I'm asking approximately about cut and wrapped meat, more than a deep freeze could hold?
As much as two full deep freeze loads, or how many ice chests to bring the meat back as extra baggage?
Thanks in advance

Stray, in 2014 I shot a cow moose in Wyoming.. They are a smaller species than up north.. We had to quarter her and bring her out in that form.. We took it to a processor near Pinedale and had her done up.. My wife said we got around 300-350 pounds of meat from that one.. Plus we lost what would have been some burger when we left the ribs.. It filled over half a 10 c.f. freezer.. Hope this helps, and best of luck..

I've been processing moose for a long time.
An average moose in this country weighs 900 to 1000 lbs on the hoof which results in somewhere between 300 to 400 lbs of boneless meat.
I have several freezers here (Box Type--hinged lid on top)5ft long maybe 2ft wide and 3ft deep. An average moose will fill one about 3/4 full, cut and wrapped.

That's what we find too. Expect about 35%-40% of the live weight in boneless meat.

That has been my experience as well.

Thanks guys that was precisely what I wanted to know.

Bear in mind there is no such thing as an average moose--an early calf might only be a hundred pounds. Biggest bull I cut up resulted in 790 lbs of meat and the biggest cow was 832lbs of meat.

I think moose from further west might be larger--the Shiras moose from the mountains are a bit smaller.

I think my experience has shown me that you get a little less than a third of live weight for freezer ready meat, but I wouldn't argue with kkahmann. He deals with lots of animals.

Only thing I can say is the older I get, the heavier the dead moose feels at the kill site, and the less it weighs at freezer time.

Where you are hunting in Canada makes a difference. In Northern BC moose are bigger than in the southern part of the province and eastern Canada. Moose in the Yukon and Northwest Territories are bigger yet.

That is very true, moose I've taken around my house average 300 to 400 lbs at the butchers, the ones 5 hours north average 800 to 900 lbs. My biggest up there was 986 lbs, just the 4 quarters.

We have boned out a good many very large Alaska-Yukon bulls of 60 inch class......these are flown out in Supercubs and later weighed into a local meat processor at 600 pounds. There will be a bit more cleaning and trimming so I'd think we put 500 pounds in the freezer.

About 50% live weight. less than beef, or we would be raising them instead.LOL

cut and wrapped, 4 150 qt coolers, or 2/3 to 3/4 of a 6 foot chest freezers. Thats about average of what I have seen from my moose 950 and 975 live weight.

Some of these replies are IMO not boneless meat, but with the bones in. The largest certified live weight moose went, as I recall (my moose book is 600 miles away...), about 1700 lbs (1695?) at 5 years old. They did not weigh it after that, as it was getting cranky and hard to handle as it reached its full maturity. This was a Yukon/Alaska (largest subspecies) from Interior (largest within the subspecies!), bottle-raised at the Moose Research Center on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska , with no lack of food or stress from winters and predators.

Now, the larger the animal, the higher the percentage of boneless meat, which is unlikely to go over 50% for a 1700 lb animal and possibly slightly under that. Bone in will add at least 100 lbs on the larger animals. A "yearling" bull moose will likely be closer to 40% boneless to live weight.

I will stipulate that I believe that bulls, which reach their maturity at about 7, may well get heavier than that pampered, but documented! live-weight 5 year old on record. I've seen some with the physique of a Hereford bull, which I wouldn't put money on not to exceed the documented record! And of course they are individuals, with different genetics, even in the same area. The last bull I shot a few miles south of here was tooth-aged at 7, and the cow with him was bigger - the biggest one I've ever seen. I guessed her live weight (at 30 yards) to be in excess of 1,000 lbs - and that's as tight as I'll put it! OK - I personally think she went 1200 to 1300 lbs - but I'm not claiming that.
By the way, I have killed 21 Alaska bulls, mostly on the Kenai, several in Interior, and two here in NWArctic. For a couple years I hung out as an occasional volunteer at the Moose Research Center - and even those guys that had the advantage of working with moose every day and weighing them (trained to step on the scales) said they were lucky to be able to guess a moose weight plus or minus 100 lbs. before scaling them. So there's a bit of salt involved here with anyone's "live-weight" guesses. Only a scale tells the unadulterated truth. And that's a difficult thing to get a wild moose to agree with! Dead or alive.

I have weighed the boned meat from my largest and smallest bodied 15 month old bulls ("yearlings"). 333 and 270 pounds, respectively. Both were taken on the Kenai, about 5 miles and 3 seasons apart. The largest one had 3 inch stubs for antlers, the smallest one had 16 inch spikes. Go figure! I have weighed the hinds (bone in, off at the knee and without the pelvic girdle) from two bulls that I figured were probably both 5 years old. One was from the Kenai, the other from here in NW Arctic. 110/ 111 lbs for the Kenai bull, and (IIRC) 95 and 97 for the Noatak bull. Just under 100 lbs, anyway.

Vern nailed it,,,

A central Canadian bull moose & caribou completely filled my 15 cubic foot freezer. I'm guessing that 2/3's or 10 cubic feet was moose. All meat was boned out, butchered and wrapped.

I think that is what I found (35-40) when researching it before my Newfoundland hunt a few years back. I shot a large moose. I brought him back in 2, 200-quart Colemans and had plenty of room for ice. The meat weighted 300 pounds boned and vac sealed. We did not take neck meat, or strip the ribs, either (that is just how they did it). We did eat ribs and heart in camp, though.

The short answer is: if you're hunting Alaskan moose there is going to be more meat than you want to ship home. My medium sized SW Alaska bull resulted in 200 pounds of top cuts (sirloins, backstraps, tenderloins, roundsteak). I left all the front quarters and shank meat with my Alaskan relatives and the neck and rib meat went to the local food bank. If you're lucky you can find a fish processor to hard freeze it for you. A good thing because the airlines lost my "fish" ... but even after 3 days it arrived still frozen.

My Colorado bull moose was more the size of a very large bull elk.

For eating, bigger is usually not better, just more. Best meat is two or three year old dry cow, or a yearling bull. They're smaller, but nicer meat than some old sixty inch hamburger bull. For me, the trophy goes in the pot, not on the wall.

Brother Keith
I like your approach to trophies, eating not mounting. Cheers NC

And mine, with respect to different moose sizes.

A really big Yukon/Alaska bull weighing 1500# will up the percentage of meat to live body weight to 45% or a bit more. The smaller the live body weight, the smaller the percentage of boneless meat.

Are you on a Resurrection Tear or what?

I've weighed boned out meat from several very large Alaska bull moose [60+ inchers] and they all came in very close to 600 pounds.

Packloads:
1 ea hindquarter, x2 loads
1 ea shoulder + 1 ea ribcage, x2 loads
Neck and straps, 1 load
trim and horns and organ meat, 1 load

That's bone-in, no cape, 56" and 58" Denali Hwy animals, but I doubt you're doing much uphill with that. Soft flat ground was bad enough. I've done it twice, once 3/4 mile flat with a little downhill, the other 1/4 mile flat. Makes for a long day and a half either way. Uphill to a ridgetop airstrip would be another story (not done it), I'm guessing 8 loads boned is doing pretty well. A hind from the 58" bull bottomed my 100lb fish scale with authority.

Wife and I did a BIG kenai bull in 8 loads between the two of us, boned with no cape, flat/mossy ground, but she's no ordinary gal. She added up the back/forth mileage hiked bushwhacking the bull back to a lake, then on the 5 or 6 portages back to the truck, and it was pretty crazy for 48 hours' work. Close to 40 miles each! Each portage was five loaded trips. She fell asleep, standing with a backpack on, at 1:00 am on the last hill up from the lake to the truck. I passed her going up, dumped the load, and passed her again going down - a few feet uphill from where she was going up. She didn't remember stopping!

Old rule of thumb told to me by an old German butcher. I think for livestock, mostly cattle, but I have found it to be pretty close on game animals too.

Hanging weight + 24% = live weight.
So lets say you had a bull that hung at 1000 pounds.(999.4 pounds to be perfectly accurate for this demonstration) That + 24% = 1315 lbs live weight.

31% of live weight is butchered meat weight, clean boned.

So 407.65 pounds is 31% of meat weight in the freezer from a 1315 pound moose.
This will vary on the health and build of the individual animal, but overall it comes out fairly close.

Loss over this amount can come from not clean boning the meat, and also there will be some from blood-shot meat depending on what the game was hit with and at what angel and range. Obviously a brain shot is going to leave a bit more meat then a shoulder shot, bullets the 'blow up" are going to ruin more meat then bullets that don't, hits with a 2800 FPS impact from a 300 Mag do more meat damage then a hit from a cast bullet 45-70, impacting at 1300 FPS ----- and so on.

So the formula is a rule of thumb at best, and not "written in stone"

I generally don't reference post dates- whatever pops up on the screen I go with.

If I'm real lucky, I don't contradict my own earlier post.....