Inspired by Mouse93 and the old chamois goat I'll try to make a post.

The first picture is of a year and a half bull. He was very skinny and still had bast (skin) on the antlers. It is in the upper parts of our area and a few meters below the tree-limit(?)


We are five hunters on the team, we had two one and a half year olds and two calves left to shoot. The guys that hunt on the neighbour area had a few moose almost at the border. At least a big bull and a cow with one calf. From prior experience we figured it might be more of them and that the hunters probably were able to scare them over the border. So we posted out and started to wait for action. I got the uppermost post and beeing in a hurry over marshes and in steep climbs I was pretty exhausted by the time I got up there. The place where I met the moose is marked in this picture:

I didnt have to walk all the way from where the picture is from!

The neighbour teams dog appeared soon after I got to the post but then we heard a shot and the dog ran away. After about half an hour I saw a cow below the cliff i sat on, I reported on the radio and said that I didnt intend to shoot because I believed it was an adult cow and that the other team had shot her calf.

Just seconds after, the cow turned and walked back and another moose appeared. It didnt look big and the antlers looked about right so I put the crosshair on his shoulder and pulled the trigger. I saw that it was hit but werent impreessed by the shot reaction so I shot once more. Then it had trouble walking straight so I just waited for it to fall over. The dog was obviously one for shooting because we got to the moose about the same time.

My teammates were sure I had shot an adult cow and they were not happy on the radio.

I used a Mauser 98 with an old competition stock and a Douglas barrel in .35 whelen. Its nothing for the eye but it shoots anyting like a dream. The load was 200 gn. TSX over 58 gn Vihtavuori 150. The tested trajectory suggest that they were slow, probably not much over 800 m/s (2625 fps). With time running out an presicion top of the line I didnt develop further. Both bullets had entered just below the shoulder ball. Since I shot from above the first shot touched the heart and exited quite low under the shoulder on the opposite. Shot two entered at almost the exact same spot as number one, but the moose had turned and the bullet went through lungs and exited a bit further back. The bullets performed exactly like I want them with some but not a lot of meat wasted.

Here is one picture from a bit above where the Moosepic is from:

The cliff where I shot from is marked.

And Finally a picture of our exellent machine that bring out all our moose more or less reliably. The driver is one of the guys from our huntingteam and the moose on the trailer is a calf also shot with the .35 whelen. It was shot from behind an the bullet broke a rib in the other end of the moose, thats a meter and a half of penetration and quite impressive. I did not find the bullet, but I probably scraped it out in the snow when I gutted the Moose. The reason for shooting from behind was that it had already been fired at . The bullet had entered high in the shoulder and angled almost straight up, damaging the spine slightly, but not slowing the moose down much. The combination of 6,5*55 and bullet failure.


Ok

Looks like fun!!

Lovely pictures, impressive scenery. Weidmannsheil!
- mike

Waidmannsheil 900 SS and welcome to AR. Rugged looking country there, very pretty. Thanks for sharing the hunt there.

Can that snow cat be used on bare ground or can you put wheels on it? That is the way to fly when hauling out moose! Dom.

900 SS,

Waidmannsheil!

Great pics and a good story to go along with them - your idea of Moose Hunting looks like a good time!

The snowcat will go anywhere you dare, snow or not. But to much big rocks will break the belts. You can not put wheels on it but you can put belts on the trailer.
You can get in trouble with it if its heavily loaded and the trailerwheels go down in wet marshes. The boggie should swiwel so the leading wheel goes down and under and ends up as the rear, but an unfortunate repair has disabeled this feature resulting in some sweat and swearing from time to time.

Great report and hunt!

The radio is a great tool but can be irritating on occasion. I too had a telling off on the radio for shooting a cow that had passed 3 other stands.

I however had my binoculars with me and was able to see the little knobs on it's head - about the size of the top joint of my thumb. I shot it and it was indeed a young bull.

After the disbelievers were put right the fun started. Previously they had ribbed me for carrying the binos - 'can't you see a moose with your own eyes!' Now I had taken a bull they had mistakenly passed on the subject changed to the huge size of the trophy!

Thanks for posting.

The ground there looks like it would be a lot of fun to hunt. I also like the way that your Moose hunts are always a team effort.

Thanks again,
FB

Nice story, do you hunters in the neighbouring block get irritated that you take advantage of their drive?

The scenery is magnificent.

quote:

Originally posted by Boghossian:
Nice story, do you hunters in the neighbouring block get irritated that you take advantage of their drive?

We help eachother out from time to time, so no hard feelings. In a situation like this, having extra hunters close by might be a good thing if a bad shot should happen.

We also get som bragging rights when we can take advantage of them sending moose to us. They got us back a couple of weeks later when we hunted together and they shot a calf for us. After some very impressive work by the dog (Buster) in the picture by the way.

And yes the scenery is great, it looks a lot bigger in real life. I live almost exactly in the middle of pic three.