Colorado elk bullet help

[longbowelk]

Planning a Colorado elk hunt this fall. I have used ML in Colorado several years ago. I have read alot of posts and it seems the BH209 powder is the way to go. I have a TC Hawken .50 1:48 or a New Frontier BearTooth Magnum 1:28 inline to decide on. My son will be shooting a CVA Optima .50.
I am going to say we would probably not be shooting over 100 to 125 yards. I have killed 2 cows in the past both 50 yards or less. Neither dropped in there tracks but less than 75 yards. What bullets would you recommend.

[T3-OleMan]

Originally Posted by ronnie1972

i am going to colorado this year on a muledeer muzzleloader hunt. this will be my first hunt with a muzzleloader i a purchased a tc triumph. now i have noticed in colorado that u can not use sabots, or pyrodex pellets

http://www.longrangehunting.com/forums/f32/colorado-bullet-choice-71142/

Hope this will help.
Good luck.

[silvercreekguide]

I would try 100-120gr of triple7 and powerbelt platinum 338gr. My girlfriend and I took 2 nice bulls last year with that combo, one at 8 yards, chest shot, and one at 147 yards, behind the shoulder shot. The bullet preformed perfect on both, and put them down fast with a lot of blood. Oh and both with CVA rifles.

[tayhot]

Do not use power belt. Go with Thor or the Hornady conical. Powerbelts blow up on impact. I have seen this first hand with about 10 elk that pb were used on. I don't recommend them to my clients

[cat26fish]

I would not use powerbelt bullets on elk. I think they are great deer medicine, but I have had inconsistent results with elk. The group of people I hunt with all started using powerbelts and 777 because they load so easy and are accurate. Their performance in the field though was a different story. We have lost several elk using these bullets, and the ones we did get took several shots.(it was a giant mess) I switched to Thor bullets and and BH209 last year and got a buck and a bull. The bullets performed much better, all the bullets were found just below the hide on the far side.

[silvercreekguide]

I do agree that the Thor bullets are good, but so are the Powerbelts. With the Powerbelts you just can't push them to fast or they will come apart. Keep them at a moderate speed and they will do just fine. Get both and see which ones shoot the best and go with that one.

[ENCORE]

Irregardless how any bullet prints on paper, if it doesn't perform 100% reliabily and never fail, you shouldn't be using it for hunting. You should never have to worry about pushing a bullet to fast or to slow, wondering if the load is just right to perform. Any HUNTING bullet that causes you that kind of work, isn't worth using on paper.

Powerbelts are well and widely known for being unreliable. Bullets that are supposed to mushroom, shoot and act like a FMJ, punching nothing but a hole. Others completely explode on impact, with very little if any penetration. The internet is full of hunters with bad expierences from one end of the country to the other. Complaints of extremely poor to non-existent blood trails, with perfect hits. Just because someone may shoot them and in the past have had good luck, its only a matter of time. As mentioned above by another poster, he's had elk lost from hunters shooting the bullet and doesn't recommend them. See his reasoning?

I would highly recommend that you do some searching and just see what others have to say. Then think about this..... IF a bullet MAY perform that badly, why would I want to risk it? Use a premimum bullet and one that doesn't have so many bad reviews across the country.