Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Dimensions of Moose Body?

Save you some time......... No, a moose will not fit into the back of a mini-van. Tell her you have to buy the full size pick-up truck.

There is a truck larger than the F350,4 door, 4x4 powerstroke she bought me a few years ago??

Try the ADF&G website. They have lots of interesting information about Alaska's fish and wildlife.

In 08's ford now has a super duty 450!!! Better trade in!

Perhaps I am missing the joke but, a mature AK/Yukon bull is just about 36" wide across the rear end, about 7'tall, to the shoulder hump, (I shipped a front and hind quarter and a bag of loins from a 60" Iliamna area bull, the weight was 395#s). As the dead animal's chest on the ground will be a bit compressed, I would guess the width on a live animal, would be more or less the same 36" or so. From the rear, if the bull has a foot more antler, visible on either side of the rump, it is a 60" or so Moose. From the front, a similar mature AK/Yukon bull is about 10" between the eyes, another way to guess the antlers/chest width. Bill

Am

If you're shooting at a moose far enough away that you need to be able to make that much adjustment, you might want to consider getting closer.

Just a thought...

'get a tag.(?) In AK tags over the counter, just about everywhere there are huntable numbers of moose, due to mainly spike/fork/50" rules. Wolves and especially bears take an unbelievable number of moose, so in some areas it is getting hard to find good moose close in. Bill

S

The 50" gets a lot of people in trouble every year. I shoot most bulls under 75 yards. I go by brow tines as moose vary in horn heigth (which look wider than they are) and body size.
You can tell the ones closer to 60" are big but try to judge a
48" to 52" when you are risking all. F&G will take everthing from you if you are wrong,

Too true! Brow tines are the best certainty, but they can get you in trouble also - especially on a hasty assessment. Doubly so if one is not well versed in "brow tine". Add to this the enormous variety in antler configuration.

ADF&G's unctious "if you aren't certain, don't shoot" is of small comfort for those who were certain they were certain and correct, but weren't. Been there, done that. Fortunately in the first 2 years of the new system, when they cut everyone some learning slack.

For antler spread, there are several ways of making a close guess, but kk is right - it's that 48 to 52 range that will kill you, if 3 (or 4 in some areas) brow tines (study up on what is a legal brow tine) are not present. Especially on those dang basket antlered bulls- they can have huge antlers, but may just not reach the minimum width.

I have adopted ear length as one of my measuring standards for width on mature bulls. I've measured the ears of several such bulls I have killed, and all of them came out right at 11 inches long, from tip to skin. If you can guess, or better yet, catch the bull looking at you with an ear laid out horizontally, and there is an honest (no cheating now, allow for any off-angle or other discrepancy) ear-length of antler beyond the tip of his ear, he will go about 52 inches - that gives you a little bit of buffer. If it ain't there, nor the brow tine, don't take the shot.

I formulated this method several years ago, used it for the first time this year on my double-tine-set bull. When he raised his head and dropped that ear, it looked like an honest ear length. Insurance check on his left brow tine seemed to show 3, making him double legal. He turned to run and I busted him before I could check his right side. His main set of tines only went about 44 inches, but those big outside tines sweeping up on the outside, from the bottom of the palms, gave him extra width. In fact, I didn't realize he had two sets of tines until he was on the ground - I was just going by observable outside tine length in relation to the ear.

Turned out he wasn't brow-tine legal on either side, either, but either side was a fool-ya at the angle. On his left side, he had 3 "functional" brow tines (according to Cris Hundertmark, who ran the Moose Research Center until his retirement from ADF&G, and is now a prof at UAF), but was not technically brow-tine legal . He had an anomaly single spike inside the real two point brow tine, on the same plane and correct angle, but there was no common base.

On the right he had one legal brow tine on the upper palm set, and two on the lower - or was it the other way around? They had an arguable common base, too - but were not on the same plane, though both sets were on a different plane than the tine-set they went with.

He did go 52 and an eighth, however.

Elapsed time from seeing him to him hitting the ground was about 6 seconds - maybe less. I have confidence in the ear system, under the appropriate circumstances, obviously.

Uncas. Sounds like you spend most of your time looking at the wrong end of them swamp donkeys!

AK moose are good sized animals for sure but I have yet to see one that had three feet spanning the rear end. I would be real careful about using that size estimate as a guide as you will only overestimate an animal's size which could easily be trouble.

I am surely no expert on judging antler size but like the ears as a "self-contained" method. If time allows - and one must err that direction when in doubt - using a rangefinder and scope reticle dimensions could prove more useful than many other things.

My explanation was perhaps a bit confusing as to the brow tine configuration, common bases, etc.. In your imagination, put this bull at 70 yards through 6X scope power, quartering left, with his head thrown high, and try to imagine determining brow tine legality. In 3 seconds or less.

The ideal, of course, is to have plenty of time on an unaware animal to evaluate him in several ways, several times each.

las,
I kind of think you'd have had a decent case in court if he had been smaller than 50" and you'd gotten tagged. I don't know exactly what law states in regard to brow tines but I'm sure they were written for typical moose - which that one surely isn't. Cool animal.

To determine "brow tine" legality, the following should be true. Brow-tines have a common base, and are on a different plane than the main palm. They are separated from the main palm by "a wide bay". They should point forward or inward at the tip, rather than strongly outward/upward.

A legal "point" is longer than it is wide, and must be at least 3/4 inch wide at the base. (Just where the "base" is, is subject to some interpretation).

The first year of the new brow-tine/50 regs, I shot a 37 inch bull (which I called very closely on width) as a brow tine legal bull, at 40 yards. The "Oh, Chit" moment came at about 2 yards when I saw the crease in the brow-tine base. He had a tine out of place, tight up against the brow tine base, THEN a wide bay. The tine was nearly on the same plane as the brow tines (closer than the main palm, anyway).

While I couldn't have seen the crease when I shot, I did see that the last 1.5 inches or so of tine hooked out rather strongly. At the time I did not know this was indicative of a "not a brow tine". The Protection Officer educated me.

Several things saved my butt from a citation, and let me keep the meat (the antlers were confiscated and used in a joint ADF&G/ USF&W -it was taken in a Refuge) educational display, which, several years later, was stolen by some low-life SOB. All half dozen sets of antlers, legal and not.

First, it was the first "educational" year of the antler-restriction program. People were cut considerable slack for mistakes.

2nd, I took the critter through the game-check station at noon - obviously I wasn't trying to get away with anything. (They closed midnight to 7:00).

Third, there was only one officer on duty that Sunday - and he had two stations to cover, about 40 miles apart. He didn't have time to deal with meat - though he asked me if there would be a problem if they came after the meat the next day. I told him "Nope, but I start processing the day after. Then there's a problem!" He laughed. It probably didn't hurt that his wife was head park ranger, said park headquarters being next door to my house. It's the little things that count!

Fourth, he told me he had seen two others nearly identical come through the other check station that morning.

I think so too. All the way. Which is why he is in my "cull corner". I was already going to shoot him based on width before I checked the brows anyway. The point I'm trying to make is that while brow tines are a safer bet than guessing at something around the 50 inch mark, they too can be a tricky sumbitch.

I doubt I would have even been cited - we've got pretty decent LEO's down here, most of whom I know. One way or another.

The other moose in my cull corner is there cuz he's pretty, but several down from the biggest I've killed. Very symetrical, 45 inches, with 3X3 palmated brow tines, and an "almost a point" on one side. Besides, he fit above the piano. I'll have to dig out the disc with his picture...


Check out this caribou rack. He has no shovels, or shovel tines, but he does have some wicked bezes, half of which are making believe they are shovels. At least, that's what Art told me.. Seems to me, based on base position, they could be double shovels with bez pretentions.

And you make that point well. We are among a fortunate few who, as residents of the area, don't have to count or measure - (non-res hunters do.) The really crazy thing is that the fall portion of the hunt requires one to kill any bull - antlers or not, while the January portion, when some bulls will have already shed, requires that a bull be an antlered one to be legal!???

As for the antler characteristics requirements; I kind of think, based on the moose I've killed over the years and where, that some bloodlines tend toward more brow tines while others don't - regardless the age. Some areas seem to produce antlers with really massive main beams regardless the antler mass beyond. Some areas produce huge antlers which go tall rather than wide and, if they lack brow tines, are therefore not legal by BT and width regs.