150g corelokts recovered from spike bull elk

[remingtonman_25_06]

Earlier this year I posted on teh success of our elk party. My cousin shot his first spike bull this year at around 100 yards with a Browning BAR in 30-06 w/150g core lokts. I gave him a bad time the whole time we were up there saying he barely had enough gun for deer, let alone elk, ha ha. Anyways, the elk was coming right at him his first shot. He hit it low and it turned and ran. He proceeded to hit it all 5 shots before it died. Upon skinning, I dug around and found 3 of the 150g core lokts. Much to my surprise, they were nice little fat mushrooms. They held together quite well. Did not weight them but they looked dang good. Total opposite from my experience shooting the 120g 25-06, and 180g 300 Win mag into wet newspaper at 100 yards. Those particular corelokts looked like pancakes and expanded waaaaaay to much, much more then ballistic tips. So as you can see I was very surprised.

The next bullet I found was the 180g btip. I have been loading this particular bullet for 3 different guys 300 Win mags in my elk camp. I load them all with 75g Rl-22 spittting them out at near 3100fps. This combo has accounted for at least 5-6 spikes in the last couple years. Ranges were from 100-750 yards. This bullet has worked flawlessly for us on elk, so I continue to load it up for them. They requested a high BC bullet that was accurate and cheap. I figured the 180g btip would work great since our shots are usually 200-300+. It hasn't let us down yet. This particular one was shot at 450 yards high in the shoulder. It was found lodged in the offside after it smashed through quite a bit of bone. Pretty good perforamnce from the 180g BT in my opinion....

 

[JD338]

Rem man,

Good report. Those bullets look good!

JD338

 

[FOTIS]

Just goes to show you there is no substitute for actual field experience.

 

[moreloader]

It doesn't matter what the lab test shows. I am sure your elk never asked a single question.

 

[RogueRiver]

They may have exited.

 

[fredj338]

Personally, I think your original thoughts on 150grRCL for elk are correct. Yes the elk went down but there doesn't look like much bullet left & I for one like more penetration/energy. At least you got your elk, but have your buddy move up to at least 165gr NPs for future hunts. :grin: I wonder what the result would have been if it had been a large bodied bull. :?:

 

[Alaska]

for Elk I suggest the 180 gr bullet weight in the 30-06 the 150's just alittle light.

 

[remingtonman_25_06]

His normal gun is 300 Win Mag w/180g SBt's, but he didn't wanna pack it that day. So the back up rifle is the 30-06 w/150g corelokts. The bullets actually aren't that bad, they weighed 84,92, and 97 grains. So thats average of about 60% weight retention. Not bad for the weight of bullet and range and all the mess it encountered. That bull was hit 5 times so it was a mess.

 

[cutthroat]

I have been watching this thread with considerable interest. Until this year we used 30:06 150 grain corelokts exclusively. I have been hunting for 40 years, my son for the past 8 years and my father used the same round for years prior his passing. We used them on everything from coyotes to Elk. Our experience was that a well placed shot killed every thing we aimed at. Poorly placed shots caused problems. We recovered two bullets in all of that time, one in a large bull elk. In that case I found the bullet just under the hide after a nearly complete through and through shot in the front shoulders. The other was lodged in the sternum of a cow elk that fell victim to what I now know is a Texas heart shot. It was after complaining about the degree of meat loss if a shot went through the front or rear quarters that I was introduced to the 300 win and Nosler partitions. I don't know what to expect with a poorly placed shot because we did well this year and virtually every shot went through the chest just behind the shoulder or was in the back of the neck. The bad shots will come with time - no one shoots perfectly everytime but I expect that the amount of meat loss will be much less than with old the old corelokts based upon comparing entrance and exit wounds this year for both the 30.06 with the 165 grains and the 300 with the 180's. I will still load the corelokts to practice with in the summer but when the season open, we are sticking to the partitions. :grin: :!: