Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska My Best Moose

H-4831, I was shooting a Sako L-61 if memory serves with a 24" barrel. My original load was 76 grain of H-4831 an old Jim Carmical load with a CCI mag primer for about 2730 fps. I switched to the Federal 215 and got 2800 fps with 2 grains less powder 74 grain. I latter backed that load down even more.

50-60 lbs sounds about right for all 4 bones from both hind legs plus perhaps including the pelvic girdle. I once weighed the largest rear leg bone from a 50 plus inch Kenai bull and IIRC it weighed about 12 pounds.... IIRC......... I seem to recall the pelvic girdle weighing about 7 pounds. Bathroom scale.

Let u know next moose I kill, hopefully later this winter.

Very nice bull!!!

Nice bull.

Very nice! Congratulations!

Moose bone-in pack trips with good walking:

Hindquarters: 2 loads

shoulder stacked on a ribcage: 2 loads

Neck, flanks, chops, tenders, misc. trim, liver/heart, horns: 2 loads (and this can be a bit of a stretch)


If the footing is tough or spongy, then you have to lighten and increase quantity of the non-hindquarter loads, and the hindquarter loads are absolute killers. Cape would add another load - I've never brought one out.

I've not done it in less than 7 loads, but smarter packing would have had me at six heavy loads. There is a tremendous amount of meat on the neck.

"if" should only be used to suggest more than a single option. (Recall that shooting on, from, or over a roadway is illegal in Alaska. )



This should be noted by anyone who has never hunted moose. (And a neck shot spoils a lot of the meat through blood-layering.) We generally bring out the neck intact when sleds can be brought alongside. Any of the quarters is dwarfed by the intact neck.

We usually figure about 9 trips to haul out an entire Moose. Gets old fast :-(

We have been able to bring out a few decent bulls (not big bulls, just decent bulls) from northern BC on atv's/tracked machines. Three different bulls in the low 40's were all right at 740 lbs, skinned, legs off below the knees, head off. The hindquarters together cut just ahead of the hip were 340lbs. Even on my best day there is no way I'd try to carry out a whole hind from one of those bulls.
We did bring out a smaller bull from the Chilcotin in 5 loads on our backs, he was just over 500lbs skinned without the head. Luckily, the carry was only about 300 yards on mostly firmish ground, and we were both in pretty good shape in our early 40s.

First moose was 3/4 mile to the lake - half was foot-thick memory foam, half was bulling through alder/club/rose/spruce/whatever else grows so thick on the kenai peninsula. That was an 8-tripper: 4 each for my wife and I. She's not an average gal, and we boned it out fully. But then we had another 3 miles or so of canoe trail portages, each portage being 4 meat trips and one camp/canoe trip. Starting with the first load off the carcass at about 2:00 am after a last-light kill the previous evening, we spent the next 48 hours packing with about 12 hours of sleep thrown in. For all but the last lake paddle we two-tripped the lakes with half the meat each time. For the last lake, we put it all in. With 4" of freeboard on a silent windless clear night, we paddled the last few miles under a partial moon (actually I paddled, she sat low and still to not rock the boat). Near the end, my wife fell asleep, standing, with a big load on her back walking up the final hundred-yard steep uphill trail from lake to the truck at midnight. We pulled off to sleep on the drive back to Anchorage, waking at waning dark to a blown rear tire on the pickup at the pullout just down from the pass. Got to the apt at 7:30 in the morning, in time to get her to the airport at noon. I think we both lost over ten pounds.

Fourth moose was a pancake-flat 1/4 mile stroll to the trickle (creek) on smooth cobble bonded together by tight, firm moss. It was about like walking across your living room. Someone upstairs must have finally figured that I earned that one. Should have made it in 6 bone-in trips but did it in 7. Sounds easy, but it took 3 solid days of packing and dragging to get my raft upcreek to that point...Broke my canoe paddle on the float out going through the short rapids. Found the broken half and taped the paddle back together for the last few hundred yards of white knuckle rapids (luckily shallow and only 4 miles from the truck). Started floating at frosty first light, and pulled up to the bridge a while after dark.

I LOVE moose hunting.

As long as 'memorable' is a worthwhile goal, moose hunting always seems to have successful endings.

I had to call an end to the 3/4 mile forays through the swamps this fall. Those moose highways, I knew, were writing checks which my knees were not going to be able to cash, and I no way wanted to leave it up to my pard. As it was, he felt sorry for me as he watched me trying to raise up from my knees while we skinned and butchered, and he ended up hauling the bulk of the loads the 1/4 mile or so we had to pack. Every new, 'less wet' path we made through the thinly veiled swamp became a canal by the second passage. Moose give no quarter when it comes to a man's pride, perhaps why the killing of them is often regarded as easy.

First bull I shot we stumbled onto a "magic" pathway. Some form of strange natural gravel formation bordering the swamp where I felled him. It was shaped in a perfect half circle around the perimeter of the swamp. It led back to camp and was "magic" because by some miracle it was made of approximately 3' of hard packed gravel. It was literally like walking down a slightly overgrown gravel road. After wrestling him into pieces and out of the bog we nearly floated the 3/4 mile back to camp down the Highway.

I'd shoot 50 more of them in that exact spot if I could.

Thats one reason, I like the bullet that failed on you once.

Shot mine in the neck last fall, and with a 210 ttsx, you could literally eat up to the hole. I never found any bloodshot meat to speak of.

I dread the day of the packing loads out, I've been super lucky so far, even hunting off the trails, and not on them, but it'll catch me one day...

duplicate post!

Lady Luck has a sister, and she ain't pretty.

And the trait you mention is probably at the top of the good characteristics the monos have, though one of the worst 'layer-bleeders' was one that involved a more prolonged death (and bleeding) due to poor damage track. But the lack of bloody loss was true of my young bull last fall, and the spine was nicely divided for the butchering process saving one extra obstacle to deal with in the waning light. Granted, I wouldn't have minded if he had been able to stagger downhill and a bit closer to the sled rather than falling straight down where he stood.

Sig line material right there.

Nice moose. I hope I have an opportunity to do a hunt like that someday soon.