So I had the opportunity to go on an elk damage hunt with my friend Alex. ( I believe he is ridgerunner here on the hide.) I get about 2 hours of sleep, speed down to the Alamosa WalMart to meet Alex and purchase the license by 0500. I made it in plenty of time, and we were out hunting on his property by 0600. I would say within 15 minutes, we had a cow down. I was shooting my .308 Savage/Broughton. I was using the 185 Berger VLD pushed by 46.5 gr of Power Pro 2000MR, MV's are ~2670 fps. This load shoots about 1/3 MOA.
The last time I shot the rifle, it was in January or February with the 208 AMAX and RL17. Killed a coyote with it then, too. This rifle is VERY consistent. I have yet to stretch out any of the loads I have worked up. I had no reason to believe that they would be any different than load workup. I'm going to blame all errors on myself. The weapon and loads are not culpable in this case.
So, Alex finds this herd at 650 ish, and I wasn't comfortable with that long of a shot. I did not have my iPod with the ballistic calc, so I would rely on the reticle. I have not used the reticle and these loads. I have no reason to believe that they would be anything different than the calc suggests. It has ALWAYS been very accurate with drops. anyhow, I told Alex we needed to get closer. We got within 492 I think it was. I was much more comfortable with that.
The elk were in a middle of a meadow, and all we had was the impenetrable willows on the sides of the meadow for cover. Basically no cover, so longer shot or no elk.
I use the Leupold VHR reticle, and have figured the subtention value for my loads, and have found that it too is very accurate. The subtentions match closely, but not exactly. I held the "500" yard subtention on her thinking it to be good enough. In all reality, it is around 525 yards. I had forgotten this. There is around 11" difference between 490 and 525. Lack of sleep or whatever caused me to hold over what ended up being about a foot high. She had her head turned around, in line behind her shoulder. So the foot high bullet slammed into her muzzle, causing her to kind of lose her bearings. Alex kept eyes on her dutifully, and picked her out of the now mixed up herd. The herd slowly made their way towards us. They ended up being around 300 to 325 ( I don't remember) and I was able to put her down. The second shot she piled up, but after 30 seconds or so she got to her feet. A third shot finished it.
I'm not proud of the fact that I went out with unproven equipment. It's just the truth of the matter and I'm just throwing that out there.
After getting the cow into the truck, we went to Alex's house to skin and clean her out. Afterwards, we shot at steel at 660, and 400 using dope calculated from the iPod. The rifle is dead nuts. Sometimes my head if full of dead nuts too. A lesson I won't soon forget. By the way the tenderloins on the grill last night were out of this world! Give me or Alex a shout if you need a tag.
Eric
