Thread: First for the 300WSM

Over the last several weeks we have been testing various loads in Beeman's oldest son's 300 WSM. Wayne was keen to run the 200 gr or 212 gr ELDX in his WSM so we started to develop a load. What we found was most loads shot an inch or better which was great.
The 200gr ELDX load we have finally settled on runs at 2957 fps so is no slouch.
Yesterday after finishing off the load testing we headed to an area of young pines where Wayne and his brother Neil had seen 5 stags a month an a half back.
It was about 5.45 pm when we arrived and got our gear sorted for the walk to spot we could watch out for any animals, this would take about half an hour following a few ridges.

It was pretty warm as we made our way up from the road. As we climbed we noticed quite a bit of sign of both pigs and deer. As we neared the top where it joins the main ridge I seen Wayne looking across the head of the gully and readying himself for a shot, within seconds his Remmy boomed and I glanced a set of antlers dash through a gap in the young pines, the loud smack that came back signaled a good hit.
I stayed put and Wayne ran around the top of the gully and came down the spur the deer ( there were 3 of them)were on, I directed Wayne to where I had last seen movement of the trees.
A loud yahoo told me he had found the stag so I headed on over to give him a hand. The stag was a beauty, the velvet was well developed for the 1st Nov and the animal was in good nick as he should have been considering the feed available.
After the photo's we gutted him and then set to dragging him back to the truck. As luck would have it all we needed to do was drag him down hill about 400 yards to the road and load him onto the truck.
What a great way to end the day, a first for Wayne's new Rem 300 WSM and the first animal with the 200gr ELDX. Later we found the projectile, it had hit square in the shoulder and angled through the chest to come to rest about the middle of the rib cage. The bullet had lost it's core but still done a good job. Range was just under 100 yards and the stag went about 15 yards after the hit, all in all pretty good I think.