Moose with .30-30

[Mack in N.C.]

Did any of you see the moose shot on the hunting show with the 30-30?......he went down fast!......he was using buffole bore ammo, i am assuming the 190 grain cast bullets but man that moose hit the dirt!....Thats a dream of mine to hunt moose with my 30-30 but honestly problay will never have the money to do it...Mack

[JWP58]

I'd love to do it just to prove people wrong. Same goes for Elk. Watched Bob Foulkrod take a caribou with a 30-30 the other day on a tv show.
 
http://www.buffalobore.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=222
 
They arent cast, but look like they'd work.
 
 

[akpls]

A moose is not particularly hard to kill.  We have taken them with 7x57 and 7-08.  We also routinely hunt caribou with the .257 Roberts and 25-06.  Keep the range reasonable, pick a good shot and they will do the job.

[Flynmoose]

I guess it all boils down to shot placement. I did love watching the guy bust that moose with a 30-30 and IRON sights. So many of those  people on hunting shows shoot from such a distance it could hardly be called hunting.
FM

[BBF]

Mack:
 I don't know what your budget is, I just heard that a moose hunt can be gotten with a good chance of success in Newfoundland for $3200. Add transport, you don't have to fly, there is a ferry. Apparently you can get up to 3 tags.

[SHOOTALL]

I guess it all boils down to shot placement. I did love watching the guy bust that moose with a 30-30 and IRON sights. So many of those  people on hunting shows shoot from such a distance it could hardly be called hunting.
FM

That said , at some point in that long range shooting the bullet from even a 300 Weatherby mag is only going as fast as the 30-30 at 100 yards . So in reality the 30-30 hunter or the 300 WM sniper are equal at some point 

[Dand]

I shot my first moose - a small one- with a 30-30, M94 win iron sights at over 100 yds with some home loads a neighbor gave me.  I held high and luckily happened to hit the backbone right behind the hump.  Fastest dropping moose I've taken.  But looking back I'd have to say I was really lucky. I've shot 4 more, all small, with a 300 win mag at 35-125 yds.  Moose aren't hard to kill most of the time, but now and then I hear of one that takes several solid hits and still manages to wade into some nasty muck hole before dying.  I'd shoot a moose again w 30-30 if I had to but I'd much rather have more power, to hopefully stop them from going far.  Also once the moose is down, I like to have plenty of power in case I have to argue with our brown bears. A friend once had 5 bears hanging around his camp all night. He didn't get any sleep but managed to keep his meat.

[Swampman]

The Cree Indians hunt moose with the .30-30.

"Gun lovers have their own guns and it is not well to argue with them. For many years I carried restocked Springfields, Mausers and others. Now I carry a 30-30 Winchester carbine with sling. The much improved cartridge in this weapon will stop a moose or a bear without trouble. The gun is small, light, has good balance for carrying, and is convenient. For safety the sling is looped around a thwart in a canoe and around a cross bar or a lash rope on a dog sled.
 
For small game a single-shot 22-caliber pistol with a 6 or 8 inch barrel will work out. But a better gun all around, if it can be carried, is the over-and-under type with a top barrel shooting a 22-caliber cartridge, the bottom a .410, 3 inch shot shell. In some parts of the North, ducks are very plentiful, and the .410 shot shell is this gauge is not too heavy to carry. The pattern, however, is somewhat small but it is a worthwhile compromise in weight of shells
 
 On Hunting for Food: Guns and ballistics have fascinated me since boyhood, and I hope this elemental pleasure will endure, for it has offered me a great deal of pleasure as well as kinship with others that only ballistics and a cozy campfire could possibly create. Such cartridges as the .270 Winchester, .300 H&H magnum, .30/06, and even some for the big-bore British favorites are as interesting to me as though magic were contained in these combinations of figures....
 
What has been the result? I have reached up to the gun rack and taken down the .30/30 carbine by some process of natural selection, not condoned perhaps by many experts but easily explained by those who spend long periods in the wilderness areas. The .30/30 Winchester carbine is light, short, easily worked through dense forest areas and, when carried over arduous trails, lends itself well to canoe, pack-horse, and dog-team travel. Also it is vested with the crowning glory-the open hammer and the lever action, which symbolize the outdoors as do the pattern of a snowshoe or a canoe."~Calvin Rutstrum~

[KP]

Mack,
 
Here's the link to a few posts from a caribou hunt in Alaska. My son and I both shot some really big caribou with a 30-30. I've killed 3 or 4 moose with a bow, never a firearm. Moose aren't hard at all to kill, they're just tough to put down quickly. If you don't break big bones, they have a tendency to go to water.
 
I have confidence in the 30-30 though. It will kill a moose.
 
http://www.gboreloaded.com/forums/index.php/topic,180208.msg1099055304.html#msg1099055304
 
KP

[BBF]

Same with any other cartridge, bullet placement is the key.

[mannyrock]

 
  When I was in college, one of my wilder friends ran off to Canada and stayed there a year, allowing his visitor's visa to expire.
 
  He was extremely strong, having been a roustabout on an oil rig before college, and appararently got odd jobs for cash without problem.
 
  When he got back, he told me that he was up at a logging mill on a river way up north, standing outside a trading post.  Someone spotted a moose swimming across the river.   At seeing this, an ancient Indian woman ran into her hut, pulled out a .30-30 Winchester,  jumped in a canoe and went after it.  She got up really close, and just as it was getting out of the water on the other side, when it was ankle deep in water, she shot it, twice.  It never made the bank.  The men then helped her drag it out of the river with a rope, so she could clean and butcher it by herself.
 
   To her, it was just another day in the neighborhood.
 
Mannyrock
 
 
 
 

[Dee]

Back in the old days of the early 1970s, I worked with three guys at IBM, Sherman, Tex. The three had bribed their wives into a hunt in Canada for moose, bear, and one other species, but I don't remember what. They talked about it every day at lunch for months, and about the rifles NEEDED for such a hunt. One used a 300 Win.Mag., one a 458 Win.Mag., and the and the other guy used a custom 30-06. All three had custom ammo loaded by someone in Dallas, Tx. cause by golly they were goin to CANADA! And big guns were needed in CANADA.
Well the big trip came in finally, and this is what they said happened on the trip. They flew up to Canada, then got on a small plane and flew to a camp, and then got on horses, and followed an old guide (wearing an equally old hat), with packers to a base camp.
They were sitting around the fire the first night "ruffin it" leaned up against their saddles and talkin, when the issue of gun CONVENIENTLY calibers came up. Everyone gave their analogy of what, and why, they brought what they brought and one of them asked the old guide what he used. He reached behind him, and pulled out an old, and very used, Model 94 Winchester in 3030. It had been carried in a saddle scabbard for so long, a 1" strap had almost worn thru a place on the forearm. The stock had been broken at the tang, and was wrapped in wire, and then wet rawhide.
Toward the end of the trip, a couple of tags weren't filled, and they asked the old man if he could fill them for them. He agreed, and when he was offered any one of their rifles he just said: No, I'll use mine. It's worked for 50 years, and it'll work this time. And it did. He was offered a new rifle as a tip, and he said if it was alright with them, he'd just take the money, as he already had a rifle.
Gun rag writers have sold a lot of magazines, a lot guns, and a lot of bull over the years. I guess havin a degree in journalism, or BS, doesn't really make you an expert on guns. Just on sellin'em.

[Savage .250]

As noted ,the 30-30 will get the job done but it sure wouldn`t be my first cal choice J s/n.

[yellowtail3]

If invited on a moose hunt, it would be between my 336 (in 30-30) and the Mosin M91/30. The Mosin has a LOT more power, but I'm more precise with the Marlin, and it's got enough power.


I'd bring the Marlin.

[Sourdough]

A 30-30 will kill a Moose with no problem, the locals have been using a 30-30 for a hundred years.   KP and his son really did a number on those Caribou, and those were big animals.

That said, I won't carry one Moose hunting.  It's those Brown guys with the Grizzled coats that I think about.  They hang out in the same area as Moose.  It takes something that will smash bones to stop one of those guys.  A 30-30 just is not up to the challenge.  You don't carry a gun for the game you are hunting, you carry a gun for what might be hunting you. 

[Dand]

A friend's son shot his first moose in mid December with a 30-30.  The kid is in 7th or 8th grade and quite small ( 95 lbs) but he whacked this moose  in the head at about 80 yards.  It surprised his dad - that wasn't where his dad had told him to shoot it.  But the boy has been practicing a lot all fall and did quite well.  Even loads his own ammo.





More details:


Temp  -30F
Winchester (pre-64)  94 30-30
T's handloads (170 gr. RPSP)
Distance 80 yards or so
Shot placement Head

[yellowtail3]

A friend's son shot his first moose in mid December with a 30-30...

Temp  -30F
Winchester (pre-64)  94 30-30
T's handloads (170 gr. RPSP)
Distance 80 yards or so
Shot placement Head

Sweet! But tell the kid to go for heart/lungs next time...

[Blackhawker]

I think that a lot of people underestimate what old calibers/rifles can do and they feel the need to buy these dinosaur killers to hunt deer etc.  When you think of it, what did people have available to them 100 to 120 years ago?  30-30, 38-55, 45-70 and a few others.  Back then, people actually relied on hunting as a means of putting food on the table too!  They also relied upon these rifles and calibers to defend their lives as well. 
I would have no doubt that a 30-30 can do the job on most anything that walks here on this continent with the exception of maybe a griz or polar bear or maybe a walrus. 

[Dand]

Yellowtail - yep his dad DID tell him to hit the boiler room.  But dad admitted to me that he does head shots sometimes so son followed more the actions than the instructions.  Dad in this case is a darned good shot - but knows better.


I just cringe when people advocate the head shot. I think we lose a number of animals every year around here from guys trying head shots. Bad idea for most hunters.

[T.R.]

I also got a thrill watching the youtube video of the huge bull felled by a single 30-30 bullet.  Wow!
 
TR
 
 

[Sourdough]

This little experience just goes to prove almost any caliber and bullet weight can do the job.

Three of four years ago an old miner friend of mine needed some help taking equipment back 30 miles to the mine from the highway.  I agreed to go along and drive a Nodwell.  I took my trusty old 30-06, but it being winter and not having to worry about Bears, I only took some 125gr Speer TNTs.  I thought I might see some Coyotes, Lynx, or maybe a Wolf.  As we were preparing to leave the highway the old man came up and handed me a proxy.  He asked me to shoot a Moose on the way in, he was out of meat at the mine.  Oh man, I hoped we did not see any Moose on the way in, I did not have the right loads for Moose.  Luckily we saw no Moose on the way in.  I did get a nice Lynx. 

Next morning as I walked from the bunk house to the kitchen I saw a Moose browsing above the road up to the excavation site, up on a ridge of taillings.  I slowly walked up that way.  I worked my way up on the ridge of mine tailings the Moose was on.  At 80 yards I sat down and got a good steady rest on a willow limb.  I aimed for the spot right behind the right ear.  I took the shot and the Moose dropped like a ton of bricks.  It rolled down the bank and onto the road.  I walked back to the kitchen where everyone had come out to see what the shooting was about.  I looked at the miners two sons and said.  "I shot it, you clean it".

[Swampman]

Head shots are a bad idea.

[Dee]

Head shots are like opinions on head shots. Sometimes their right, and sometimes not.

[Swampman]

I'm always right....like it or not....

[Dee]

LOL!

[hillbill]

head shots always work when you hit where yu aim. it is people who cant hit where they aim that give them a bad name. im all about the heart/lung shot on big game.but when you have a animal standing quietly at close range,you know your gun and how it shoots,why not? now mind yu i always take them off a dead rest on a animal that doesnt even know im there.

[Dee]

Head shots have their place hillbill. I occasionally have taken them, and have never had a bad experience. Most of the time, it's heart-lungs, but as the situation dictates a head shot is a viable shot.

[T.R.]

This not a moose but my 30-30 Winchester did the job nicely.  Distance was approx 80 yards or so.
 
TR
 

 

[Dee]

T.R. you shouldn't have shot that with a 3030. The 3030 ain't got enough power. Haven't you read the magazines?

[Swampman]

Good thing they hold 7 rounds.