Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Cartridge for Alaska Moose Hunt

I don’t have the volume of experience of many on here who have commented above, and I accept the wisdom of all of your experiences. Another point I would make is that there are, by one measure, two different types of Alaskan moose hunting (among others): (1) a fairly-routine moose hunt by an Alaskan resident in a relatively convenient place that can be repeated from year to year and even multiple times within the year; and, at the other extreme, (2) an expensive and rare moose hunt opportunity by a nonresident who must sacrifice a lot of resources to make it happen.

I fell into the latter category a few years ago and was extremely fortunate to have a successful hunt. A few years before that, I was fortunate to have a successful bear hunt. I haven’t yet gone back a third time though I want to, in part, because I have shifted the resources I might have used to make that happen to purchasing some hunting land in Colorado.

In my last AK hunt, I went big, and brought a .340 Wby that I shoot really well, loaded with 225gr TTSX bullets with a 3,160 fps MV.

The second 11-day hunt was limited because of some really foul weather. Before the bad weather (and I mean ridiculously bad), we saw a couple of shootable bears, but couldn’t get within range; saw some other non-shootable moose and bears; and saw a bunch of caribou that I could not hunt in that area as a nonresident. After the bad weather lifted, we had to begin rafting our way down river to get to the pick-up place. I was still hunting from the raft, but the best opportunities already had passed, and I was comfortable justifying the trip and expense as a pleasant and challenging experience. It was the last day of moose season when we began our trip down river. At roughly 3:30pm that day, a giant moose presented himself about 80 yards away or so in a clearing covering about a half-acre or so, and he was running like mad for some nearby cover. I had less than a second to think about anything, but in a fraction of that second, I felt like I could hit the vitals in the front half of the torso of that large, fast-moving creature. I did so three times in a few seconds. With each shot, the moose slowed down a bit more and allowed me to put the two follow-up shots with increasingly-selective placement. After the third shot, he ran through some brush away from me and all but disappeared, except that I could see the tops of his antlers about 25 yards away from where he was shot, and they were wavering and then dropping out of view.

The first two shots hit in the center ribs, and I am pretty sure it was the third one that hit the near shoulder, went through the far shoulder, and stopped under the hide on the far side. The first two shots exited.





All three entrance wound areas are visible here; all three shots hit a little further back than I intended, likely because I didn't lead as much as I should have give the speed at which the moose was running from left to right:



It took a lot to put that guy down. I don’t know how far he would have gone if I had hit him only with the first shot, but decided then in a millisecond that I wasn’t going to find out. I also don’t know if I had hit him in the same places with something else, what would have happened. But, if I had, for example, a .243 Win, I doubt that I would have felt ethical in taking that first shot at a large running moose, where I couldn’t precisely place my bullet within the front part of that moose body. Would the moose have slowed down as much after the first and second shots to allow me to place each subsequent shot with increasing precision if shot with a .243? With .270? My son successfully took a deer last fall with his .243. I took one the next day with my .308. Both worked, but there was a big difference in the wound channels. There are many cartridges in between a .243 and a .340 with which I would feel comfortable taking that first shot at the moose of a lifetime (at least for me), but I’m not sure where I would draw that line. As a person who doesn’t get to hunt moose regularly, I am glad that, when the monster appeared, I was possibly over-gunned, rather than under-gunned. I’m glad that I now am curious about what some lesser calibers may or may not have done to that moose, rather than possibly fretting for years about whether I could have successfully anchored a lost moose if I had brought something bigger.

I shoot that .340 well at the range (usually well under an inch), especially with a shoulder pad when shooting a decent volume. With the pad, my shoulder never bruises even in the slightest even when I shoot 30-40 rounds in a session. Any non-bruising recoil just doesn’t bother me. I carry a lighter rifle when back-pack hunting. But, I’m in good shape and don’t have any trouble carrying that .340 when carrying only a daypack or the equivalent.

If I was an AK resident and could regularly and routinely hunt bear, moose, caribou, sheep, etc … there, I probably would never have bought and spent so much time practicing with the .340. YMMV.

I know that I am going to catch some flak from some for suggesting that anything more powerful than a .270 ever could be advantageous for hunting an animal that weighs up to 1,800 lbs. But, I think it conceivably could be true for a nonresident who won’t get to hunt moose 15 or more days a year every year a short distance from home.