Finally winding down after a 3-day hunt at the Texana. Myself and a few buddies were hunting elk and other assorted meat critters. One of the guys wanted a trophy bull and a scimitar oryx but he was a rifle guy so I won't post the pics here. I took my first head of big-game with my 475 Linebaugh and I'm very happy with the performance of the setup and the load which was 30.5 gr of 296 with the 325 Speer Deep Curl bullet. I popped a huge cow with it at 60 yards and it crushed the onside right front shoulder and penetrated into the paunch. She ran about 50 yards and was down. We bottomed out a 450 lb scale after field dressing her so I'm not sure what she weighed but her head was the size of a cinder block.




As much as I wanted to recover the bullet from the elk, it was not to be. It entered the paunch and she had been eating so much that there wasn't any way to recover the bullet in a reasonable amount of searching. I looked for it for about 30 min and gave up. If you look closely in this photo you can see the hole it carved in her liver before entering the stomach.



If you're interested in a cow elk hunt at a very reasonable price let me know there are a few of them left.

Gary

Congrats on a successful hunt

Thought that was a camel at first glance.

Nice elk....good job.

awesome.Congrats

Nice work, Gary! Congratulations!

geting it done gary looks like you had fun.and thats great

Nice! I'm glad you got one with the 475

Gary,

congrats again! Post the rifle pictures in the Off Topic if you will - I know I'd love to see them...

Elk are great table fair nad Cows are excellent eating. Good job

You can see the the pictures at the Texana website.
http://www.texanaranchhunttx.com/gallery/index.php?year=2010&sortopt=-1

Congrats on the hunt and kill.
Looks mighty warm though.
Guess living in Texas one gets used to hunting in t-shirts instead of snow camo

I don't mind hunting in a T-Shirt at all. The weather overall was pretty nice for hunting this past weekend. I was trying to get buddy of mine a shot; he's a new handgun hunter. We spotted the elk feeding during mid-day from about 800 yards on a hillside. After stalking for more than an hour and covering about 1000 yards an errant little puff of wind spooked them but only a little and they busted out into an opening from the thicket... big mistake. It was a great spot and stalk hunt and was executed perfectly if I do say so myself. We were fortunate that there weren't any other animals we had to contend with between us and them. I was also hunting and the shot wasn't going to be one he was comfortable taking, because of his experience and a little too light a bullet for a frontal quartering shot, so I hammered her with the 475.

Gary,Congrats! Nice elk cow and a great shot!

I remember hunting in t-shirts when I lived in Northern Florida.
Sounds like a great hunt. He will get his shot. Glad he was out with a handgun.

Nice going Gary!!! You are right, that elk's head is HUGE.

That is REALLY nice!!

How much meat did you get?

Yeah me too - she was just having a bad hair day.

Nice camel Gary...oh and great shot too! LOL LOL

nice shooting!

I just finished a dinner of blackbuck backstraps and I'm here to tell ya that is fine eating. I love Texas...

That's a big ol' cow, Gary.

CONGRATS GARY!!!!

WTG, Gary!