I was lucky enough to draw a special early season Colorado rifle tag for cow elk this year, so I took a few days with a couple of friends and my son to try our luck in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. I took along one of the jewels of my Sako collection, a well-used but deadly accurate original L61R in .300 H&H loaded with my own concoction of 180 grain Accubonds.
Early Saturday morning I seated myself in a small stand of Aspens overlooking a meadow approximately 300 yards across. Only a few minutes after it was light enough to see, this cow elk ventured out of the timber into the meadow about 200 yards away. I could see that she was being followed by several more elk, and not wanting them to all get together in the meadow and thus risk mixing calves or spikes, I quickly put the crosshairs of the Leupold 3-10 VX-III on her behind the shoulder and sent a Nosler her way. At the shot she staggered, ran in a little circle, fell, tried to get up, then fell back still, less than ten steps from where she was standing at the time of the shot.
Upon field dressing her, the performance of the Accubond (at 2960 muzzle velocity) appeared near perfect. It entered just behind the shoulder and lodged in the offside skin after destroying the lungs. If you don't count one shattered rib, not an ounce of meat was lost.
Fortunately for my tired old bones and aching lungs at 10,000 feet elevation, my son was not far away so I fetched him to "help" with the field dressing (Dad mostly held the legs while Son did the hard part). It was a great hunt as the weather was mild, we saw lots of game, and one of our group who had a deer tag filled it with a respectable Mule Deer buck.
Early Saturday morning I seated myself in a small stand of Aspens overlooking a meadow approximately 300 yards across. Only a few minutes after it was light enough to see, this cow elk ventured out of the timber into the meadow about 200 yards away. I could see that she was being followed by several more elk, and not wanting them to all get together in the meadow and thus risk mixing calves or spikes, I quickly put the crosshairs of the Leupold 3-10 VX-III on her behind the shoulder and sent a Nosler her way. At the shot she staggered, ran in a little circle, fell, tried to get up, then fell back still, less than ten steps from where she was standing at the time of the shot.
Upon field dressing her, the performance of the Accubond (at 2960 muzzle velocity) appeared near perfect. It entered just behind the shoulder and lodged in the offside skin after destroying the lungs. If you don't count one shattered rib, not an ounce of meat was lost.
Fortunately for my tired old bones and aching lungs at 10,000 feet elevation, my son was not far away so I fetched him to "help" with the field dressing (Dad mostly held the legs while Son did the hard part). It was a great hunt as the weather was mild, we saw lots of game, and one of our group who had a deer tag filled it with a respectable Mule Deer buck.
I had to smile about it when I saw him, then I started trying to put the face with his knowledge and his way with words and it all went to heck.
