First elk of the season is in the freezer.

I’ve got a buddy who farms a couple of sections of alfalfa close to my house. He allows a couple of us to shoot elk on his property as they are pretty tough on his product.

It took several afternoons of waiting but the herd finally came onto the hay with legal shooting light. This is purely a population control/ meat hunt so the target was a tender cow or young bull.

The herd entered the hay field and were standing at about 500 yards. The wind was dead calm my 22” Steyr Scout in .308 Win was rock solid on its Integral bipod. All of the cows had young calves with them so I decided to shoot a young bull. A spike was standing broadside and my range finder hit him at 514 yards.

I watched the young bull drop in my scope as the 165 Gr Nosler Accubond did its work and exited behind him. It’s a good start to our season!

George P said:

Since these are culls, is there a limit or not?

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You can have as many tags as you want, no limit. $42.00 each for a resident.

Highland Lofts said:

308 us an exxcelkent csliber for elk.
Congrats on your elk. Some good eating right there.
What state are you hunting in.

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Colorado.

Shanghai McCoy said:

Congratulations.
And I'd guess this answers the eternal question. "Is the 308 enough for elk?"

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Admittedly that was a small bull and the conditions were perfect. And I don’t know what more you could ask for performance wise. The bullet punched through just behind the shoulders and a little high, broke the spine and exited.

This rifle regularly shoots under 1/2 MOA on a good day it’ll rip a ragged hole into ten shots at 200 yards. It is topped with a Night Force 2.5x10 that is really incredible glass! I have ultimate confidence in it’s ability to deliver the goods with deadly precision. I’d not hesitate to shoot anything in North America with that “little” .308. And the 165 Gr Accubond has been extremely consistent for me on game. It opens fast and penetrates very well, usually exiting even on large critters. In fact I don’t think I ever recovered one but I’ve mainly shot deer and antelope with this combo so that’s to be expected.

I’ve got a cow tag in a different area as does my wife so hopefully we’ll have some more reports on this bullet and “elks” later this year. She shoots the exact same combo but out of a 19” Scout.

Whizzbang said:

Congrats! Always nice to fill the freezer early. I like to get the meat part out of the way early then I can chase horns if I want without guilt.

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Ditto! Having meat in the freezer early take the pressure off and let’s me get picky later in the season.

We had roasted tenderloins last night.They were incredible!!!