The rule of thumb is 1/300th or so, but that's without VR. At 1/200th, you're only half a stop under the general guideline, but VR gives you at least two stops better than that, probably three, and possibly four (depending on how stable at hand-holding you are to begin with, and which model of 70-200 you were using). Three stops better than 1/300th is 1/300 -> 1/150 -> 1/80 -> 1/40th, so at 1/200th you were pretty safely in the wobble-free zone. If you had the VR-II model and are skilled at hand-holding, 1/20th probably would have yielded a stable, sharp result. BUT...

All that only accounts for camera motion. If the subject is moving, that's not handled by VR. I agree that in general this shot looks pretty sharp, but it's very possible that you could have achieved a sharper result with a slightly higher shutter speed - say, 1/500th. Given that you used f/7.1, that was easily achievable by either (a) shooting at ISO 1600 instead of 720, or (b) shooting at f/4 instead of f/7.1.

Finally, this is one situation where the background is doing you no good. It's messy, distracting and just doesn't help tell the story of elk, unless you specifically mean "hey look at the elk in my back yard" or something like that. So this is definitely one time I'd open up to f/2.8 (or wider, if I had it). At f/2.8, you could have shot this at 1/500th and ISO 400 or so. The result would have been a background that was much less in focus (although in this case probsbly still recognizable), and likely sharper elk. And at ISO 400 instead of ISO 720, less noise - although there isn't much to be seen here anyway.

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Brian... a bicoastal Nikonian and Team Member

My gallery is online. Comments and critique welcomed any time!