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"
