2016 Maine bull Moose tag, 6.5 Grendel?

[kmon]

Congrats on a great bear and bull

[rabiddawg]

Congrats!

It's amazing the differences in weather and growing seasons. You had frost on the ground; our low so far has been upper 50's. You still have corn in the field; ours has been in the bins since early september

[Drift]

Great kills! And frost on the ground. It's 82 degrees here and full dark. Kinda makes me want to move up north.

[Fredman]

Hey Kilco, nice job. I'm working with a bunch of Bancroft boys here in VT. Do you know any of them? Hard working group.

[Kilco]

Hmm I do remember a Mikey bancroft, and there was another close to my age, real good guys!

It was the absolute perfect conditions for moose hunting.. broccoli fields hadn't been plowed under, frost on the ground, it was ideal. Still wish I could have "grendeled" them..

[Chrazy-Chris]

Why don't you guys like the 123 SST for hunting big game? Genuine question here - I'm new to the caliber and am planning on using the 123SST on a big ol mule deer (not Moose-sized, but one can dream haha). I stocked up 200 rounds of it because I intend on reloading the brass so I'm open to trying a different bullet. I have the 8208XBR on-hand so I plan to start with that for powder.

I like the consideration an early poster pointed out about using velocity to determine max effective range... I'd always used 800ft-lbs of energy as my min for mule deer. This is a big difference with the SST. If 2000fps is your min velocity, that makes the max range 300yrds versus 500 yrds being the max range if you're going off of energy. If 1800fps is your min (as a different poster said) that gives you a max effective range of around 450yards. At the end of the day, I'm not confident enough in my shooting to make a 500 yard shot in the field anyways, so it's probably a mute point.

[JASmith]

Best bet is to look at Volume 2 of the 6.5 Grendel reloading handbook for better insight into what bullets work well for hunting with the Grendel.

You're good to go with the 123 gr SST for any Noth American Deer -- even the big ones!

The 1800 fps number is the minimum velocity that will give realible expansion for the 123 gr SST.

Your max range is the lesser of the range wher the velocity drops below the threshold or your abiloty to reliably put that bullet inside a 10-inch circle under the stress and weather conditions for your hunt.