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las Offline
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Originally Posted by troutfly
Originally Posted by Cariboo
Originally Posted by kkahmann
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.


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.


The only true cost of having a dog is its death.

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Originally Posted by las
Originally Posted by troutfly
Originally Posted by Cariboo
Originally Posted by kkahmann
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.


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?

wink


Mark Begich, Joaquin Jackson, and Heller resistance... Three huge reasons to worry about the NRA.
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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.

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Vek Offline
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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!

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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"

IC B2

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las Offline
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Originally Posted by Sitka deer
Originally Posted by las
Originally Posted by troutfly
Originally Posted by Cariboo
Originally Posted by kkahmann
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.


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?

wink


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..... smile


The only true cost of having a dog is its death.

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