I am reporting the preliminary results of my elk rifle shooting survey (originally posted here: https://www.rokslide.com/forums/threads/rifle-shots-on-elk-survey.134191/ posted also in Hunt Talk forum for more data). Up to now I have only recorded 47 elk encounters. So far this has not enabled me to come to many interesting conclusions, but I'll share what I have for now. Overall the main message is... inconclusive! I might be able to discover more with a larger dataset, so please do share your experiences if you have not already!
Shooting distances
The median shot distance was 150 yards. About 42% of shots were at 100 yards or less, and about 29% of shots were at 300 yards or greater.
Hunter efficacy
Out of the 47 elk on which shots were taken, only 1 was not recovered, apparently due to a poor shot. That will be discussed more below. About half of elk went down within 10 yards of where they were first shot, and only 1 of the 44 elk that were recovered went beyond 100 yards. On the whole, when Rokslide and Hunt Talk hunters decide to shoot an elk, the result is almost always a recovered carcass. That's good.
Shot placement
Only one elk shot was not recovered. It is not a coincidence, I think, that this was also the only elk that was probably not hit in a "vital" area (i.e. heart, lung, head, spine). Specifically, the user suspects that the bullet only hit the shoulder at a steep quartering angle, without going into the thorax. The shoulder broke, but the elk ran off and was never recovered, despite much effort. One incident doesn't prove anything, but this fits the common sense belief that the best way to achieve a quick, humane kill is to put a bullet in the vitals.
Killing power vs. kinetic energy, velocity, bullet size and type
For every hit on an elk, I attempted to determine the kinetic energy and velocity of the bullet at impact. I used the muzzle velocity either from factory loads or as provided by the user, the ballistic coefficient of the stated bullet, and plugged that into gundata.org's ballistic calculators. This is not perfect, of course, but should provide pretty decent estimates. I then used this to see if I could determine whether there was some effect of any KE, velocity, or bullet size/type on speed of death. I defined a quick kill as "putting down an elk inside of 10 yards", which again happened about half the time. This threshold is arbitrary but seems reasonable enough. I used logistic regression models and tree-based models to see if any statistically significant effects showed up.
The result of this analysis did not yield any strong conclusions. There does appear to be some evidence that higher impact velocities increase the chance of a rapid kill. Below about ~2300 fps, only about 15% of elk died within 10 yards; above that threshold, it went up to about 60%. These is only a weakly statistically significant result, however, so you should not put much faith in it. More data would help, so please contribute to the survey if you haven't yet! Once speed was accounted for, there was no obvious effect of kinetic energy or bullet size. This does not mean that those variables do not matter, however. First, the sample size is quite small, so the ability to discover such relationships is weak. Second, the smallest bullet in the data was 110 grains, and the smallest impact KE was 1128 ft-lb. It is likely that these variables would have more effect at lower levels - surely many would be wary about shooting a 50 grain bullet at an elk, for instance. But since I do not have less powerful cartridges in the data, I cannot speak to that.
I should reemphasize that all bullets in the data set, *when placed into the vital areas*, resulted in dead, recovered elk. Higher velocities *may* be useful for quicker kills, but even relatively slower projectiles (the lowest was 1669 fps) get the job done if you do your part. Cartridges used ranges from the 6.5 creedmoor on the low end to >30 cal magnums on the high end.
A lot of the variation seems to be unpredictable. Sometimes elk just run - 20, 50, 100 yards - whether they are hit with fast, high energy projectiles (>3000 ft-lb) or low energy (<2000 ft-lb) ("low" is clearly a relative term here). One bull hit by a 325 WSM - a 200 grain bullet delivering 3500 ft-lb to the lungs - managed to run 75 yards. Meanwhile many elk dropped immediately with standard cartridges at modest speeds. So there are no guarantees.
Shooting distances
The median shot distance was 150 yards. About 42% of shots were at 100 yards or less, and about 29% of shots were at 300 yards or greater.
Hunter efficacy
Out of the 47 elk on which shots were taken, only 1 was not recovered, apparently due to a poor shot. That will be discussed more below. About half of elk went down within 10 yards of where they were first shot, and only 1 of the 44 elk that were recovered went beyond 100 yards. On the whole, when Rokslide and Hunt Talk hunters decide to shoot an elk, the result is almost always a recovered carcass. That's good.
Shot placement
Only one elk shot was not recovered. It is not a coincidence, I think, that this was also the only elk that was probably not hit in a "vital" area (i.e. heart, lung, head, spine). Specifically, the user suspects that the bullet only hit the shoulder at a steep quartering angle, without going into the thorax. The shoulder broke, but the elk ran off and was never recovered, despite much effort. One incident doesn't prove anything, but this fits the common sense belief that the best way to achieve a quick, humane kill is to put a bullet in the vitals.
Killing power vs. kinetic energy, velocity, bullet size and type
For every hit on an elk, I attempted to determine the kinetic energy and velocity of the bullet at impact. I used the muzzle velocity either from factory loads or as provided by the user, the ballistic coefficient of the stated bullet, and plugged that into gundata.org's ballistic calculators. This is not perfect, of course, but should provide pretty decent estimates. I then used this to see if I could determine whether there was some effect of any KE, velocity, or bullet size/type on speed of death. I defined a quick kill as "putting down an elk inside of 10 yards", which again happened about half the time. This threshold is arbitrary but seems reasonable enough. I used logistic regression models and tree-based models to see if any statistically significant effects showed up.
The result of this analysis did not yield any strong conclusions. There does appear to be some evidence that higher impact velocities increase the chance of a rapid kill. Below about ~2300 fps, only about 15% of elk died within 10 yards; above that threshold, it went up to about 60%. These is only a weakly statistically significant result, however, so you should not put much faith in it. More data would help, so please contribute to the survey if you haven't yet! Once speed was accounted for, there was no obvious effect of kinetic energy or bullet size. This does not mean that those variables do not matter, however. First, the sample size is quite small, so the ability to discover such relationships is weak. Second, the smallest bullet in the data was 110 grains, and the smallest impact KE was 1128 ft-lb. It is likely that these variables would have more effect at lower levels - surely many would be wary about shooting a 50 grain bullet at an elk, for instance. But since I do not have less powerful cartridges in the data, I cannot speak to that.
I should reemphasize that all bullets in the data set, *when placed into the vital areas*, resulted in dead, recovered elk. Higher velocities *may* be useful for quicker kills, but even relatively slower projectiles (the lowest was 1669 fps) get the job done if you do your part. Cartridges used ranges from the 6.5 creedmoor on the low end to >30 cal magnums on the high end.
A lot of the variation seems to be unpredictable. Sometimes elk just run - 20, 50, 100 yards - whether they are hit with fast, high energy projectiles (>3000 ft-lb) or low energy (<2000 ft-lb) ("low" is clearly a relative term here). One bull hit by a 325 WSM - a 200 grain bullet delivering 3500 ft-lb to the lungs - managed to run 75 yards. Meanwhile many elk dropped immediately with standard cartridges at modest speeds. So there are no guarantees.
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