Some of you may remember my thread last year about the Moose Whomper rifle that I’d had built so that I could send my favoritest rifle ever off for a new tube, and not be without my favorite chambering.
Moose Whomper took a couple of bulll moose, a couple black bears and deer, and some coyotes for good measure. All no fuss, no muss, and fast kills. Heavy for caliber bullets that are a bit on the softer side flung from a faster than standard twist certainly seem to carry some magic way out there.
Enough magic that when the Elk Whomper showed up late last fall, I decided that it would get the nod for sheep season this year.
And while we had a spectacular sheep hunt, the only legal rams we saw were the day before the opener. For 3 hours. 300 yards from the tent. The opener showed that there were a LOT of guys in sheep country, who haven’t read enough books. There was a lot of dudes on the skylines, covering a lot of ground, and very little glassing occurring. That said, I hope all those guys had great trips too.
Any rate, no blood spilled for the re-barreled Kimber Montana.
Until Sunday that is… Bulls have been pretty quiet so far, so I started with a few cow mews through the Phelps Heavy Metal tube. (Incidentally, if you can use a mouth diaphragm, those tubes are worth the money. Way more depth to the calls.)
Every hundred yards or so I’d let out a couple of chirps, casting them to each side, and after a few times of doing that I thought I might have heard a bugle. I gave a couple of excited chirps and walked another 100 yards, trying to decide if that had been a bull or a people. The next bugle was decidedly closer, and I stopped for a couple of seconds to try and pinpoint where it came from. Then he bugled again, closer yet. I stepped closer to the tree line, and dropped the bugle tube to the ground. Spread out my hiking poles, and dropped Elk Whomper over the crossed wrist loops and settled onto my knees.
At that point I could see the bull coming like he was on a string. He’d run as hard as he could go for 200 yards, and slow to a trot and bugle, stop, and look, and then charge again. I didn’t pay much attention to antlers, I could just see that he looked high and wide and he was legal.
He was keyed in on where the last cow calls had come from and when he was 200 yards out I realized that he wasn’t stopping this time. He was a little over 100 yards out by the time I was able to rotate the diaphragm into position a hit him with a chirp.
The bull hit the brakes, and turned from almost broadside presentation he’d been at, to a very hard quartering in angle. The crosshairs were hard on the leading edge of his shoulder and I touched the very light trigger and it broke as clean as glass. There is never any guessing with this rifle when the bullet hits flesh, and this time was no different with the resounding WHOMP, and the bull rocked backwards.
I watched him through the glass start to turn, lifting his front leg as I flicked another round into the chamber with my thumb and forefinger, he hopped three steps and I could see blood blowing out of his nose and then he was faced straight away. He staggered to the right, just enough that I could see the crease behind his shoulder and I touched him again but he had already started to fall over at that point. First shot to bull on the ground was likely 6-8 seconds.
I took a few pics, cut the tip of one of his ears off, and then walked back to the house to get my boy to give me a hand. (He’s in college and works in between classes and Saturdays, so he gets pretty tired by Sunday).
The first shot went in on the leading edge of his shoulder and exited at the last rib. Two broken ribs going in, one at the exit. The second shot broke two ribs on entry, but I’m not positive if it exited or if it’s still in the shoulder. .
The boy was working that quarter and he doesn’t pay much attention to that stuff. Regardless, 2” holes bored for 3 feet or so criss crossing in the middle and down and dead in under 10 seconds. Solid bullet performance in my mind. 109 yards ranged after the fact, and impact velocity would have been right at 2400 fps.
Not the biggest bull that I’ve killed, but 4 quarters/backstraps/neck/rib roll was 248 lbs hanging.
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Originally Posted by Buck
Re: Elk Whomper
