wankerjake
Member
Good old Savage 99’s. Killed my first two cow elk with a ‘99 in .300 Savage. 150gr Interlocks loaded at or below minimum. Lol. NOT my perfect elk rifle/combo.
Very impressive sir"My" perfect elk rifle, the 35 Whelen as well. Mine was built as an all weather rifle on a Mauser VZ24 action with a Douglas Premium barrel with a 1-12" twist, given a black Parkerized finish, and bedded into an inexpensive composite stock. Carrying rifles in saddle scabbards and riding through brush and timber is hell on rifles; function trumps form. It wears a plain-Jane Burris 4X matte finish scope. For back up I installed a band-type front sight and mounted an inexpensive Williams 5D aperture sight to the receiver. Once zeroed with the receiver sight, the sight base and aperture arm were marked, and the aperture arm was removed and kept in my hunting pack with a screwdriver "just in case", because "just in case" always happens 2 hours ride by horseback from your spare rifle.
My initial load was a 225 gr. Nosler Partition running right at 2700 fps with which I shot a nice 6x6.
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Although I got the bull, I was a little disappointed with the bullet due to lack of penetration so I switched to a Barnes 225 TSX. This one too was run a bit under 2700 fps and shot incredibly. During load development the largest 100 yd. group was 1 1/4", with most 3/4" and less. The load I settled on was the most accurate-
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My father was the first to shoot an elk with this particular load which was a nice 6x6 that he shot at about 100 yds. literally, in the rectal orifice, just before dark. I was stunned by the performance of the bullet as penetrated all the way up the front of the right shoulder, stopping under the skin-
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Not bad for a 71 year old man at almost 11,000'!-
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Another opportunity came with a bull a little over 350 yds. Again, the bullet performed perfectly, and penetrated the bull angling from high behind the right shoulder and exiting the low left front side of the neck (the shot was somewhat downhill).
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I worked up a load for Dad's Remington 700 Classic 35 Whelen. This rifle wears a 4X Leupold and is a fairly light rifle, which means it kicks like Sister Sara's mule. I decided to try a 250 gr. Speer SP. This rifle too is very accurate and finding a load was easy with the 3rd load tried fitting the bill-
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Dad was carrying this rifle when a rag-headed bull walked out a mere 44 yds. away. I don't know that I've ever seen such wanton destruction inside an animal-
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The bullet was reduced to a relatively small shard of jacket, but it did its job.
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A sort of neat picture of him with what would be his last bull-
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So, there's 2¢.
35W