Only wood chips, no meat. UPDATED

[Bob Mc Alice]

Sara and I have been beating the brush south west of Steamboat Springs for the last two weekends trying to fill one cow elk tag. She drew, I got rejected this year. We hunt private land in the late season every year. We encountered all kinds of weather like snow, rain, fog, cold and wind.This year there seems to be fewer animals than normal and they are quite skittish, cant get within 800-900 yds. before they are off running. This is tough country to hike around in with steep hills and deep cuts and plenty of thick scrub oak for them to hide in. Shots are generally long. We finally got within decent rifle range of a good cow Saturday morning. It was roughly 450yds. away on the opposite side of a draw we were over looking. She was in some scrub oak just looking around. Trouble was it was quite windy maybe 12-15mph.

Sara was using my M70 .30-06 with 180gr. Nosler ballistic tips. The gun is zeroed at 300 yds. I figured the wind and gravity would put the bullet on target. Laying prone resting off my pack I told her to put the crosshair on the animals head and squeeze when ready. BOOM.....the animal flinched and was off running into the thicket. I heard what I thought was an impact sound. Lets hike down and check for a possible hit and bloodtrail, I said. We reached the exact spot in twenty minutes. Right away I saw wood chips scattered all over the snow behind where the cow was standing. That bullet was just a tad high over the shoulder and smacked a four inch scrub oak tree nearly center. That 180 went clear thru and did some serious damage to that tree.

We followed the animals tracks for 30 minutes to be sure it was not hit. Not a single drop of blood was found.

We will hit it again next weekend. The tag is valid thru the 31st.

http://s766.photobucket.com/albums/xx302/seveno8/elk/

[lone ringer]

Nice pictures Bob, better luck next week.

[jjp]

That is some beautiful country. It looks like the tree might not make it. Looks like yall are enjoying your weekends together.

[Dee]

Looking at the pics I think I see you problem. How can you expect to get close with all that bright orange on?

I have always wanted to hunt elk but we have none here. Good luck!


D.

[Bob259]

Thanks for sharing Bob!

[Jim Beckley]

McAlice, It seems like all this year when you needed to do some serious shooting, you borrowed someones 6.5 to get it done. Wouldn't it have been fair to get Sara some sort of 6.5 for that cow?

[Bob Mc Alice]

Now using Mr.B's 6.5x47L to slap a 300m golf ball is one thing. You don't use 6.5 silhouette cartridges to shoot long range big game, just wouldn't be ethical. Well, maybe with the Swede hand loaded warm with heavy bullets.

[Jason]

While I sometimes think that Bob is punch drunk from that 7-08 because he's so religious over it for silhouette, I have to agree this time. The numbers looks fine for the heavy bullets out of a 260 Rem, but if I had a choice I would just rather be carrying a little more gun for elk, especially if there was any chance of the shot being long. That said, my current elk hunting gun (on the very rare occasion that I get to hunt elk) is a .270 Win because it's what I have in a hunting rifle. I have loads for it using Interbond bullets at 3000fps and I'm pretty confident with it.

[Jim T.]

Jason:

Get that .270 necked up to 7mm or 30 caliber, use 175gr and 180 gr Nosler Partitions and you will have a great elk cartridge. Take it a step further and have that .30-.270 blown out and the shoulder steepened (Ackley Improved) and you will have a cartridge, when handloaded, can duplicate factory .300 Winchester Magnum with a lot less powder.

Jim

[Jason]

Funny you mention that. It's a commercial Mauser made in 1953, and the original factory barrel isn't the most accurate in the world. While trying to coax a little more accuracy out of it, I've tried lots of things. The trigger wasn't good at all, so I took it apart expecting to find an old military-style trigger. I was shocked to find that it already had a Timney trigger in it, but it was not adjusted correctly and was really gunked up. After cleaning it up and adjusting it, the trigger is great but it didn't really help accuracy. Then I used a pillar bedding gift certificate that I won at the Conard Cup to have it pillar bedded by Neil Johnson. That also didn't help as much as I expected. The crown wasn't bad but wasn't perfect so I had it recrowned. The gunsmith said that the pilot was very loose in the bore and that I shouldn't spend any more money trying to make it accurate as the bore was oversized and that it "wasn't exactly match grade when it was made over 50 years ago." That got me to thinking about rebarreling. Most of my gun money is actually being funneled into my daughter's 4H prone shooting, so it occurred to me to pick up one of the short-chambered Mauser screw-in barrels in .270 Winchester since I already have the dies, brass, and bullets. The more I think about it, I'm actually considering going to 30-06, though. Hunting opportunities in the near future will probably be wild hogs or elk, and I think I'd like a little more bullet on those. I don't really want to go all the way to 35 Whelen, though, as the hog shots tend to be fairly long. My one and only hog kill (~325lbs at least, as that's all the scale could weigh) was a broadside heart shot with a bonded bullet from a 30-06 and it didn't even exit the other side. I don't have huge confidence that anything from a 270 Win would exit.

So... tell me more about this Ackley Improved ability to duplicate 300 Win Mag ballistics...

[Jerry G]

I have always wanted to chip wood. Where can I get one of thoes guns?

[Bob Mc Alice]

We hit the road Sunday at 3:30am and arrived at the ranch gate at 6:30 am. I had to chain up all four tires as there was 18" of new snow since we were there last. Deep snow on the ranch roads prevented us from reaching the spots we wanted to hunt. Knee deep snow forced us to put on snowshoes to get up to promising feeding areas. For our two hour hike we only saw three bulls, two of them wall hanger quality. Not a cow anywhere. Back to the truck for lunch and move on down to another spot. Came across six pronghorn antelope feeding on sagebrush and got a few pictures of them.

It was a cold but sunny day and lots of critters were out. We saw a lot of coyotes, red fox, bald and golden eagles, a weasel, crows ravens and magpies......but no cow elk. Another fun filled snowshoe hike proved fruitless, no animals at all. Towards the end of the day I got daring and pushed the Ford deeper into the property. At times the bumper was plowing snow. Finally the truck quit going at all. Good spot to turn around before it's too late. I glassed the surrounding area ...nothing. It was 3pm and we decided to call it a day, head into town and get a motel room.

On the way out Sara spotted animals on top of a hill, more like a mini mountain. I looked them over and saw that there was four yearling elk (18-20 month olds) looking down at us. I guesstimated them to be a 275 to 325 yard shot at a steep uphill angle. They were not at all nervous at our presence. Not as much meat as an adult cow, but perfectly legal to take. Sara wanted one bad to end this miserable hunt. I stepped out and put my pack on the hood of the Ford while she got the M70 out of the case. The elk had not moved. Sara got comfortable resting the '06 off the pack. I told her to put the crosshair center on the shoulder of what appeared to be the larger of the elk.

With no wind to deal with I watched as she let the 180gr. Ballistic Tip loose. WHACK...the animal dropped like a sack of rocks. The other three animals did not move and stayed focused on us. In fact they stared at us for all the time it took us to climb up that slippery snow covered slope. In disbelief I snapped photos of them along the climb up. At 50 yards they finally walked away minus one. The shot went high and broke the spine over the shoulder. It turned out to be a male yearling and was probably 30 lbs. heavier than the others.
Looking back at the truck assured me it was a solid 350 yard kill. By the time all the work was done it was 6pm. We slept good that night. We are glad this hunt is over. I added some more photos. http://s766.photobucket.com/albums/xx302/seveno8/elk/

[Bob259]

Congrats to Sara and end of a good hunt

[lone ringer]

Thank you for sharing Bob.

[Trent]

Great story and photos Bob!!

That was a STEEP shot! Congrats to Sara!!