Headed out this morning with the good Colonel's timeless wildcat. Got a shot at about 75 yards to fill my cow tag. Love that 400 Whelen.

Love it!!!! Lefty too!!!!

Congratulations. Lots of good eating there.

quote:

Originally posted by crshelton:
Congratulations. Lots of good eating there.

Yep.

Had moose and reindeer steak with friends this summer in Sweden.

Very nice indeed.

Congratulations Marty. Lots of good eating there. Which bullets were you using ?

Phil,

I used the 400 grain Hawk. I had a handful loaded and left over from load development and they shoot to the same POI as the 400 grain Woodleigh.

I have to fess up. She only offered me a Texas heart shot so I took it. It dropped her instantly and very decisively and I finished her with a round to the head from the 44 Special. I didn't recover the bullet. It appears there was less than three pounds of meat damage and no blood shot. The bullet is probably in the gut pile. I'll know for sure Friday when I cut and wrap the meat.

I had three other moose come in on me while I was field dressing her. A sub legal bull and cow together. He was way too interested in me and what I was doing. My yelling and revving the wheeler had no effect, nor did the 44 Special rounds into the ground near him. He tried mounting the cow that was with him and she had finally had enough and headed back into the dark timber. He followed hot on her tail. This all took place 35 yards away.

A little later a bigger but still sub legal bull showed up. He wasn't interested in me or scared of me. I yelled at him and he just ambled off unconcerned.

I've seen Moose hunting on television but never had the opportunity to try. They seem rather blind and dumb from what I've observed. And it seems that may be the case as well from your story. They seem rather easy to fool and get close to. What have your experiences been?

Congrats on the moose. Moose meat is quite nice...very lean.

Moose are like any other wild animal and depending on the conditions can act very dumb or very cagey. They are neither dumb nor blind. When there is heavy hunting pressure they can be very wary.

The moose rut is just starting to spool up. In another two weeks the bulls will be acting very dumb but even the wary Whitetail looses all caution when the season hormone overload goes into effect.

I think these animals that showed up were not catching scent of me and weren't sure what I was.

I have hunted cows in area where they were heavily pressured and found them to be pretty wily. In other areas with less pressure I've walked right up them within yards.

Most of those TV hunts are in fly in areas with limited pressure. I'd be willing to bet if they conducted one of those shows near the populated areas that get some heavy pressure, they'd find a different caliber of moose.

Very nice, and with a peep sight no less.

Thanks for the info mart.

Good work Mart! Good to see the old Whelen out earning its keep.
I've been trying to get mine out on a hunt, trying to take it Black Bear hunting but where I hunt I'm sometimes faced with a 300 yard shot.
Congratulations on the Moose!

Way to go Mart!
Keeping the 400 Whelen safe from obscurity!

Heh, heh, the .458 Winmag is enough for cow moose too,
or at least it was in 1987 at Fort Richardson US Army Post, just a few miles from my base housing on Elmendorf AFB.
The Fort Rich drawing permit paid dividends in excellent meat:



500 grain Hornady RNSP with 71 grains of IMR 3031, about 2150 fps MV by chronograph,
Remington 700 BDL 24" barrel, right hand action, available in lefthanded also.

It was a spectacular bullet failure, a one-shot-bang-flop.
Moose died instantly when the Old Hornady 500-grain RNSP went in behind left shoulder and shed its core, which broke into two chunks of lead and an empty jacket.
One primary projectile became three.
Each of the three bullet fragments broke a rib on the off side of the moose.
All of the kinetic energy of the bullet striking at about 100 yards stayed inside of the moose.
That much kinetic energy must have raised the internal temperature of the moose only a fraction of a degree, eh?
No meat was spoiled!

Rip,

I'll bet that 500 grainer rocked her world. That's a great picture.

Mart,
Yours is way better.

1. You got a little closer.
2. You did it with a receiver sight instead of a scope.
3. You did it with a 400 Whelen.

That is three ways better than my cow, though I am sure they were equally tasty.

The 400 Whelen is pretty cool but the 458 Win Mag ranks pretty high on the coolometer as well. You get extra points for the scope if it has a post and crosshair reticle.

quote:

Originally posted by RIP:
Way to go Mart!
Keeping the 400 Whelen safe from obscurity!

Heh, heh, the .458 Winmag is enough for cow moose too,
or at least it was in 1987 at Fort Richardson US Army Post, just a few miles from my base housing on Elmendorf AFB.
The Fort Rich drawing permit paid dividends in excellent meat:



500 grain Hornady RNSP with 71 grains of IMR 3031, about 2150 fps MV by chronograph,
Remington 700 BDL 24" barrel, right hand action, available in lefthanded also.

It was a spectacular bullet failure, a one-shot-bang-flop.
Moose died instantly when the Old Hornady 500-grain RNSP went in behind left shoulder and shed its core, which broke into two chunks of lead and an empty jacket.
One primary projectile became three.
Each of the three bullet fragments broke a rib on the off side of the moose.
All of the kinetic energy of the bullet striking at about 100 yards stayed inside of the moose.
That much kinetic energy must have raised the internal temperature of the moose only a fraction of a degree, eh?
No meat was spoiled!

You remember all that from 30 years ago?? Impressive!!

Mart,
The reticle was only a standard duplex, Leupold 1.5-5X , so no extra points for me, you are coolest.

The Army boys were aghast that anyone woud show up for a cow moose hunt with a .458 WinMag, but very satisfied that only one shot was fired,
and that the bullet stayed inside the moose.
After my lark, they changed the rules to archery only for the annual cow cull!

Kenati,
Even the senile and demented can remember events from the remote past in vivid detail.

Yeas ago (1964), I was walking down a fire break in Maine, loaded for bear with my .375 Taylor (.375-.338), when a cow moose stepped out of the trees directly in front of me and proceeded to relieve herself. Shortly afterwards a bull poked his head out of the trees and stared at her, ignoring me.

I pulled out my camera and recorded the scene, and both animals ambled away. Later, back at the lodge, I asked my host what would have happened if I had shot the bull in self defense. "There is no open season on moose in Maine. If you shoot one, you had better have moose tracks on your chest," was his response.

(PS All my big game rifles have post and crosshair reticles, including my .400 Whelen Springfield.)

RIP,

I put in every year for the muzzleloader moose hunt on Ft. Rich/Elmendorf but as yet have not been drawn. I have a 62 caliber round ball gun just itching to smote a moose.

It's kind of funny to talk to folks in the field about big bores. Some are almost incredulous when you say 400 or 500 grain bullet. One guy even told me he didn't hate any moose enough to shoot it with a 400 grain bullet. I don't know where folks get their ideas.

Like I mentioned earlier, there doesn't appear to be more than three pounds of lost meat. I expected more from the Texas heart shot but then it is a big slow bullet. Past experience has shown me they just don't tear up meat like a faster, smaller caliber bullet.

I certainly would have preferred to take a broadside or quartering shot but she didn't seem inclined to offer it. She kept her butt to me as she'd move away. She'd take a few steps and stop. I've used the Texas heart shot a couple of times before to anchor animals but they had been lung shot and were still on their feet and threateningly close to either going off into some steep country or in one case, across a state line. The ranch I was on had land in two states and the elk liked to hang out in the field near the line.

I still have a caribou tag and it will reopen while I'm up on the slope. I'll go out again for caribou in November when I get home. I think I'll mount my Redfield 2 3/4x with the PCH reticle and load up some 300 grain Barnes TSX for that hunt.

xausa,
Thank you for proving to Kenati the vividness of detailed memories we may have of events over 50 years ago.

I do not recall being concieved in Maine, 6 weeks after my Irish Twin Brother was born in January 1954, at Loring AFB near the Canadian border, New Brunswick (base closed 1994 after the Cold War was won).
I also do not recall then being born at Fort Campbell, KY on the Tennessee border where they used to stockpile nuclear weapons in 1954.
I also do not recall flying to Ramey AFB in Puerto Rico when I was 3 months old.
But I do recall being pulled out of the ocean by my Dad's hand grabbing the seat of my shorts when I was 2 years old, at Air Force Beach near San Juan. My little inflatable boat capsized in the surf. That was traumatic, will never forget that!

Mart,
Good to hear they allow muzzleloaders now at the Fort Rich/Elmendorf cow moose cull. Have they ever allowed the taking of bulls?

Caribou!

I became a legal Alaska resident hunter in August 1986. First thing I did was a September Kodiak deer hunt with another Air Force captain I worked with. We took a ferry boat from Seward to Kodiak, then flew out from Kodiak town in a Cessna 210 on floats to Spiridon Lake, near Spiridon Bay. Spent a week shooting deer and playing with the bears.

30 days paid leave each year was great for hunting!

Next up was a solo caribou trip on the Alaska Peninsula in November 1986. This was due to a last minute bail-out of the Airman supposed to accompany me.
I do not recommend solo hunting for most of a week alone in a two-man tent in late November on the Alaska Peninsula, just when the creeks are starting to freeze, but I survived and have many vivid and detailed memories to show for it, glad I did not chicken out.

Uncle Sam flew me into King Salmon Air Force Station to oversee the annual administration of flu vaccine to everyone.

The posh VOQ at King Salmon AFS, a room for a night all to myself, pack contains food and gear for tent camp for a week. Rifle and backup handgun and ammo were locked up in the Armory for a day:




Then next morning I went on leave while I was TDY there. 5 days. Flew out in a charter, and got dropped off at Danny's Dune near Lake Becharof.
The dirt strip where we landed was called that because "Danny" was the pilot that crashed a Piper Cherokee there years before. Our landing was great in the cold dense air on Cessna tundra tires:



My tent pitched on the side of the sandy landing strip, North Face, gear from REI in Anchorage:



Home Sweet Home:




5 short days and 4 long nights communing with nature. 5 hours of day and 19 hours of night about then.
One night was very long as it was dark by the time I loaded my pack frame with 100 pounds of meat and antlers, then carrying it back to camp I broke through the ice of a creek and got wet up to my neck, then got lost in the dark, and spent about three hours first jogging in place to build some heat and then jogging around this way and that amongst the dunes with flashlight, and finally found my way back to the tent, sans 100-pound pak.
Frozen hip waders ("Tundra Tennis Shoes" they are called) were cut off with a knife, and I stripped naked in zero degree F, then got inside of two nested sleeping bags and cracked some chemical heat packs around my toes. Three hours more and I could feel my toes again.

In retrospect, the ice supported me earlier in day, crossing with empty pack. Stupid to not drag the loaded pack across with a rope after I had crossed the creek ice on the return trip. I had heaved the pack out onto home side when getting out of the creek that night, retrieved it next daylght.

My first selfie ever was a trophy photo, with ice on my mustache, just before starting to work on the meat, a bit excited:









It was great! Then pilot came back and picked me up, with frozen meat and antlers, returned to King Salmon, checked in, off leave, and flew commercial back to Anchorage on Uncle Sam's ticket, except for my excess baggage, including meat boxes and caribou antlers, with shotgun hulls taped over the points.
My resident subsistance tags covered at least 3 caribou, maybe it was 4 back then, little fuzzy on that detail, but I only took 3.
Bang, bang, bang ... oops the one out at 350 yards went down but he is getting back up ... bang. 4 shots, 3 caribou, in less than a minute.




340 Weatherby Fibermark 1985 vintage, 210-grain Nosler Partition handloads, the first ever factory rifle offered with a synthetic stock, a black wrinkle-painted McMillan of Weatherby Mark V shape.
Leupold 2.5-8x, an old favorite still.

After the bear sniffed my tent one night on Kodiak Island, in September 1986, I decided I needed a .375 Weatherby, for the 1987 trip to Kodiak.
Just to bring this back to "big bores," that was the start of my craziness. I was quite sane until then. Yes, just a little bit insane by November 1986.

RIP,

Nice caribou.

The Ft. Rich/Elmendorf (JBER now) hunt is any moose now. They take some pretty nice bulls there and the season runs Sept - Jan.

quote:

They seem rather blind and dumb from what I've observed.

Some of them are. Some of them aren't. The dumb ones are pretty easy to get. The smart ones you'll probably never see at all.

We shoot one a year since that's as fast as we can eat them. Its my son's turn again in a week. My youngest daughter got hers with a muzzleloader when she was 13.

Hi Mart
Can you tell us some more about the rifle? Looks like a Charles Daly/Zastava LH action? Is the receiver sight a Lyman and which model code is it?

Sorry for all the questions but this fellow Southpaw is quite interested in putting together a similar rifle.

cheers
stu

We have another 400 Whelen convert joining the fold??

Mart,
The Whelen's kind of made the "Texas Heart shot" into a heart shot. Big slow and heavy works.
Great Shot!!

Nice going on the moose Mart,,what a good looking rifle too!

35 years ago I took a B&C 416 caribou from the same airstrip on Whale Mtn. The penisula sure was a caribou paridise back then before the stinking air taxi's elbowed their way into being.

My 400 is starting to come together this winter with my PWS barrel being fitting to a 1917 Rem Enfield action.

Now to find a nice stock,,wood if possible.

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by waterrat:

35 years ago I took a B&C 416 caribou from the same airstrip on Whale Mtn. The penisula sure was a caribou paridise back then before the stinking air taxi's elbowed their way into being.

Jim

Thanks for that, Jim.
That jogged my memory.
Yes, Whale Mountain that is 1930 ft elevation on the topo map, right near the central north shore of Becharof Lake. The peak is on the border of Becharof Wilderness adjoining Becharof National Wildlife Refuge.
I was in BNWR on Shosky Creek at about 200 ft elevation, maybe 10 to 15 miles Northwest from Whale Mountain peak, so the curvature of the earth was hiding the peak of "Whale Hill" pretty well.
Soon to be 29 years ago, I did not see or hear another bushplane flyover during the 5 days I was there. Sure was glad to see my pilot return.