Thoughts? Would you be comfortable with either round? How about at less yardage?
Considering both dollar and opportunity (ie how often do you get to go elk hunting) cost of an elk hunt, I wouldn’t hunt with either.
First, the dollar costs for elk. Outfitter costs (if you use one), travel costs, equipment costs if self-outfitting, and so on. It adds up bigtime these days. I go to a few outdoor shows. The dollar COST of elk has risen at a tremendous rate.
Then, IMO, there is a bigger cost. You have to look at the opportunity cost. Elk tags don’t grow on trees nor does the time to hunt them. Multi-year waits to draw a tag, followed by the time invested in travel + hunt + meat care/transport, etc, etc, etc.
IMO, with the vast crop of modestly-priced, super-accurate rifles that are out there these days, getting the rifle that represents enough gun to get the job done right is a modest percentage of the overall cost AND possibly very cheap insurance against disappointment.
Obviously, if you’re talking OTC cow tags and being guided by your brother in law while staying at his house, and using his vast selection of mountain-hunting gear, then the equation changes a little as far as justifying adding a rifle. But for most people paying full whack for an elk hunt in both time and opportunity, getting enough gun for the job is the only thing that makes sense.
I’m not a fan of the 308. Never have been. Just too many compromises in this chambering, for military use it makes sense, for hunting use, there are literally a dozen better and more versatile choices. The 6.5 CM is an over-hyped target chambering and is just too small to produce the energy margin for error necessary for bigger, tougher animals. The problem with target chamberings that become popular for hunting is that fanboys with little HUNTING experience start to invent logic about how if it’s good for something, it’s good for everything.
As Randy very rightly points out, you cannot extrapolate what works on whitetails to what will work well on elk. Whitetails are the easiest to kill of the major NA big game species. Despite all the tall campfire tales about bulletproof bucks charging hapless hunters after absorbing 5 hits from a 300 Win Mag.
If you handload and you chose to move ahead with the 6.5 or the 308, you could load a hot tough-bullet handload for the above chamberings. Personally, I like really boring, old-school bullets that have proved toughness on game over decades, not years. Swift A-Frame or Nosler Partitions are as good, tough, and reliable as they come when terminal performance matters.
Grouse
