Would love to hear more from some of you Scandanavian hunters on the progress of the first Moose season. I am hearing great things from Vasterbotten. How about Suomi and Norway?

Here in Finland (Suomi) our Moose season begins on the 28th, so there's still over a week to wait. My expectations are high, since this year we have the largest number of moose licences ever! My hunting party has a total of 10 licences and 9 riflemen, so I should have a pretty good chance to try my luck at least once...

Oh yes; a few weeks more.. 30 moose and 20 whitetail licenses.. 8x60S with woodleigh 250grs..
Crisp mornings and good friends. We happy few..

Boha

Hello Tombo.
On the evening on the 24'th of sept. I start up my truck and leaves home for approx. two weeks.
We start our huntingseason on the 25'th of sept.(moose).
I REALLY looking forward to turn of my computer for two weeks!!
My .416 Taylor is tuned and ready, and if my .338 RUM get scoped, it will come with me too.

The moose-season has now been going on for about three weeks and so far I have bagged three: a calf, a cow and a bull with a 6-peg rack. All three have been shot with a customed Winchester 1895 lever-action in .45-70 Government. The bullets have been Speer 400gr FN for the calf and the bull, and a finnish-made 420-grain premium cast bullet for the cow.

All three have been one-shot kills and dropped immediately on their tracks. Ranges for the cow and the calf were about 30 metres and 7 metres for the bull (tried to run over me. Failed.)

Personally, I'm not any special fan of US-made products and inventions, but I must admit being very impressed by the performance of the .45-70 gun/cartridge-combo so far. I also have a .338 Win. Mag Sako TRG-S reserved in the local gun shop, but I doubt if it will bring any improvement to my moose-hunting armoury.

The moose-season in our area started sept.25. So far we have taken 8 animals of 13 availabel. I have been pretty lucky and shot 2 bulls. Both with a Rem 700 .30-06 and 180 Nosler Partition Gold. A 5 and a 7 pointer. This weekend was cold with wind and snow. Brrr

Hi Tombo21!

The moose hunt have been pretty normal exept for a few really warm weeks in sep.

I have shot 3 moose so far 2 bulls and one calf. The first bull was shot in early sep. It was a medium sized bull weighing in at about 270 kgs.(guts out, no skin and legs) The head wasn�t that big, 9 points.

We have had some heavy snowfall last week but at the moment the snow is melting in a hurry. Strong winds and above temperatures seemes to save the next couple of weeks of moosehunting.

I�ll go for some moose tomorrow just outside Ume�, we still have 2 adults left on the permit in that area.

I shot the 270 kg moose with the brand new 9,3 Oryx 18,5 grams. I was a bit conserned about the fact that the bullet lost aprox. 25% in weight......

The shot was a quite tuff one for the bullet though. The bull was at a pretty sharp angle against me, I fired a single shot at 40-50 m into the area where the neck and chest joins. The bullet whent thru the lower part of the spine, passing the lungs and was inbedded between the ribs and the rear part of the shoulder. Expantion was all the way past the bottom of the bullet.

V/0 was about 710 m/s.

The calf I shot was with a brand new 300 WSM barrel on my Sako 591 rifle. I used the Sako Super Hammerhead in the WSM. The 154 gr bullet performed good and expantion and was good and controlled in spite of about 940-950 v/0. The bullet had about 90 % weight remaning. I took the shot at about 160-170 m. The bullet entered behind the shoulder and was found under the skin in the other shoulder. The Super Hammerhead have given me exeptional accuracy in my WSM with 3 shot groups at 100 m without paiper between shots! Not all groups have looked like that, but quite a few

Good hunting everybody!

Stefan.

Congrats on a season that seems to be progressing nicely. Don't know much about those Sako hammerheads. Where can I find some information on them? I wish I was there this year. Damn Damn double Damn! :-(

Tombo.

To bad you couldn�t make it to Sweden this year....

The Hammerhed bullet is a bonded SP similar to Norma Oryx or Woodleigh. There should be some info at Sakos wep page about the bullet.

Stefan.

Stefan,

I'm interested in your 18.5gr Oryx performance. I have the 15gr ones and gave them a hard test of 3" of dry magazine paper followed by wet newsprint at 50m. The idea was to see if they would manage a really large bull shoulder and still kill. The weight retention was about 30% and the bullet was completely mangled - it made about 10 of print so despite looking bad on paper (pun intended!) it seemed to be good for the job.

This was borne out by the shot I took (one of)on my bull at about the same range which went through ribs and lung shattered the far shoulder at it's strongest point and still exited! This with a MV of 790fps.

Seems a good compromise for sane loading of a 9.3x62

Oh yes we do have whitetails. During the thirties some enthusiasts arranged the moving of a couple of whitetail deer from Minnesota to Finland. They have breeded since then to a healthy population; 17.500 deer were bagged last year, which was an increase of 2.500 bagged. I think the biologists define them as a different species from North American. Beautiful game. They are mostly hunted from stands, but my favourite christmas holiday pasttime is tracking them in the fresh snow. I bagged two last year; modest racks.
Season is from the last saturday of September to January last.
In some places they outnumber the scandinavian moose.

Just finished the moosehunt; 38 moose in 10 days. Looking forward to the HOLIDAY SEASON and the wonderful whitetails!

Boha

[ 10-28-2002, 21:53: Message edited by: boha ]

Thought I'd try posting a picture. Small game for a small rifle.

Boha

Woops, That's small..

[ 10-28-2002, 21:43: Message edited by: boha ]

I just received some pictures from my friend Reijo Ylhainen. They are not scanned as they came by snail mail. But judging from the piles of moose(meese?) it looks as though the season is Kickin' hard in Suomi!!!!!!

Well, Boha, I suppose that if we can have Sakos in the U.S., it's okay for you to have whitetails in Finland. I think we both got a good deal!

1894.

I have a losy picture of the recovered Oryx 18,5 gram bullet.



The bullet is seen from the base, if you look carefully you can se the bottom of the bullet thru the expanded jacket.

I think I�ll stay with the Oryx in spite of the weigth loss. The bullets have a good reputation to expand good on hits behind the shoulders on moose here in Swe. It seemes like the bullet stands the tuffer jobs good enough, even though they expand a lot and sometimes loose some lead.

Stefan.

Hello Stonecreek, take look at my post on Black Powder; whitetails with .45!!

Boha