James;
Happy Canada Day to you sir, I trust the day's been as fair and mild on the east coast as it is out west here.
We've got a good friend who moved with his wife to Dawson City from BC and then transferred down to Whitehorse where they still live. He used to guide for black bears, grizzly and goats in northern BC and now hunts sheep, moose, bison, caribou and is trying to find an elk too last time we talked.
Since he's a rifle guy like me, we pretty much always talk cartridges and bullets whenever we connect, so based on that I'd toss out the following.
His kids have used a .243 for caribou if memory serves. Also an older .308 carbine that I modified for his wife has worked well on sheep. They've used a number of cartridge/bullet combinations for moose and caribou - I want to say the .300 Win Mag and .375 H&H would get the most use, but he's also a fan of the .270 with good bullets, so there you go.
As far as the .338 goes, I used to have a Ruger 77 tang model in that chambering and he had a .375 H&H Sako. The rifles were roughly the same weight and we both agreed his was much nicer to shoot even with 270gr bullets. The .338 was pretty jumpy with anything more than 225gr bullets and that was too bad because it positively doted on 250gr Partitions, but my goodness they'd give me a headache after a few.
I've handled the older Mark X Mausers which I believe are turned out now as Zastava and have read positive reports on Zastava products. If I were to get one in .375 H&H though I'd want to see that it fed okay, because its a pretty long case for a 98 action and yes I know they've made them feed the .375 for over a century - but I've also seen some not feed a .300 Win Mag for spit too....
If I was to move north tomorrow I'd try a 9.3 x 62 in a Mauser length action or a .375 H&H in a longer action without any second thoughts. Actually I've got a P14 action that's been percolating in the safe for too long and it'd likely become a .375 since I don't mind the cock on closing actions and am rather fond of the beefy Enfields.
Anyway that's just the view of one short guy with no hair here in the Okanagan and worth only what it cost you sir. Good luck with the move if it happens, have a great summer and again Happy Canada Day.
Dwayne
