Many times that number of handloads can be fashioned, with bullets and powders that continue to proliferate. 30-06 appears in about 80 types of factory ammo. Besides, myriad loads are possible for any one cartridge. A bullet’s effect has less to do with the effectiveness of the best elk cartridges in design, or even the bullet itself, than with range and shot angle, animal size and the missile’s track inside. So these notes are hardly authoritative.Įven if by sunny good fortune you were directed to test one cartridge on elk and permitted to take several bulls in a season, you’d have a hard time drawing unassailable conclusions. Constrained by the one-bull-per-year-per-state limit imposed on elk hunters everywhere, I’ve used no cartridge exhaustively. They’ve all helped shape my views on elk loads. But I’ve used 36, if memory serves, and carried on elkless hunts rifles chambered to other cartridges. 300 Holland & Holland still ranks among my favorite elk rounds. It vanished as I jerked the re-barreled Mauser up onto the elk and pressed the trigger.Ī 180-grain Speer handload dropped the bull.įorty-two years later, the. The dot appeared faintly in my peripheral vision. Dusk had stolen the dot.Īfter a frantic search for the dot against the elk’s dark shoulder, I dropped the scope field to the grass. Slowly, rifle bobbing to my pulse, I cheeked the stock and peered through the scope. The bull, seemingly close enough to touch, stared back, antler tips ivory arcs against the inky forest. I shifted slightly for a last-minute glance about…

It had ghosted into the conifers without showing me antlers. I had sat out the day’s end glassing a distant elk. Dead air kept its scent from him, short yards away. Many moons ago, in a tight Oregon meadow blackened by lodgepole shadow at dusk, he slipped silently through bleached grass and stood to watch the motionless lump at forest’s hem. 30-06 still ranks as a favorite among elk hunters. Here Wayne van Zwoll shares some observations and experiences about what makes the best elk cartridges. 32 Special (Hornady ammo) killed this elk at 130 yards.

300 bull elk