One might perhaps be excused for wondering whether the higher average number of shots per moose in the .308 and the .300 Mag is somehow related to their availability in certain fairly popular semi-autos...?

Pettson

Henrik

Interesting !
Thank you for posting.
I have taken two my self both with 30.06. One travelled under 10 meters and the other about 40 meters.
I like the Swedish moose hunting very much.

Cheers,

Andr�

Henrik,

I am not sure that you can draw any conclusions from those figures with out further information.

I think it could be more interesting to look at similar information for moose wounded but not recovered along with shots taken and missed.

Also, is it customary in Sweden to fire second and third shots at the moose even if the hunter is fairly sure his first one was "good"?

Regards,

Pete

i have in my hand an other but similar report in my hand. In this case it's based on 8830 mooses that where shoot between 1989-1994. I will try and give summarize it for you gentlemen. 30-06 was the most popular chambering in this study aswell. I present the figures in the same format as in the first report.

30-06 2849 1.57 47m
6.5x55 2792 1.57 43m
308 win 1314 1.67 41m
8x57 575 1.53 47m
9.3x62 449 1.50 34m
358 NM 219 1.16 19m
375HH 211 1.33 31m
9.3x57 134 1.50 41m
7mmRM 107 1.32 40m
338win 83 1.20 31m
300 Mag 27 1.83 16m

As you can see the figures are a bit different in this study. I hope I gave you some more food for your thoughts.

Best regards
Henrik

Hello Pete,

here in Sweden the law says that if you shot at any big game that you don't find immediatly you must have a trained searchdog at the scene within 60 minutes.



And if there is even the slightest drop of blod from the moose that one will be counted in your license. This means that almost every shooting team will put a lot of effort in finding any wounded moose.

So very few mooses are actually "lost". I'm a member of two hunting teams, and in my 20 years of hunting the two teams together have shot close to 800 mooses. Of those I think that me might have "lost" less then 5 mooses. So I would say that probably less then 1% of the mooses that are shoot at will be lost.



I do a lot of "searching missions" for wounded mooses myself (together with my faithful lab of course). In the vast majority of the cases the mooses has been hit by a car, not shot at. It's not uncommon for me to track a moose for many hours, this is obviously exellent training for the hunting season.



Because of this regulation if somebody shoots at a moose and it cant be immediatly found, no more mooses would be shot untill the first one is recovered. That mean that an entire hunting team will try to get the wounded moose.

Therefor it's alot of pressure on the shooter to make sure that he gets the mooses that he shoots at. So in order for any hunter not to shoot again he should be 100% certain that the moose will go down.



And apart from this there's always the risk that your wounded moose might run into another huntingteams domains in which case the moose will belong to them...



So, yes it's very much customary to shoot a second and third shot at any moose which tries to get away.



Best regards



Henrik

Pettson

BAR action
And you are mooore the welcome.

Cheers,

Andr�

Henrik,

Thanks for that...do you think that would be a major factor why there were not more one shot kills?

Also, what sort of shot placement do you guys prefer ie Chest or Neck? Is it customery for hunters to turn down shots at less favourable angles or try to "drive the shot" home if they think their choosen caliber is up to it?

Regards,

Pete

Henrik,

You have take into account that no two moose are alike too.

We have discussed similar subjects - in this case an impala - and have reached a conclusion that a 25-06 Remington is a much better caliber for impalas than a 375/404.

Almost all the impala I have shot with a 25-06 have dropped in their tracks, while almost all of those whot with the 375/404 run a few metes before dying.

Same goes for warthogs

Hello,
I think that there's several reasons why there seems to be so few "one shot kills" first of all these statistics include finishing shot whenever the are needed.

It's also a fact (at least in my opinion) that mooses seems pretty unimpressed when you hit them. They are not at all hard to kill, but they show very little reaction to your shots. This means that you got to be very confident if you decide not to shoot at them again if a second opportunity arises. Actually this the one area where size matters in my experience if you hit a walking moose with a 6.5x55 or 30-06 you will generally not get any reaction but after 5-10 seconds the moose will give you a indication that it was hit in the right place. If you use something like a 9.3x62 or similar he will at least "miss a step" or show you a clear indication of a solid hit.

I think that around 90% of all mooses shot in sweden is shot in the chest when standing or walking broadside. Since most of the swedish hunters are very keen on moosemeat nobody wants to see any more meat wasted then necessary. It's only when you are follow a already wonded nmoose that "raking" shot are acceptable to the majority of swedish hunters.
If you are a doghandler you sometimes will get very close shots and in this scenario it's preferble to shoot the moose in the neck.

And when you see that some cartridges get an average of 1.5 shots for a moose you got to consider that some mooses will take many shots to go down if somethings go wrong with the first shot. I have personally seen a calf with 9 hits in the body! And then there's the fact that not all hunters posesses the same skills Even though most swedish hunters have to pass the "running moose" test in order to get to participate in moose hunting.


Best regards
Henrik

Nobody seems to be using the 8x54 anymore...

Carcano