Hello,
I'm a Swede that has been shooting and hunting in Sweden for 20+ years now and during that time I've seen some changes in the preferences of my fellow swedish hunters.
First of all it's important to understand that there's some major differences between different parts of my country. In the southern parts of our Sweden there�s a lot of deer hunting as well as boar and moose hunting, whereas the nortern parts has a lot lees deer and boars but they do have good moose hunting as well as bears (at least in some areas). I do believe that the average hunter in the southern parts spend a lot more money on his (or her) hunting equipment compared to hunters in the north. The leases for hunting areas are also more expensive in the southern parts of the country.
Anyway the most popular rifles here are probably Sako, Tikka and Huskvarna but you will also see a lot of german guns such as Blaser and Sauer as well as american guns e.g. Remington, Winchester and Ruger.
(I would like to add that the german guns that Mule Deer has written about in rifle over the last years such as german mausers, drillings and double guns are also quite popular.)
The kind of optics that hunters use varies a lot depending on the kind of hunting they do, but it's a safe bet to say that during the last 10 years people have started to spend more money on their optics then what they used to do.
Deer and boars are commonly hunted in low light situations (as in dusk or dawn) and that's when high quality optics really makes a difference.Popular choices would be Zeiss, Swarovski, Helia, Kahles or Schmidt & Bender If your main quarry are moose or bears the optics are less critical and you�ll see a lot of budget scopes as well as a lot of Leupold.
Due to legislation (we are only entitled to 6 hunting guns here in Sweden) you'll see a lot of rifles with detachable scopemounts and two (or more) scopes. For the same reason switch barrel rifles such as Blaser R93 and Sauer 202 and similar guns have become more popular during the last 10 years.
Regarding ammunition, Norma is the hands down choice for the majority of Swedish hunters but Lapua are popular as well. For practice and our "running moose" training sessions people prefer the cheapest possible ammunition thats available. Handloading is also popular among Swedish hunters and shooters even though the vast majority will use factory fodder when it's time to go hunting.
Our choce of chamering might differ from your "Joe Average" as we tend to put less faith in speed and the magnums are not as popular here as I get the impression that they are in the US. We have also seen a trend where 6.5x55 is losing in popularity (at least in sales of new guns) and what used to be "the big three" 30-06, 308 win and 6.5x55 are now dominated bu the first two rounds.
Fortunately we have a tendency to document and analyze everything in our country which means that there's at least some official statistics available. I have two different documents available, the first one where are the statistics regarding 8760 mooses.
Unfortunately I'm not able to put them in a decent table when I post them but hopefully it will still make some sense
Chambering, Number of mooses, Meters traveled, Cartridges/Moose
30/06 2849 47 1,57
6.5x55 2792 43 1,57
308 win 1314 41 1,67
8x57 IS 575 57 1,53
9.3x62 449 34 1,50
358 Norma 219 19 1,16
375 H&H 211 31 1,33
9.3x57 134 41 1,50
7mm Rem 107 40 1,32
338 WM 83 31 1,20
300 WM 27 16 1,83
Total/ Average 8760 43 1,56
The second document is regarding 6167 mooses shot in an area in northern Sweden between 1990 and 1997. I will try to explain the figures first, eg
30-06 1938 1.5 43 this means that there where 1938 mooses shot with a 30-06 each moose took an average of 1.5 shots to go down and the average moose travelled 43 meters after the shot. So here come the figures:
30-06 1938 1.5 43
6.5x55 1717 1.5 41
308 Win 943 1.7 38
9.3x62 306 1.4 36
375 H&H 265 1.4 30
8x57 265 1.5 50
358 NM 192 1.2 36
9.3x57 150 1.5 35
338 Win 111 1.5 31
7 mm RM 75 1.4 47
8x64 25 1.2 32
300 Mag 25 1.9 24
458 Win 18 1.3 18
7x64 18 1.4 43
416 Taylor 17 1.3 27
8x68S 12 1.4 40
8x60 9 1.1 4
270 Win 7 1.4 64
9.3x74R 7 1.2 32
9.3x64 5 1.6 50
460 Wby 3 1.3 70
9.3x72 1 1.0 0
Unknown 58
Obviously the chamberings at the bottom of the list are only used by one or maybe two shooters and the statistics tell us more about their shooting abilities then it does about their choosen gun.
I would like to apologize for the bad english and for the fact that my post became pretty long in the end. But if any of you guys have any further questions about hunting or guns here in Sweden I will be more than happy to answer them to the best of my ability.
Henrik
