Minimum caliber for elk should be .30 IMHO. You owe it to the animal to bring enough gun and put them down ASAP
most places that restrict normally do so to 6.5mm or anything above 243. 30 caliber is irrelevent if it's something light travelling slow. a 30 cal fired from an SKS(7.62x39mm) is less suited than a 6.5 fired from a swedish mauser(6.5x55mm). in that case, I think the guy hunting with the 6.5 is way more ethical than the guy with the 30 cal. also, I've seen more elk slain with a 7mm magnum than any other cartridge put together. it's not the size of the bullet, it's how you use it, how it's built, and how fast it's going.
Anyone who has shot an elk and had it run off into a revine or any other 'hard to get to place' knows what I'm talking about
I've seen elk deader than dead with a 7mm and I've seen elk shot with 300 win mags run several hundred yards down into hard to get places, some animals just have a lot of fight and especially with elk this is unavoidable. between my two brothers, my 2 brothers-in-law, and myself who have all been on more than a couple elk hunts, only two of us have had dead-right-there elk, one was mine and it was a head shot, the other was a small calf hit with a 420gr slug from a 45-70 at close range.
Newbies shouldn't be shooting past 100 yards either
this depends on the skill set of the newbie involved. I was shooting for over a decade before my first elk hunt, I was a newb to elk hunting, but my marksmanship skills were no longer novice.
An even better choice for elk is a .33 caliber.......... but they whop the shooter about as much as they do the elk!
not if we are talking about 8mm mauser, comparable recoil to 30-06, again, over-generalizations are killing us here.
Bring enough gun. You won't be thinking about recoil when you see 'Ole Big' in the scope!
yeah, maybe, but you'll sure be thinking about it after your scope bounces off your skull. half your arguments revolve around the OP being completely inexperienced and the other half suggests cartridges which are way beyond what most newbs can handle. I've been shooting a couple years but I've been dummy ringed by my 300 weatherby mag twice now, I now download it to winmag velocities, I would never recommend a 30-375 or 338 mag for a newb no matter their skillset.