elk hunting

[frank the hunter]

hi everyone i am going on my first elk hunt.wood you take a 30 yard shoot with a 50 pound long bow. i shoot out to 30 yard will, but dont no if it wii kill that far.i am new to trad started about 7 mounts ago. i took a doe at about 25 yards this past hunting season. thank you guys & have a great day.

[Brian Krebs]

Frank
   If your arrow is shooting straight; not off to one side or the other; or hitting up or down- then your bow will be fine with 30 yard shots.
 Make sure your broadheads are super sharp; and your bow tuned ( by adjusting the string nock and the spine of the arrow) so that the arrow shoots like a dart; and you should do OK.
 If your bugling elk; or cow calling them in; you might get more 15 yard shots or less- then you think.
 Congratulations on your deer !

[frank the hunter]

thank you brian for the help. i shoot 19/16 with weight tubes with 125 broad head.i bear shot then & they go weight next to  the fleathed arroes & straight.

[steadman]

Frank, to add to Brian, with that lower poundage I would suggest a 2 blade. On a quartering shot, elk are thick animals. Good luck and congrats on your deer.

[Dave2old]

Absolutely not. This is not a judgment, but just a straight answer to your uninformed but straight question. Esp. with a bow pulling at the very bottom of realistic and ethical possibilities for an animal as big and tough as elk, you need to go full-out with Dr. Ashby recommendations, including a minimum of 650 grains of arrow weight (and my long personal experience says that's too low with such a light bow as 50lbs). Can you shoot consistently, tired and under great pressure, to a 6" bulleye at 30 yards with a 650-grain arrow? Do you want to spend all that money and effort on a hunt of a lifetime, knowing you're pushing the limits really hard and will likely return home with no elk and bad memories? If the answer to either question is NO, then bring the gear you need to get the job done properly, and hold your shots to the universally accepted 20-yard max for trad gear. Otherwise, no offense intended, but I have more concern for the elk than for you, so please stay home. The question should not be "Is this possible?" but rather "Will this setup assure a fast humane kill and recovery even if the worst happens and I hit heavy bone?" Again, this is not just a matter of personal ethics ... it's a matter of good sense and getting the best bang for your bucks.

[ArrowAtomik]

50 lb bow doesn't say enough to me.  Someone shooting 50#@26 has alot less energy than someone shooting 50# with a long 30" powerstroke.  A 50lb selfbow and a 50lb super-modern recurve certainly have a huge performance difference.  Pay more attention to how many fps you can get out of the 650 grain arrow, and how perfect you can tune.

As far as what you should do, your ethics are your business as long as its legal.  Colorado only mandates 35# bow for elk, so that's where they stand.  From a pure management perspective, some areas are actually overpopulated for what their habitat can hold, so its not like you risk completely ruining everyone else's opportunity with a bad shot, though it would sure make me sick to have it happen.  Consider going after a 500 lb cow instead of the herd bull for that type of shot.  But, its really all up to you.

Their vitals are much bigger than a deer (maybe 15" circle), but so are their non-vitals, making a clean miss much less likely on a bad shot.  The bigger the animal, the smaller the vital to non-vital ratio.

[Mark Albrecht]

I have to second Dave's opinion.  Get close you'll enjoy it more- doing your self a favor and you'll be less likely to have a wounding shot - doing the elk and all of us who love to hunt a favor.

Sometimes we have to forgo our own success? to achieve success in the bigger picture.  If we don't police ourselves we best not be upset when others step in to do the job.

Hey have a fun hunt and I hope you find success!!

[csbullseye]

After an arm injury, I've had to drop 15#'s of pull weight on my hunting bow. I now shoot a 51# Black Widow recurve. I was a little leary hunting elk for the first time with that light of a bow. I got a 15yd. shot at a quartering away cow and got a complete pass through with a 2 blade head and carbon arrow. She ran 40yds. and fell over. I would limit yourself to 20yds max. and a broadside or quartering away shot and you should be ok.

[just_a_hunter]

I've killed a few elk with a 50# @ 28 PSE Impala. My draw is a full 30", so at my draw I was at 55#.

Elk don't like to bleed externally. Even when you double lung them with a snuffer. They have such a huge chest cavity, that the chest cavity usually has to fill with blood before they start to bleed externally much. The animal is usually dead before this happens. I've never been on an elk blood tracking job, where there was an over abundance of blood, therefore, I feel it doesn't matter if you use a multiple or 2 blade head. If you are using 3 or 4 blade heads because you want a blood trail, there probably isn't going to be much of a blood trail regaurdless. I recomend you stick to a 2 blade head for penatration reasons.

Also keep in mind that, if you don't take out a major artery, BOTH lungs, or the heart with your arrow, your chances of animal recovery are very VERY small. If you single lung an elk, you have a 98% chance of loosing it.

However, if you do manage to take out one of the aformentioned vitals, the elk probably won't go further then 50 to 100 yards before expiring.  

I do believe 30 yards is a little far for your set up. If you set in your mind that you will not shoot past 20 yards, it's not that hard to get that close to elk. Patience, patience, patience, patience,.....and oh ya,..wind in your face,... you won't have a problem. If you hunt thick cover you have no choice but to get close.

Don't risk it, man. It's not worth it. Like Dave2old said,... you can get lucky and kill an elk at 30 yards with your set up. But,... If you're depending on luck for your setup to be efficent, you are better off staying home.

That being said, I would love to see you have a wonderfull time.

Todd

[Tree man]

Whether you should shoot at 30 yards is a question only you can answer. There are many reasons not to stretch your range.......but lack of power is not one of them. When guys talk about limiting shots to 20 yards or less because they think that their draw weight is marginal I fear that there is a lack of real understanding of how arrows function. It is actually quite likely that your arrows will penetrate better at 40 yards than they would at 5 yards. --Not because they gain power downrange (they ARE shedding energy in flight and slowing down) but because the arrow shaft is still oscillating rapidly at close range-At longer range it has stabilized more and has more of the available energy  driving directly in line with the broadhead. Broadhead tipped arrows are extremely lethal to the full length of their flight.......but hitting where you want to gets progressively difficult as range increases.

[Mark Albrecht]

I agree that an arrow may be flying straightet at 40 yards - assuming no cross wind.  It will also be MUCH less likely to be on target.

This thread began with a question of  up would you take a 30 yard shot at elk and would this set up kill at that range.  There seems to be no disagreement of the killing ability - it could happen.  

The question is would you do it.  If that is the question asked by someone with out experience then I think it needs to be answered and leaving that up to the person does not serve anyone - certainly not elk and elk hunting.  The more wounding stories, the more we allow our excitement and desire for killing success? to overcome reasonable restraint the faster we will lose our hunting rights.

I can't imagine a more disappointing and unsuccessful first elk hunt than wounding and losing any elk.  It's still is the process not the product - first trip or 100th.

Have fun and enjoy the whole experience.

[John Scifres]

Only you can answer this but I'd suspect you do not have the experience or confidence to do it.  Keep it under 20.

[jon]

Frank,
I was more concerned with the reference to a 1916 arrow. Even with the weight tubes, way too light. Depending on the bow, 50# should be OK. Just get close(closer than 30 yards) and make sure that your arrow is flying straight with a good cut on impact 2 bladed head. I regularly hunt elk with bows around 50-52 pounds. I shoot 645gr heavy front weighted GT 75/95 carbons with 160gr Grizzlies or Stos'.
A personal pet pieve, proof your postings. It was very hard for me to follow them with all the gramatical/spelling problems. Good luck and hunt safe.

[Orion]

A change in mindset is in order here.  Rather than thinking about how far you can shoot, a better approach is to think about how close you can get.  I second Dave2old and Mark's advice.

[Mr.Chuck]

I have read to many stories of women taking elk with 45 lbs bows and less.  In the fifties and sixties,  50lb recurve bows were the most popular and used to take just about everything on the north american continent! These were the old models with dacron strings, and we not the fastest bows.  Just remember, a well tuned bow with arrows matched to your bow, and very sharp two blade broadhead, and of course a well place shot is the perfect storm for success!  Good luck!  

[BradLantz]

take teh shot you think you can make

if you KNEW you could slip an arrow between 2 ribs at 60 yards, your setup would be fine. But you can't garuantee it vs the animal moving and you hitting him in the thick shoulder bone quartering to you.

somewhere there is a balance, each hunter has to figure it out on their own

That said I took a 30 yardish shot at a big bull with a 52# longbow a few years back and I shot high

[frank the hunter]

hi everyone thanks for all the help. i am very new to trad gear. i wood never take a shoot i could not do. i was just asking what you all throught, now i know. i will take my compound on this trip & use my trad bow for white tails. when i asked the was to see if the bow had the power, i draw 28". when i put the bow on the press it was 53 pounds. thanks everone & have a good day.

[monterey]

Frank, tree man is right about the penetration issue, so the only limit on distance is your ability to place the shot.

[Brian Krebs]

nice work everybody. Turned a trad hunter into a compound hunter by assuming he can't hit the ribcage of an elk at 15 yards.  

[DeerSpotter]

I am speechless to what I just read, maybe they didn't want to sound native, but that's what it looks like.  Sorry but that's what I got out of it.  I second the motion Brian   :confused:      :confused:        

He'll probably take his compound and have 10 yd. shot, and all the way home, he'll be thinking about this thread.