bullet for moose

I'm going on a Canadian moose hunt this Fall. I've killed many deer & elk, using Horady Light Magnum ammo. This is an interlock bullet & does a good job taking out the heart & or lungs on deer & elk. I've heard from some that the way to get a moose is to put it down with the first shot (shoulder or spine) & kill it with the second shot. I've heard that a quick expanding, soft point bullet is a good choice. My question for you experienced moose hunters in this NG, What is the best type of bullet for moose, & where do you aim for the first shot?

Ouch. No way to back out of it, I suppose? Better hope they lift that meat ban before you go! That's an awful lot of hamburger to leave behind...

Then you're all set.

Armchair quarterbacks. Gotta love them . Moose, actually, seem to go down easier than deer do. Last one I got went down about the same as my usually deer do.

Well, here's the thing: I hate to break it to you if you're hoping to justify some new manglum rifle purchase, but moose can easily be killed by such anemic cartridges as the .303 British, shooting 180 gr round nose as found in bargain basement ammo such as Winchester PowerPoints. That said, around here (Quebec), an awful lot of them seem to fall to 180 gr Winchester Silvertips, again, not exactly premium stuff. Myself, when I go again, I'll probably load up with 180 or 200 gr Hornady SPBTs out of a .308 Win. After you shoot and kill your first moose, and are quartering it up to bring home , take a good long look at that shoulder bone. True, if you managed to break it, the moose would fall. But it's a whole lot of bone. Friends of mine have found 'quarter caliber' (.243-.270) bullets embedded in moose shoulders. The heart and lungs, however, are nice and soft and squishy. If you run a bullet through those, the moose will also fall. And moose keep them pretty much the same place deer and elk do. Mine took one through the heart, one through the lungs, and one in the shoulder, on account of the moose just stood there, so I kept shooting . It then walked about thirty feet, and fell over.

Then the work started .

I've shot moose with a .303 British, and with a .300 Win Mag.

The .303 killed 'em out to 300 yards, aiming for a heart/lung shot and using 174gr factory Hornady loads.

My .300, which I've only taken moose hunting twice, killed two moose, using 180gr Barnes XLC BT bullets in handloads.

You don't mention what calibre of rifle you will be using. This is important.

I've heard the theories behind 'knock him down, then finish him off'. What better way to knock him down, than to blow out his heart or lungs on your first shot. I always aim for the 'boilerhouse', and usually hit it. I have never had a moose go more than 50 yards from where I hit him using this methodology.

I picked up a great tip from an Alaskan moose hunting gal. Buy a cheap little chainsaw, fill the bar oil reservoir with vegetable oil, and use the chainsaw to cut the carcass into packable pieces. A moose is a big animal. You can't just quarter it, you have to eighth it or sixteenth it to get it out of the woods.

Take a plastic apron and goggles. It's a messy process.

I agree with the previous two responces. I shoot a 300 Win Mag, but also used to hunt moose with a 30-06. Both usually took them down first shot, always a heart/lung shot. I tend toward 180 gr Nosler partitions.

Actually you cut them into 9 pieces. 4 quarters, neck, 2 ribs and the spine cut in half. 10 if your hauling out the antlers. Chainsaw works wonders. Any cartridge mentioned will work for moose. I have taken 19 over the last 29 years with 41 magnum, 430JDJ, 270 Win, 338 Win, 338/378 WBY, 30-06, 35 Whelen, 450 Ackley, 45-70, 416 Taylor and a 505

Heresy! Stihl or nothing! Well, maybe a Husky or a Jon .

Or drain it, and run the saw until the chain is clean.

Yeah, you can, but you'll regret it later... we sure as hell did . We used a stretcher, actually, to carry the quarters out. We caried it maybe thirty or fourty steps, then had to set it down... and I shot it about 600yds from camp, no road.

Sixing it would have been ok, two guys with a stretcher.

Nah, it's not; after all, you've removed the guts already (leaving a white-ish pile three feet across and a foot deep). Straight down the spine, then across at the ribs. Doing it again, I'd probably take the shoulders/hips off, and then the torso.

You gotta be kidding! The chainsaw I use for cutting wood is going nowhere near my food. I don't need toothpicks grilled right into my stakes, or the flavor of bar oil residue. While I have been known to peel potatoes with my gutting knife, that's about as close to multi- purpose as I want to get.

Nothing like packing 1000 lbs of meat out shanks mare, is there? It sounds painful! I have found a little chainsaw a handy tool in the Cascades hunting elk, too. The elk here are quite inconsiderate, and refuse to walk next to a road, or even pack trail, to be shot.

There's a good article in this month's American Hunter about taking care of game. They talk about opening up the rib cage as being necessary to cool game down. Check it out. I thought I was pretty good at taking care of meat once the game was down, but I picked up a couple good tips from the article.

I shot my one and only moose, so far, on my second year of moose hunting (can't wait to go for the 3rd time). I used my .300 Wby Mag and nailed it through the lungs twice, at about 225 mts. My loads were 200 grs. Speer GS bullets at 3,000 fps. The first shot just made the moose look around, as if bitten by a huge mosquito. The second made him take off running, I guess the noise was too loud at that time (I heard the bullet slapping home). The third, this time at about 100 mts, broke a shoulder and brought it down. It still took a fourth shot to finish him up. But it's not that he wasn't dead, he just didn't realized it fast enough. Moose tend to do that.

That being said, my hunting partners have been killing moose for year. What have they used? .303 B., .308 Win and .30-06, all loaded with standard Remington CorLock ammo. So don't sweat it too much, even your .30-06 is adequate enough for your hunting trip.

By the way, I wasn't very impressed with the Grand Slams. They did penetrate well, but didn't cause as much damage as an ordinary bullet would have.

Why not bone out the meat and avoid packing the weight of the bones? Works fine for Colorado elk and deer size critters and should also work for the other subspecies of elk and for moose.

Personally, I was amazed at how well it worked. Obviously, the saw is cleaned, and the bar oil drained beforehand . But, yep, just like playing Doom without the gore .

Yes, it was, come to think of it. Six of us. Took us six hours to cut the trail in to the moose, then another four to pack the quarters out... and, of course, they made me carry the head and rack back... kinda like a Road to Golgotha kind of thing .

Standard fare up here! A good sized chunk of 2x4 propping it open is the usual.

I'll keep my eye open for it... don't get too many american magazines, though, at the corner stores in Backwater, Quebec!