I have one antidotal story to contribute to this discussion regarding distance, bullet weight and caliber and knowledge and opportunity. In the late 1980's (pre-godforsaken wolves) elk were very plentiful in North Idaho but shot opportunities were not. If you've never been there just allow me to say that it's not like hunting elk anywhere else in the west that I know of except western Washington. It's steep, pretty rugged and thick. Not just thick timber but thick timber choked with alders and vine maples and various other types of brush that congest even the few openings that you'll usually find in dark forests. Dad would hunt on weekends and it was a big challenge to get a shot at an elk when visibility is usually limited to 40 yards or less. Occasionally, you would find a hole in the trees, usually the result of root rot felling a small patch of trees or there being a small rock outcropping. Even more seldom that the holes in the forest were those holes matching up with holes in the forest across the canyon, where you might see elk at a distance. This was the days before rangefinders so these holes might provide a 400 yard shot, it might actually be 600 or 900 or 1,500; nobody really knew and stepping it off for future reference could probably be better performed by scaling the distance off of a map.
Anyway, Dad's weekend elk hunting usually resulted in him getting an elk at some point during the season but not always. Sometimes all he might see during the entire season was the back half of an elk sticking out of some brush or from behind a tree at 30 or 40 yards and if it were either sex season (where he didn't have to confirm antlers) he wanted to take advantage of these opportunities.
My uncle (a hobbyist gunsmith) suggested a 35 Whalen AI. Dad agreed and my uncle built him one on an old Enfield action with an old school H-S Precision fiberglass stock. They then topped it with a VariX III 1.5-5 scope. They found that it would group 250 gr Speer spitzers into less than 1/2 inch at 100 yards at a speed of around 2,550 fps.
That rifle started bringing home elk on a more consistent basis than had the the previous 30-06's pushing 180 core loks.
With that much bullet, Dad became confident in smashing elk pelvis's (which he referred to as gearing them down). Because he was so close to the elk when he shot, he would work the action and charge! Usually within 5 or 10 seconds, he was on top of them and would finish them off. This technique worked great for him for many years with great success.
One day he was side hilling through the timber (as always) when he spotted something that looked like an elk butt under some trees in dark shade. He looked through his scope and it still looked like a broadside elk butt that didn't move. He sat down and put his rifle over his knees and watched it for what seemed like minutes (this is at less than 40 yards). He waited. Finally, he saw the elk lift a hind leg and then replant it. It was an elk and because it was either sex season he set the crosshairs about 6 inches below the top of the back and just forward of the center of the ham and fired (he would say, "let drive") and was rewarded with seeing a nice elk rack rock back over the elk's back as it dove forward and down out of sight. Within seconds, Dad has his feet and bounded down the hill to deliver another shot (refers to this quick charge at short range as a "pounce"). The bull had hit the ground at the shot but regained its front feet. It only traveled a couple of yards before dad put a finisher into its neck. Nice 5x6 for North Idaho.
After he gutted it, halved it and got it most of the way off the ground he headed back to camp. At the road, he caught a ride with a couple of teens and told them he'd taken a decent 5x6. They said that they had seen a similar bull further down the canyon way up in an opening. They had shot at it, and because one of them had a notoriously flat shooting 250-3000, thought that they had hit it but couldn't find any blood.
They next day while skinning the rear quarters, Dad found an extra bullet hole and dug out a little 25ish caliber (never measured) cup and core bullet. That young man, it seems, had indeed hit the bull but failed to bring it down with a shot to the rear with a 250-3000 and later in the day the bull fell to a 250 gr 35 caliber bullet to the rear delivered at less than 40 yards.
What I see in the previous example is the creation of shot opportunities using a larger caliber rifle at limited ranges. Ranges where all that was necessary was to 'gear them down' so that you could get to them and finish them off before they could escape. It was a proven technique with a proven track record. No doubt the young man who shot at the elk at distance thought he was carrying an elk rifle (if the term 'elk rifle' had even ever occurred to him) but my own experience says that a 250-3000 is a pretty marginal elk caliber with cup and core bullets. I'm sure that the poster who has killed elk at 1,000 yards with a 22-250 would view it as a howitzer but I think it needs premium bullets to make it an elk rifle.
Would a 300 Winchester have proven as good at breaking pelvises with cup and core bullets? Maybe, with heavyweights but it's also possible that the increased impact velocities could have resulted in catastrophic bullet failure and a lack of penetration.
Several have suggested that bigger guns can increase the number of shot opportunities available and I agree, to an extent, however, some of the newer mono-metal and super tough bullets (Partitions and A-frames are the first that come to mind) will allow you to do things like shatter an elk pelvis with smaller calibers than cup and core bullets in the past.
No, a larger caliber doesn't make up for terrible placement but it can provide additional bone breaking and penetration potential beyond what some smaller cartridges can do in some instances and when applied appropriately.
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