Thank you, I am still waiting on some photos which are on another fellow's camera.
The elk spotted me at 25 yards and by the time it was at 75 yards, I had a chance to take a quartering shot at it. After I shot, it slowed to a walk. This gave me time to reload my Ruger #1 and put another shot through it's ribs at 100 yards when it turned side on to me.
It collapsed seconds later.
The bullet was a Lee .309" 170 grain bullet, cast out of range scrap and hardness tested at a BHN of 12. It was sized down to .304" and then paper patched with green bar printer paper and lubed with JPW and then sized again to .314". It was pushed by 39 grains of IMR 4350 and the airspace filled with enough dacron to compress slightly.
My first bullet had entered at the rear of the rib cage, perforating the liver and then passing through the lungs. Due to my being down slope from the elk, the bullet then struck three vertebrae and the major blood vessel that runs parallel to the spine. Then glancing off the spine, the bullet continued through the right shoulder and came to rest under the hide half way up the neck. I recovered the bullet during the skinning.
My second bullet passed through the lung cavity smashing an inch out of both the incoming and outgoing ribs.
I am sure the elk would have dropped in seconds whether or not I had taken the second shot.
The recovered bullet weighs 135 grains and shows evidence of travelling sideways for some time, probably after striking the spine.
This would be considered a very mild load with recoil similar to a 30-30. I had been working on some 210 grain bullet loads, but I could not get any decent accuracy in the limited time I had. Departure time arrived and I decided to take a load I had developed last year for shooting Island Blacktails.
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The bullet on the right was shot into a pine block to test expansion.
The next bullet to the left was the one recovered from the elk.
This was an out of province hunt.
