My uncle shot a wounded moose six times in the head with 240 JSPs from a 4" .44 and the damn thing ran off. They chased it for more than five miles before they finished it with a rifle. Frankly bullets are funny things and we keep trying to make them predictable. One little bit of bone... and I know my uncle is one of the best marksmen I have ever seen.
I've shot and killed many moose even with the 38 Spl and 158 gr Semi-wadcutter lead bullets. There's some serious bone in a moose's head, so you really have to know where the soft spots are. The one I used, and it never failed was a frontal shot. You draw an imaginary line from one eye to the opposite ear and vice versa. Where these "lines" intersect, a one shot kill will happen -- every time for me.
Other place is from the rear, low, right where the first vertebrae joins the head. They don't die quite as quickly as with the brain shot, but they go nowhere, and their heart and lungs quit functioning.
Believe me. I've done a lot of injured moose with a handgun in 30 years of policing in NW Ontario. It can be done. Deer die easier, but moose die good too. Sorry your uncle had such an ordeal. Pass on the "soft spot" info to him.
