long range elk caliber

I have had just about every caliber and case size over the years. I loved my custom 338/378 it was credited with some amazingly long kills on elk and mule deer. So has the 338/416 improved and the 338/408 Chey-Tac'
If you notice I keep mentioning .338 caliber rifles. If you want to hunt elk especially long range you simply cannot do better than a .338 of some kind. .338 Rum .338 Edge and so on. The .338 Edge has the advantage of cases already made for it or you can neck them up from 300 rum brass. The .338 has some really good bullet choices just about everyone makes a long range bullet for the .338 I do prefer the 300gr Sierra over anything else. It has proven to be easier to tune and it has always performed really well out to 2,000 yards in Colorado and Wyoming.

If your idea of long range hunting is 600 yards or less then a 300Rum will do fine but when your talking out past that especially beyond 1000 yards you need that big bullet.

If your going to build a .338 Edge don't build one to load in a Mag. We have also built single shot rifles for long range you will give up a lot of velocity with the Edge if your try and run it through a box mag. You need to go with a long enough throat so you can seat the 300gr bullet out for enough to get the bullet out of the neck &shoulder junction.

Do yourself a real favor and forget about having a repeater. The mags are just to short to get the performance out of the .338 EDGE. My .338 EDGE has a AOL of 4.120 when loaded with 270gr ELDX bullets and also the 285gr ELDM a Standard length is only 3.600. that is a big difference. This why I can shoot 106grs of RL33 with the 270gr bullet and get 3170fps with no pressure on my Norma brass there is no way you can get 106grs of RL33 in that case when you run it through any mag. Your after long range performance there is always some type of trade off but we have never felt handicapped by using a single shot setup.

Also with a single shot the stock will be more ridged than any stock with a big cutout for a mag.

Pa. is the home of long range hunting and 1000 yard competition. Nobody runs a repeater there all single shot actions. When we compete in 1000 yard matches there are no repeaters allowed in both light gun and heavy gun. We have many shooters that will shoot 10 shots accurately in under a minute some is less than that.

With the Edge all you need is a Rem 700 long Mag action and a PTG single shot follower and your off to the races. That's what I use and it works great. We shoot off a portable shooting bench and have a loading block right by the rifle with 10 shells in the block all you do is grab one and throw it in the action and shoot.

One last note long range hunting is not a rapid fire sport there are many times when we get to see game that we would like to shoot but the right shot never present itself. We hunt in the mountains of Pa, so we deal with Trees.The deer and bears are always walking between trees.It seems they have a 6th sense to stop in all the wrong places so we can't get a bullet through the brush. That's all part of hunting same goes for out west Elk like to roam they can cover a lot of ground very quickly so it is important to get one or two really good high percentage shots on a animal than to think your going to run a whole clip at one it just doesn't work that way. What ever you decide the .338 is the way to go on elk size game.

Do yourself a real favor and forget about having a repeater.  exact on!

however a 300rum set up right is much more than a 600yd gun in the right hands/600yds is usually a 2"inch putt!//have had no problem w/ 300rum out to 1200yds+ & sometimes even @ 1k w/ 35mph winds getting it into the vital zone-again in the right hands with wind experience.

just recently rebarreled by hank,rem 700 very light contour mountain gun coupled with light bi-pod,shoots .5moa or less w/ berger hunting elite 180gns


can't argue against 338 but usually not needed unless you are talking ELR.  jmho

dont overlook this case which is easy to set up with H1000 or retumbo w/ 180gn+ bullets