wwb":3pnawfc4 said:
sargents1":3pnawfc4 said:
......but then I shot a moose the lungs at less than 40yds with an '06 that we followed for miles and never recovered.......
?????
My one and only moose, taken on an Alaska trip a few years ago, was shot at about 80 yards with a .30-06 200 grain soft nose through the boiler works, and was DRT (dead right there).
Any animal hit in the lungs, even with a non-expanding bullet, is not going to go for miles.... a few hundred yards at best, and usually a whole lot less. A lung shot animal is a dead animal.... ain't no question. If your moose went for "miles", it was hit low in the brisket, or high in the back... as the old cowboys used to say, "It's only a flesh wound."
WWB,
Yup, it surprised me quite a bit too. Partly its my fault, as is often the case with BS situations like this. I fired the first shot, and the moose slumped down a bit and moved behind some brush. So I walked closer to try to get a better angle to get another shot. In doing so I walked partly into my dad's line of sight and as a result he didnt want to shoot. the moose continued to walk away and so me, being young and inexperienced and extra-stupid, I followed it for a good ways out thru the cutting. Looking back at I cant really think of too many things dumber than chasing a Wounded Bull Moose thru the North Maine woods, but that is what I did. This got his blood up (adrenaline) and he took off like a freight train, never to be seen again.
As far as it being only a flesh wound...Maybe but I doubt it. We found a blood trail and we found bloody snot hanging off trees at about head high. This leads me think that he was hit in the lungs. I have no doubt that that moose expired shortly after we lost him but he went far enough that after hours of searching that afternoon and then several hours the next day we still had not found him. We did a lot of walking thinking "if I just go another 100yds I am going to find this moose... just over that next hill and he will be there laying in a heap..." and so on. As i said, we did a lot of looking for that moose.
I don't want people to take it that I dont think you can sucessfully hunt moose and other large critters with a 30-06, because you certainly can. My dad has leveled a moose before with a single shot out of a 308. Dropped him in his tracks, literally. I am just saying that based on my experiences, 30 caliber is a bit light for moose and I would prefer something bigger in diameter with heavy expanding bullets. Of course nothing replaces good shooting and experienced hunting. I say this for the same reason that I would prefer a .308 to a .223 for deer.
If I had not immediately followed that moose that i lost, it would have gone maybe a few hundred yards and then looked back and seen us Not following. At which point he would have stopped to catch his breath and while he was standing there he would have bled out. This is why patience is so important when hunting.
Anyway....enough of my mistakes and life lessons...
Trey made the point that with '06 loads in the 180-220gr end of the spectrum an '06 is significantly different than a .270. I would agree with that. Respectfully, I would point out that the most common/available factory loads for a 30-06 and .270 are 150gr and 130gr respectively. These two loads are going to perform, for most practical purposes, identically.
To put it in perspective I looked up three heavier loads from Winchester's website.
They list the following Power-Point loads:
.270 win 150gr, 30-06 180 gr, .338WIN 200gr
The specs for these loads were as follows:
2800fps/2705ft-lbs, 2700fps/2900ft-lbs and 2960fps/3890ft-lbs all at the muzzle respectively. Based on that I would say that the .270 and 30-06 are going to be pretty much the same and the .338win is a lot more (~1000ft-lbs more).
if you had your choice, which would you use to take down a 700lb+ animal?