With so many great options, finding the best moose cartridge to meet your specific hunting needs isn’t always easy. Fortunately, you have Ammo.com, which is always here to help make things simple..
This article looks at some of the most popular moose hunting calibers and cartridges available (plus a few wild cards). We’ll dive into the advantages and disadvantages of each to help you narrow your choices down and find the cartridge that suits you best.
Choosing the Best Cartridge for Moose Hunting
Because moose are the heaviest-bodied members of the Cervidae family, many inexperienced moose hunters believe they need a big bore cartridge. Although they are definitely large, moose aren’t inordinately tough. The rifle/cartridge combo you use for whitetail deer hunting will probably suffice in most situations.
Here are the characteristics we looked for when choosing the best moose hunting calibers and cartridges:
- Power to stop a moose – or grizzly bear, if needed
- Damages as little meat as possible
- Availability
- Manageable recoil
It can’t be a good moose hunting cartridge if it doesn’t have the power to ethically harvest your quarry of choice or protect you against a grizzly bear. A little more power also extends the range over which you can ethically harvest a moose.
On the other hand, the ideal cartridge can’t be so powerful that it damages a lot of meat. As ethical hunters, we want to waste as little of the animal as possible (noting that a well-placed shot also helps limit damage to meat).
The cartridge should also be readily available. It does us no good if we can purchase it to hunt with.
Lastly, we’ll consider recoil. It contributes to comfort and accuracy, and determines how accessible a cartridge is to young and/or inexperienced hunters.
Here are a few of our favorite options for bringing down Bullwinkle.
| Cartridge | Recommended Ammo |
|---|---|
| .270 Winchester | Hornady Superformance 140 grain SST |
| .30-06 Springfield | Winchester Copper Impact 180 grain Copper Extreme Point |
| .308 Winchester | Remington Core-Lokt Tipped 150 grain Polymer Tip |
| 6.5 Creedmoor | Black Hills Ammunition 143 grain ELD-X |
| .300 Winchester Magnum | Federal 200 grain Terminal Ascent |
.30-06 Springfield
Today’s .30-06 cartridges achieve muzzle velocity around 200 feet per second (fps) higher than what our grandfathers were accustomed to. Its extra velocity gives the modern .30-06 a ballistic edge and a bit more striking energy, which are both nice advantages to have while hunting hulking bulls from a distance.
One of the major perks to moose hunting with the .30-06 is that there is no shortage of either ammo or rifles. Moose hunters can find suitable bolt-action and semi-auto .30-06 rifles with no problem.
Like some magnum rounds, the .30-06’s recoil is stout yet bearable. Its light (relatively speaking) kick facilitates accuracy, which in turn helps you land a shot that damages minimal meat.
.308 Winchester
The .308 Winchester is another popular deer hunting cartridge that works well on moose. It doesn’t have quite as much velocity or terminal energy as the .30-06 Springfield, but modern powders and bullet designs have helped close the performance gap between the two popular cartridges.
One advantage the .308 Winchester has over the .30-06 is its recoil. With significantly less felt recoil than the hard-hitting .30-06, the .308 helps hunters make faster, more accurate follow-up shots. That can be a major advantage when pursuing an injured moose through thick brush (or firing on an advancing grizzly).
Rifles chambered in .308 offer another advantage to moose hunters. Because the .308 Win is a short-action cartridge, chambered for it tend to be lighter, more compact, and easier to tote through the backcountry.
.300 Winchester Magnum
Although the .30-06, .308 Win, and .300 Winchester Magnum are all .30 caliber cartridges, the .300 Win Mag delivers more power and better ballistic performance. Think of the .300 Win Mag as a .30 cal cartridge on steroids!
The .300 Win Mag’s 180 grain bullet achieves an impressive muzzle velocity of 3,130 fps: fast enough to confer a whopping 3915 foot-pounds (ft-lbs) muzzle energy followed by a laser-flat trajectory. If you really want to milk the power advantage of the .300 Win Mag, choose a load with an even heavier bullet.
The .300 Win Mag’s commanding stopping power comes at a price: hefty recoil. While most hunters should find the .300 WM’s recoil to be manageable, it doesn’t exactly make for a fun day at the range. If you are recoil-averse, this definitely isn’t the cartridge for you.
Rifles chambered for .300 Win Mag tend to be heavy, long, and somewhat cumbersome. The high-pressure ammo is also notoriously tough on rifle barrels, which necessitates frequent replacement if you fire it often.
You shouldn’t have trouble finding plenty of .300 Win Mag ammo, but be prepared to spend a few extra cents per round. .300 Win Mag loads aren’t as cheap as most other .30 cal rounds.
6.5mm Creedmoor
A relative newcomer to the big game hunting scene, the 6.5mm Creedmoor has earned a large and dedicated fan base (including myself).
The cartridge was first developed for Precision Rifle Series long-range shooting competition. Its aerodynamically efficient bullets make the 6.5 Creedmoor a ballistic superstar. The bullets clear the muzzle fast and conserve a relatively high percentage of their velocity downrange, and they do so without bucking the shooter with excessive recoil.
The 6.5 CM’s high ballistic coefficient (BC) bullets do a fine job of resisting wind drift, making it one of the most inherently accurate loads available to modern big game hunters.
Many hunters consider the 6.5 Creedmoor to be a bit meager for large moose. However, Scandinavian moose regularly fall to the Creedmoor’s ballistic twin, the 6.5x55mm Swedish.
The 6.5 Creedmoor is currently surging in popularity, so you can find plenty of ammo to feed to your moose rifle.
Speaking of moose rifles, the 6.5 Creedmoor is widely available in most major models. You can choose everything from a traditional bolt-action to a modern AR-10.
6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum
If you want the high BC of a 6.5mm bullet – but with a little more velocity and power – then the 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum delivers.
Although this cartridge has yet to achieve widespread popularity, it is the fastest 6.5mm factory ammo currently in production. The 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum is derived from a full-length .300 Weatherby Magnum case that was necked down to seat the narrower 6.5mm projectile.
Since off-the-shelf hunting loads are still hard to come by, handloading opens a whole new world of moose-stopping potential.
The 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum’s muzzle velocity beats the 6.5 Creedmoor’s by a blistering 600 fps. That extra speed also increases energy transfer, meaning a 140 grain bullet will depart the muzzle of a 6.5-300 Wby Mag moose rifle with 3,384 ft-lbs of knockdown power. And because the round is loaded with high BC 6.5mm bullets, it reliably conserves over 1,750 ft-lbs of energy at 500 yards.
Few moose hunters have the marksmanship they would need in order to implement the 6.5-300’s full effective range, though it has serious long-range chops if you’ve got the goods.
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