Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Help Me Pick a Moose Rifle and Scope

What is the best combination for moose to 500 yards?

There you go 'Stick wade (pun intended) in on this one.......I want to hear 'Sticks #1. Laffin'

wow,its gonna take a rather large and faily quick round to do a moose at 500 yards .your gonna need 1200 pounds of energy at that range minimum. that will transfer to at least a 165 gr pill form a 7mag or a 30 caliber with 180s. but u better have your ballistics ,aka drop

Up to 500? To me I would start with faster rounds like the 264 Win mag and go up from there. Around here "moose gun" is synonymous with a 300 magnum of some sort fwiw.

Depends on what you already have. If you have a 30-06 on up, just use that. I doubt that you will actually shoot at any moose at 500 yards anyway. If you really ever get to do this, I would recommend a 9.3x62 or .375 and a very good range finder.

Interesting how people recommend .300 Magnums etc. for moose. Moose weigh more than Cape buffalo and, in Africa, they think a .375 is marginal for buff. Perhaps buff are over-rated.

Moose are not that tough, not like a Cape Buffalo. They also don't typically try to grind you into the dirt either. I would politely suggest a 9.3x62 is far from ideal for long shots (+300 yards) on moose.

I have only shot one moose past 300 yards, most are shot at ~150 yards or closer.
I tend to lean toward large diameter heavy bullets at manageable velocities as these seem to anchor the animal better than the zippy 30's and there ilk. A wandering moose can cause a lot of work.

338-06 with 225 Nosler A/B 2700 MV

It'll work just fine.

How about a 33?

I have only shot 4 moose and my wife a couple more.. So our experience is not vast.. Killed two with my old .300 WM, one with the 7mm Wea. mag. and one with my 375 H & H..
My wife took two: one with an '06 and her last with a 7mm Rem. magnum.. All worked fine.. Hit my last in the neck with the 375, of course it fell on the spot.. My wife's last was shot with a 140 g. BTBT. Hit about 1/3 of the way up behind the shoulder, it took one step and fell. The one with the 06 ran the greatest distance.. If I were going tomorrow, I would take my .300 first and the 7mm second.

I am sure someone with more experience than myself can reply to this but I bet there is a good reason why they call the Cape Buffalo, Black Death.

I killed more moose while looking through a fixed 4X scope than anything else by a wide margin, though 2.5X and 6X have always served just as well. The 30-06 has never been too much, but always easily plenty - more than anything else I've used, both smaller and larger.

500 yds is several hundred yards too far to pack one.

I know a 25-06 will kill a moose stone dead but for best the .308 would be my starting point and a 338 win mag or 375 H&H are never a bad choice. I like simple so fixed 6X.

My brother and my neighbor (and good friend) are much more experienced at killing moose than I and they both use the same rig for moose (and everything else): BLR in .308 w/1-4 Leupold and whatever ammo was on sale at Walmart when they were stocking up for the year. And yes, they've killed them close on to 500 yards if not quite that far.

I think that a SS,synthetic stocked,.338 Win.Mag,with a scope somewhere around 2.5-8 or 3.5-10(I'm a Leupold fan). Quality bullets(my wife uses 225 Barnes TTSX's),give it a 300 yrd. zero and your easily good to 400 yrds. still holding on hair.Beyond 400 and a rangefinder would be handy! memtb

Up here in moose country, 308s and 270s work very neatly. As will anything larger. They're not armor plated.

Would a 35 Whelen be appropriate in this situation? I'm by no means qualified for an opinion, but that doesn't mean I can't ask the question.

I would not feel that a .35 Whelen would be bad choice but 500 yards is an awfully long shot. Having used both on elk, my choice would be .338 Winchester Magnum over the Whelen. With either I would try to get a shooting opportunity in the 200-300 yard range.

1200 FPE? Explain how energy is relavent to the wound channel. I killed and seen moose killed with revolvers that had much less than 1200 pounds of energy. A guy killed a charging moose in Alaska with one shot from a 9mm. Claiming a certain amount of energy needed is an exercise in futility.

Yes. That is what I use.