Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Alaskan Big Game Rifle?

I'm with ya Randy almost all the time. If I have a rifle, I don't often have a handgun on me. Wife almost never carries a rifle but has 16 rounds of 10mm handy on a chest holster at all times.

Works for us.

Now when fishing, I tend to carry a large handgun instead of a long gun.

Hard to believe that this thread has gone so long. To the OP, just buy an "Alaskan" (.338WM) and learn to shoot it. Otherwise a .416 and learn to shoot it like this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7goTNi9yJQ

Uhhhh... my Airweight does not have CT grips because you are not allowed to shoot grouse or other game with them...

Wow, I've never shot a grouse with one, only shotguns, but I see folks shoot em with 22 rifles all the time while we are moose hunting. Guess I'll have to read the regs, I'd have been guilty at some point having not read this post.

Any aiming device that projects a dot is illegal for hunting. 22lr is just fine. Seems there may have been some confusion?

What a great catch.!!!

Wow is right!!

My bad, sry for the confusion. Mine has off/on switch on bottom Potting grouse with iron sights it works fine, but squirrels up a tree around our cabin turns it into a lot more useful tool for that application. Course after cutting all the big spruce down around our cabin they’re not as much of a problem as they were. Even though it’s more expensive I’ve pretty well gone blueboard for insulating needs around our cabins. Fiberglass + squirrels is bad juju ime

10-4. got it. Same stupid rule TX had in effect for a while until they realized what they had done....

Hey, in Ken’s defense, and with some embarrassment in my admission, I’ve had to “track” a couple of moose that were lung-shot and were a bit difficult to find. Not because they went anywhere after being shot however. (Maybe I need to do a better job of spotting their location before I knock ‘em over, huh? 😏)

The poor guy shot that .416 almost handheld like a shotgun with pistol grip

A lot of guys think they are aiming for a high lung shot and manage to hit the top spinal processes , that often drops the moose immediately but when they do get up they don't hang around and will cover a lot of territory quickly !

I sure wish folks that shoot ANY animal would do the research, to see where vitals are compared to bones, blood paths, organs, hide/hair etc....

Vitals are NOT situated fairly IMHO. If that makes sense. IE to high forward not good, so lets stay lower, but not to far back if thats the case. Almost to the point of being an oval flopped in at an angle...

I have never had a use for high shoulder shots personally. but thats just me. I tend to center vitals, or go big CNS hits. IE the brain. When I"m forced to think break bones along the way I have to rethink where I'm aiming too.

To their credit (and ease of demise), moose are pretty darned easy to poke properly (except when one intentionally takes dumb shots on them - as Phil noted). And mostly they just stand around if you 'did' them well enough. I've only lost my place a few times when they tipped over so quick that I figured wrong. There's nothing like "embarrassing elation" at wandering around in the thick stuff only to find a big dark behemoth lying right where he stood or ambled when the gun recoiled. Seems a bit odd to have to track an animal that size in the last tracks he made before the shot.

And tracks are very difficult to find sometimes in the thick moss. In the areas I hunt on the Elliott Highway, after the shot I have to stay put memorizing the spot where the moose stood, and from there direct my hunting friends to the spot. It's amazing how a downed moose can blend with the low growth from mid to the end of September. If you shoot it in an open area, then there is no trouble see in it. I have been lucky to kill my moose early in the day, except for one. These hunting areas are on a ridge overlooking Old Minto, so there is still plenty of daylight to perhaps 9:30PM just before mid September. This evening I shot a moose around 9:00, in it took one of my friends about 45 minutes to find it, but we were very lucky because by then it was getting dark. On my directions he rode his ATV upon the train about 300 yards, parked the machine, walked about 30 yards into the birch thicket (away from the trail), and then walked in my direction as he listened to my voice (we could not see each other). The funny thing is that we could have used flashlights to show out positions, but both of us forgot about them in the backpacks. Anyway, we never leave a moose out there though the night, so we worked on it until hauling the meat to the campsite about 4:00AM. But this area has been getting crowded lately, and even some hunters from Anchorage come up to it. I have been enjoying more time at the campsite for the past two years

Actually I think more folks should memorize the last location and the location of the shot before moving. It sure can make life easier.

I've said it before that we've used rangefinders even.... and they sure can help too

I can't imagine not doing that. That said, trying to memorize what it will look like from 90, 150, or 180 degrees which is often the approach angle is often confounding. ("He was standing in the only grassy patch in that willow thicket" ...until you get down there and discover grassy patches among the multitude of willow thickets. ) Looking back for a good visual on what the position the shot was taken from can be real handy too.

There's nothing like walking into the grass patch, seeing it is much bigger than it looked, and finding that the grass is 2-3 feet taller than it looked and covering knee deep tussocks to make one second guess whether a moose with both shoulder broken might actually get up and wander off.

Indeed. It's amazing how the view changes from different perspectives. Likewise as the sun and shadows move. That's especially true in the woods and thickets. Also noteworthy is how many seemingly very unique trees have multiple twins running around. Always good to check your back trail as you make your way in.

Could not have said it better. It's so easy to go in to lose the way back. I remember one time that I manage to ride my ATV into the area where the moose should have been, then walked around looking for it and found it. But I was lucky that a friend of mine was with me (he has a lot of experience tracking moose), who pointed to me the direction I should take to find the 4-wheeler. Nowadays I mark the trail in with surveyors tape

Just carry a compass and do a reverse bearing whenever you are going into unfamiliar country