[Lennyjoe]

Just got back from the range finalizing my loads for this month's elk hunt.

The reloads consist of 180gr Nosler Partition spitzers, 56.3gr of IMR 4350 in Remington brass and WLR primers. C.O.L. is set at 3.325 which puts me .010 off the lands.

Grouping was 3/4" @ 100 yards and the 5 shot string averaged 2850fps out of my 21" Savage 110 series rifle.

I think that will work on a cow elk. Hunt starts Oct 19th up near the Grand Canyon.

Sumpnz, are you going to make this hunt?

[Old Trapper]

Lennyjoe,

Your load is very close to what I've been using on elk for the last 30 years, and it's worked well. However, one occassion I wished I had an exit wound and better blood trail. See the thread on exit wounds. Not everyone agrees on the need for an exit wound. Your load will most like do a good job killing your elk if you hit it in the bread basket, but most likely will not exit the far side of the elk.

Don't assume your elk is not mortally wounded if you don't see blood on the ground. There may only be small drops of blood that are hard to see even if you made a good shot. You may have to invest considerable time and energy in following up wounded elk even when it's dead not too far from where you shot it.

[H&Hhunter]

Great elk load.

2850 with a 180 gr bullet out of a 21" barrel? That's a heater of a load for sure! Are you getting any pressure signs?

That has to be a compressed load right?

[GooseGestapo]

Unless you hit massive bones on an outsized elk, I doubt that you'll NOT get an exit wound with the 180gr Partition.

However, with marginal shot placement (the actual area of greatest lethality on an elk is much smaller proportional to a whitetail deer), even an exit wound won't help much. Be sure to place the shot close in on the shoulder or better yet into the shoulder. An elk with the front "landing gear" shot out from under him runs less than one on all fours.

In '03 I put a Hornady 200gr Interlok (.338/06 @ 2800fps) through the "bread basket" on a ~700lb cow in Colorado. Elk made it back to the group over night and other hunters got it at day break. I tracked the cow for 3.1mi (gps measured) before missing a running shot as it went over a far ridge. I hit her a "little" too far back (in front of kidneys) due to a significant x-wind @ 250yds and a little too low (missed spine). A friend who outfits and guides bowhunters in ID says he's hit them "there" with arrows and seen them a week later grazing with the arrow still sticking out..................

In '05, a friend used my 7mm-08 on a 1,200lb 6x6 bull(weighed! private ranch animal). 3 exit wounds from 140gr Nosler Part's., and a Sierra 140 PtSP that lodged just under the hide. (guide told him to keep shooting till it wouldn't get up........ didn't want to extricate it from a nearby canyon).

My younger brother has killed 3 elk with a .308 and 150gr Nosler Part's. 4-shots for 3 elk, no bullets recovered. (One cow tried to get up and recieved another shot to the neck).

Shot placement is VERY important...........

[Lennyjoe]

Yea, its compressed. There are no signs whatsoever on the expended brass. I'm still .2gr from listed max.

For some reason I get a pretty good fps out of that rifle. Maybe shooting at 3000ft above sea level helps.

Here's a photo I took after the last shot of the day thru the chronograph.

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b7ce27b3127ccebd6cb35cb9b300000026100AcOWLdk3cN2Lg

[H&Hhunter]

I am going to have to try that load. She is a "smokin" for an 06! Heck that is the same ballistics as a Federal HE load from several years back!

[Old Trapper]

GooseGestapo,

Unless you hit massive bones on an outsized elk, I doubt that you'll NOT get an exit wound with the 180gr Partition.


I don't load my 180 grain Noslers as hot as Lennyjoe does, but I've never gotten an exit wound on a solid hit with a 180 grain Nosler partition and that suggests to me a low probability that Lennyjoe will either unless that extra velocity he's pumping into the the load is really significant in pushing the back end of that partition through the hide.

We may define "bread basket" differently. I've never shot a cow elk, but bulls don't run around the next day if they've been hit in the bread basket on day one. Maybe Colorado cows are tougher than the bulls living in more northern States.

I appreciate your frank honesty about wounding an elk with poor shot placement. You are a good tracker to track a wonded elk over 3 miles without an exit wound. I also appreciate your honesty in admitting to having a friend who hunts farm-raised elk and who shoots four rounds into a lying elk before killing it. Neither of those images make pretty pictures. Hope that farm elk didn't have chronic wasting disease.

We do agree that Lennyjoe has a very good elk load, but we might debate if Lennyjoe could have a better elk load. Elmer Kieth and Jack O'Connor were engaged in that debate over 40 years ago and it still hasn't been settled. At that time neither Elmer or Jack had any better bullet options than the Nosler partition. Opinions on the matter seem to be largely based on an individual hunters experiences -- both good and bad.

An old friend of mine was a game warden assigned to an area just outside Yellowstone National Park back in the 1960s when the Park decided to reduce the elk population. As a State game warden he cooperated with NPS in reducing the elk population. In that official capacity he shot more elk in a couple of years than most hunters will in a couple of lifetimes. He used a .270 Win. featherweight and a .35 Whelen. He shot 150 grain Nosler partition bullets out of the .270 and found it just as effective as the .35 Whelen. Not surprisingly, that featherweight .270 became his favorite elk rifle.

When I asked him with what caliber he'd actually killed the most elk, and he replied the .22 rimfire out of his Colt Woodsman pistol. If you ponder the context of the situation that's understandable. You might also conclude that shooting straight is more important than what you shoot.

Needless to say, that old rascal, a former member of the ElkGestapo, is a very very good shot.

[Lennyjoe]

I started the load at 53 gr and worked my way up.

The old fashion "Complete reloading manual for the 30-06" from loadbooks.com shows a max of 55.0gr.

IMR website shows a max of 56.5 with Sierra 180gr bullets (not nosler)

Lyman's 48th edition shows a max of 56.0gr.

Since, no one other than the 1st showed Nosler as the bullet I decided to start low and work up.

The 56.3gr load showed the best grouping. Highest I went was 56.5 but the group was not as accurate as the .3 load. There was no signs of overpressure with the 56.5.

Based off the 56.3gr I adjusted OAL to achieve the best groups. Again, no overpressure signs.

Highest fps of the string was 2911 with the rest running right around 2850fps.

Will see how she performs in 12 days.

[H&Hhunter]

I have to agree with Old Trapper on the 180 gr Nosler. I also doubt that you will get an exit wound very often on elk sized animals.

The Nosler partition will, without fail blow the nose off the bullet at impact. A Nosler PT will retain about 60% of it original weight. While they are a very good bullet and they give very good penetration they seldom exit on an elk sized critter.

I've seen a 150LB hog stop a 300gr NPT out of a .375H&H on a broadside shot.

Of course I've seen a cow elk stop a 270gr Barnes X on a quartering shot as well. There are no ALWAYS and NEVER statements that hold true when dealing with bullet performance.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lenny,

I was looking in the Nosler book last night and they also list 55.0 grs of IMR 4350 as a max. But oddly enough they list 56.5 as a max for the .30-06 AI with identical velocity to what you are getting. Interesting, I wonder how many times this is true and how often the loaded round stays within pressure limits?

[Lennyjoe]

I did start to work up a load with Barnes X but they failed to feed out of my box magazine in the 110 Savage bolt rifle I'm using. Kept hanging up on the nose of the bullet and the base of the barrel. I don't need that happening if I have a follow up shot (probable with elk) so I abandoned the Barnes X bullet.

My buddies 110 (non boxed magazine rifle) feeds the Barnes TSX just fine.

[eliphalet]

I cannot compare bullets here as every elk I have ever shot has been with 150 grain Core-lokt's reloaded in 30-06 and one with the same bullet in 308, or with a muzzle loader. I have yet to have one NOT exit if shot through the ribs in the heart lung area, even the 320 grain muzzle loader exited after passing through the lungs. I find it surprising what I read here and the so called "premium" bullets that didn't.
The only bullet IIRC that didn't exit was a second shot as the animal was trying to stand back up that from a front quartering angle went into the neck taking several inches of neck bone out, on through the shoulder blade on the far side and coming to a stop against the inside of the hide. That bullet still weighing in at 90 grains or so. If Noslers come apart that bad from a rib shot you could not sell me one. But like I said I can only judge from my own personal experiences.\

Years ago I did use some 180 grain Hornady's on a couple of deer. The damage was extensive, far more than necessary, meat loss excessive, and so stopped using them. No idea now as that was about 30 years ago.

Found and weighed that Core-lokt bullet, it still weighs 92 grains.

[H&Hhunter]

I've always had good luck with Corelokt bullets.

[musher]

I find the reports of no exit wounds with 180 gr noslers out of an '06 on elk sized game a bit surprising.

Admittedly, most of my experience is with the nosler 210's out of a 338 and that's a different animal. The only nosler from that rig that I've recovered was one shot lengthwise through a caribou starting with about 6" of neck vertebrae at 200 yards. It's accounted for lots of moose and caribou over the years.

A closer example is when my sister in law shot a full sized moose (55") at 300-325 yards with her '06 three times before it gave up. All three rounds exited just fine.

I guess it all depends on just what you hit between the near side and the far side.

[Old Trapper]

I find the reports of no exit wounds with 180 gr noslers out of an '06 on elk sized game a bit surprising

There are so many variables that contribute to hunting experieces with bullets that none of us will probably ever collect enough uniform data to reach statistically significant conclusions about bullet performance in the field. But, being human, we use our experiences to form opinions pretty quickly.

So, after only 30 years of using 180 grain Nosler Partition bullets for elk, I'm going to follow the suggestions of some participants in this forum and try Barnes Triple Shocks for the next 30 years.

I'll report back when I have as much experience with the copper bullet as I've had with the partition bullet. Hope the old legs and lungs hold out until I conclude the experiment.

[sixgunner455]

Trapper, I hope that your lungs and legs hold out for all of that too. Hope mine hold out that long.

[ArmedBear]

180 grains at 2850 from a .30-06?

For Elk?

Hell, everybody who hangs around a gun shop knows that you can't hunt elk with anything less than a .416 Weatherby. Absolute MINIMUM is 6000 ft-lb at the muzzle.

Your load is barely enough for coyotes.:p

Seriously, good hunting! Wanna hear about your hunt when you get back!:)

[Lennyjoe]

Just got back from the range again. This time I loaded up some Barnes X bullets.

The Barnes bullets hang up in my rifle when trying to feed. The rifle is a box mag Savage 110 bolt (left handed). When loaded with 4 rounds the gun feeds the 1st round fine (left side of mag) but hangs on the 2nd round. Therefore I elected to stay with the Nosler loads. Besides, the Barnes loads were pretty spread out using 55.0, 55.3 and 55.7 gr of IMR 4350. Nosler load is definitely tighter and more consistent.

I'm using a Burris 3x9x40 scope with the ballistic plex reticle. Has bullet drop beads below the cross hairs. Of course they differ with loads/bullets as far as yardage goes.

http://www.burrisoptics.com/images/ballplexreticle.gif

My rifle is zeroed at 100yds with the Nosler loads. I took the target out to 200yds and used the 1st bead down. Bullets impacted 3" high with that bead. So I used the cross hairs and the bullet impacted .5" below the X.

I think I'm going to like this load. Getting the gear ready and am heading out to the unit on Wed to set up camp and scout prior to Fridays hunt.

I'll definitely post pictures and bullet performance when I get back. Hopefully Saturday with a cooler full of elk meat!

[olhippie]

....Your load sounds like a winner to me. No need to change, but if you wanted more penetration while still maintaining good expansion characteristics in the projectile, you could swap to Trophy Bonded bullets of that same grain weight.

[Lennyjoe]

Thought about using them but decided to give Nosler and Barnes a go in the initial load developments. Kinda ran out of time. Oct snuck up on me pretty quick so I stuck with the Nosler loads for now.

The Nosler loads definitely grouped better than the Barnes bullets.

[sumpnz]

Hey Lenny - I've been a little "forum'd out" of late, so I only just found this thread. Hope we get a chance to meet up over the hunt.

I'm bringing both CZ 550's. The 6.5x55 that I used successfully 2 years ago on that big cow elk is going to be the backup rifle this year. The 9.3x62 that I bought from buzz_meeks here will be the primary. I've got 140gr XLC's for the first that chrony about the same as your load. The 9.3 has 286gr Partitions that buzz said chrony'd 2400fps. I didn't take the chrony with me when I sighted in.

[Lennyjoe]

Good deal.

Be safe on the drive. I'll see you up there most likely Thursday since you'll get in late Wed eve. Pack some warm gear cause it's below 30 at night. Mid 50's during the day.

Also, we have GPS coordinates of the herds we seen up there in Sept. No snow so they should be in the same general areas. I'll fill you in on Thursday.

Now off to Sportsmans to get some last minute stuff........

[Lennyjoe]

It took 2.5 days to finally get to test out the load but Sunday eve it worked great.

Took a cow elk from 40 yards. Hit her just behind the shoulder and she immediately got the drunk walk going. Took 2 steps and my hunting pardner thought she was going to run so he shot her in the neck and downed her for good. I personally didn't think it was necessary but concidering the terrain we were in it probably saved us a few extra yards in packing out the meat.

Either way, the Nosler partition took out a rib on the recieving side and exited the opposing side leaving a quarter size exit wound.

We shot her about .5 miles from the truck at 4pm so it was after dark when we hiked the final load of meat out.

Sumpnz joined us on the hunt and it was a great time. We did alot of walking but in the end elk hunting was a very enjoyable experience. I'm sure I'll do it again. No, I know I will!!

I'll get some pictures up shortly.

[GCW5]

I switched to a 9.3 X 62 for elk 3 years ago for a little more "wompum" for bulls with a 250 gr Balistic tip, 63 gr of RL 15 (2650fps) and love it.

Before that, I used a .270 with 150 gr partitions and always had a drop dead stop and an exit wound, cows only. My son has had a .270 WSM since they came out, using the 140 gr "Failsafe". He has killed every elk (again cows only) he has shot at with 1 shot, never had a drop dead kill, always went 40 to 50 yards before going down, and never an exit wound. I'm going to load him up some 150 gr partitions for next season to see if this makes a difference. In the meantime, I'm not to sure about those fancy copper bullets, no matter who makes them.

We also had a good hunt during first rifle season, a cow each and out before too much snow hit.

[eliphalet]

Way to go Lennyjoe.
Never hurts to plant a elk, I will take a second shot if they aren't down.

[T.R.]

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c146/rushmoreman/HPIM0375.jpg

If you can get this close, a .357 MAG revolver will get the job done!

30-06 has killed stacks of Wyoming elk. Good choice!
TR

[sumpnz]

Lennyjoe - Thanks for all the help and an enjoyable couple days of hunting together! Too bad we couldn't fill all the tags, but it was a tough hunt. Don't forget to send me Tim's address.

I finally got mine this past Tuesday evening. Like GCW5 I used the 9.3x62mm, though I used 286gr Partitions over 59.5gr RL-15. Those gave a thru and thru at 30-40 yards. When I looked inside the carcass the ribcage on the off side had a 2" hole in it, though the hide had about a caliber size exit wound. The old girl went about 10 steps and then practically flipped over backwards when she fell.

I just got home about 45 minutes ago after 2 days of driving. I'll be cutting and wrapping tomorrow. Loved the hunt, but I think I'll stay closer to home from now on.

[Lennyjoe]

I don't blame you for hunting in WA instead of AZ. Long drive.

I'll do some research and see what's required for the WA non resident hunt. Maybe next year I'll jump on a plane and hunt WA with you.

Here's some pictures from this past weekend.

Scouting picture. Day before the hunt. On the upper basin you can see the beginning of the Grand Canyon.
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b7ce07b3127ccebe28f83d580200000036100AcOWLdk3cN2Lg

While scouting we found a dead calf which appeared to be killed by a cat. We must of ran the cat off cause the kill was only about an hour old.
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b7ce07b3127ccebe28f84f587000000026100AcOWLdk3cN2Lg

The take. Shot her at 40 yards with the Nosler loads and you can see the entrance wound. We started skinning her and remembered to take pictures before we got too far into the job.
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b7ce07b3127ccebe28f84d587200000036100AcOWLdk3cN2Lg

Me and Andrew (Sumpnz) taking 5 after walking about 1 mile. Great guy and a pleasure to hunt with.
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b7ce07b3127ccebe28f835580a00000036100AcOWLdk3cN2Lg

Me taking a siesta after hiking thru thick stuff.
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b7ce07b3127ccebe28f832d93d00000026100AcOWLdk3cN2Lg

I'm hooked. I plan on hunting as much elk as possible.

[sumpnz]

You're welcome to come up here and hunt with me anytime Lenny. Soon as I get the card reader set up on the laptop (desktop is in for repairs) I'll post some pics that I took.

[Lennyjoe]

Andy, I sent you Tim's address.

Got the offer done with Northrop Grumman so I'm off to the east coast on Friday.

[sumpnz]

I got the addy. It should be on the way by Saturday. Good luck with the new job!