Bust Big ELK With A Deer Rifle

Planning an elk hunt and think you need a bigger rifle? If you hunt deer, think again

- Patrick Meitin

I’ve never been a big-gun advocate. I killed my first elk at age 12, a New Mexico 5x5 bull at 200 yards, with .243 Winchester; my second was another bull at the same range, using the same rifle, two years later. These early experiences shaped my perspective on rifles.

That attitude was reinforced while guiding elk hunters for 23 years in New Mexico’s Gila region. I witnessed too many sports arriving for their long-awaited adventures armed with big .300 Weatherby or .338 Winchester magnums—cartridges generally deemed ideal by gun-writer types—who couldn’t hit their butt with both hands while shooting these blunderbusses. Who could really blame them? Especially in the custom 6 ½-pound mountain rifles many of these clients chose for the big event, these cartridges punish from both ends.

Accuracy Trumps Power

In time, I developed the general attitude that I’d rather have a client shoot a lighter cartridge well than a larger round with mediocre accuracy. This doesn’t even begin to address the issue of youth or petite women hunters.

First, since these hunters usually used their light rifle extensively for white-tailed deer and were intimately familiar with it (and not afraid of it), they typically shot it well. More pointedly, the notion that larger cartridges compensate for sloppy shooting is ridiculous. Killing big game is all about bullet placement and always will be. Some argue that visiting sportsmen must sometimes take the shot presented or go home empty-handed, a point made as a way of excusing shots taken at steeply-quartering or straight-away animals that require bullets to plow through lots of body. Placing precedence on larger cartridges to excuse risky shots, again, is ridiculous. Risky is risky, and elk deserve better.