good 6x6 was among them, and we wasted no time crossing to their side of the valley. The bull was still there when we arrived, and I found an opening and laid across a log.

The bull was about 225 yards off and quartering away, so I held on the crease just behind his shoulder, in the lower third of the chest. That was where the bullet struck, passing through the heart, breaking the off shoulder and coming to rest against the hide on the far side.

The bull took the bullet hard and lunged forward. I didn't want him to get into the timber, so I was instantly ready to fire again. There wasn't time; he made less than 10 steps and dropped into the soft grass.

The Colorado bull was unusually close; he took the bullet at full muzzle velocity and energy. The second bull was at a fairly normal shooting distance. In both cases, shot placement was about as good as I can make it. One bull went maybe a hundred yards and might have gone farther if the creek hadn't stopped him (we had a heck of a time getting him out of it). The Vermejo Park bull dropped almost in his tracks, folding in less than 10 yards. One of these elk was taken with a wildcat .338 WSM from Rich Reilly's High Tech in Colorado Springs, firing a 225-grain Swift A-Frame. The other was taken with a factory Winchester Model 70 in .270 WSM, firing Federal Premium's 140-grain Nosler AccuBond load.