Rod, I give you alot of credit in sharing your life experience with us because I know that talking about lost game is something we usually don`t like to do.When I rifled my first elk in Utah I was using my 375 H&H with a super handload uusing a 270gr Speer
My shot was a cross canyon and I was glad I had that heavy bullet weight to cause the 5x5 to swap ends and hang his head.
I missed the next 3 shots and caught him once more befoer I ran out of ammo. The guide yelled at me to bring more ammo if I ever go on another elk hunt. I grabed my Redhawk from my brother and ran down to finish the elk but he was done for when we reached him.I had my scoped 454 but could not get close enough for a shot and this was the last day of a 5 day hunt.
The last thing a hunter needs is to pay BIG money for a hunt and then hit the creature your hunting only to lose him due to lack of extra ammo. Its amazing to me to look at the empties in my pocket after a hunt to realize that I shot that many rounds to take an animal down.The last elk I took needed 6 rounds
of Winchesters 454 260gr partition ammo before he finally went down. At the first 2 lung shots he looked around to see where the noise was coming from,showing NO signs of a hit.
So I say YES....carry all the extra ammo you want because you never know when you will need it...