I am an avid hunter with rifle and Bow and have been hunting for more than 50 years. I have taken big game such as whitetail deer, red deer, elk, Moose and African Plains game
such as Kudu, Gemsbok, Springbok, Blesbok, and Impala and wrote an ebook entitled African Safari -Rifle and Bow and Arrow on how to prepare for a first safari. Ed is a serious cartridge reloader and ballistics student. He has earned two degrees in science and has written hundreds of outdoor article on hunting with both bow and rifle.
Hunting and Fishing for me is a Way of Life. I roamed the woods in Salem, New Hampshire as a 6,7 and 8 year old boy. Robin Hood was my TV hero as was Davy Crockett played by Fess Parker. Freedom was grand! I was selling “shiners” at the age of 8 to local fisherman. In the late 1950’s there were beaver ponds everywhere. Wildlife was thriving behind my home and I wanted to be a part of it. The rules of life at that age were simple during the summer, go play and be home in time for dinner. I made my first bow and arrow at the age of 7 using maple saplings and string from the kitchen drawer.
Since then I have killed numerous deer with rifle and bow and had the duty to do the butchering too where I learned first hand where cuts of meat came from. In the same way, I clean and fillet my own fish!
You are what you eat!
Several years back I recall walking down the beef isle at the local grocery store when NAFTA ( a government run trade agreement) was in effect. There was a sign in the store that said the beef was from North America. That meat could have been from Canada, USA or Mexico. The quality of the meat in my mind was suspect if I did not really know where exactly the meat came from and what it had been fed including drugs and hormones. Questions in my mind arose long before this but I use it as an example.
I was always fishing and hunting and very happy with the God given natural food from field and stream. I trust it without reservation. Nature is Organic!
I reflect on my father was a simple man who liked to till the earth and grow his own food and harvest his own meat whenever possible. He was a child of the Depression in the 1920’s and 1930’s. He trusted himself, enjoyed the process of hunting and gathering. He passed the hunting gene to me in a much larger way. Ever since I shot, killed and ate my first deer taken in Northern New Hampshire in my teens, I have relished the though of providing naturally harvested wild meat and fish for my family but could not get enough of it.
Understanding were your food comes from at a young age is very important!
I understood it at a very young age that something must die in order for me to live was paramount. Beyond this, the culinary aspect of preparing your well earned harvest was of great importance. I learned to cook and eat very well.
Recently I fed some venison and wild boar to my very young grand kids and we talked about where food comes from. The kids reacted positively and enjoyed the meat.
The PSE Thrive 400 Crossbow is seen as best in class by others besides me like “The Fearless Tactician” website below say it is best performer in its price class in the $400 dollar range. Having looked on the internet, the Thrive is still NEW out there but according to the article it beats nearly 40 other crossbow models below including some Barnett’s, Ten Points and even Excaliber’s. Wow! That is sayin’ a lot!!!
I have shot compound bows of all kinds since they became popular in the early 1970’s I can say they have come a very long way indeed especially in crossbow technology. I did a search for reverse cam technology employed in the Thrive and found that it increases speed yet keeps its accuracy. The string coming from the inside of the cam provides at least 2 or more inches of arrow acceleration. That’s big! I measured the bolt speed with my chronograph at 377 fps at 10 feet with a 400 grain bolt. In round numbers, at the face of the bow, I estimate 380 fps. I did not know how close to 400 fps I would get. That is about 95%. Fine with me!!
As a hunting weapon I tested the Thrive 400 on Wild Boar and it was simply fantastic in speed and accuracy. I could had taken a much larger boar and still got such powerful exit wounds with the 4 fixed blade 100 grain Muzzy.
Crossbows in general do not cradle well in ones arm but this crossbow was able to cradle in the crook of my arm sufficient to walk somewhat comfortable with its 32 inch length, 6.7 pounds in overall weight and 18.25 inches axle to axle.
It is camo’d in Kryptek Highlander and blends with surroundings just fine for its size and small profile as seen by game from the face of the bow.
I like the illuminated scope very much as it was designed specifically for crossbow use and is marked for longer ranges. I did not use the illumination feature but at dawn and dusk it will be used to the hunters benefit.
This crossbow on a solid front and rear rest, it can be used beyond 40 yards but in a tree-stand or on the ground in a hunting situation and no rest, I expect 30 yards or less to be max range for most shooters.
The Crossbow comes with four 400 grain Thunder Boltz bolts and a Heavy Discharge bolt. The arrow points are 100 grain threaded bullet points and the nocks are half moon. The point insert is brass for great strength.
On my recent boar hunt, I drove a broadhead through my wild boar and it stuck in a birch tree so deep that we could not recover the broadhead. The nock of the arrow popped off the shaft due to the tremendous remaining energy. I closely inspected the arrow for damage and you should too.
Energy for this crossbow delivers nearly 140 ft-lbs and would be great for elk and moose.
Canada, I believe does not allow crossbows last I checked, but rules may change. The PSE Thrive 400 is great and powerful Crossbow for those who do not compromise on speed and energy!! The bolt drop at 40 yards is also quite a bit less at these fast speeds making ranging error less a factor.
I chose the PSE Thrive 400 Crossbow with a 4×32 illuminated scope to test because of my PSE knowledge over decades of quality compound bow manufacture and its use by friends in 3D archery. This crossbow utilizes reverse cam technology and, very modest cost MSRP ($449) yet high level of CNC machined quality. I was hopeful that it would be accurate too.
If you do your homework you can see that the cost of the best crossbows were over $1000 dollars. If that was all there was to choose from, I would have to pass on them.
For the broadhead test, I shot it with a Muzzy 4 blade 100 grain and it was the same point of impact as the 100 grain field points.
On Safari years back, I successfully hunted African Gemsbok and Red Hartebeast with these Muzzy broadheads. I love’em!
Now, on with the test with broadheads on wild boar at “Skinner Bog” in Maine; owned and operated by Jeremy Bilodeau. I have hunted Russian boar previously with Jeremy with my TC Encore Rifle in 30-06 Springfield. It is a very family friendly hunt and where Jeremy is also my friendly guide.
We rode Jeremy’s 4×4 down a snow covered trail and parked. Jeremy said, “These boar can be anywhere so load your crossbow.” Reaching in my pocket for the string loader device I was able to get my foot in the stirup and pull the 175 lb needed to load the bow. You have to use your back muscles and finally your arm muscles to load it. It is not an easy pull but wow does it shoot a fast bolt (arrow) at around 400 fps.
I noted how firmly the PSE Thrive crossbow held the nocked arrow and broadhead as I moved through the woods. I like that!!
We sat in a blind for an hour waiting for them to come to some food and even used some hog squealing to call them but to no avail.
We decided to use the “go to them mode.” I took the quiver off the bow and asked Jeremy to hold it. Jeremy noted that the quiver broadhead cover was coming loose, (the only thing we found that could be better) some adhesive should fix that.
Below we spotted them!
We began a stalk on some boar napping in the cold morning sun. Suddenly they heard us as the snow crunched beneath our feet. They nervously awoke and began to scatter. These boar are younger but still hefty in size from 100 to 250 lbs.
The PSE Thrive is not heavy and is easier to carry than I anticipated. I like the stock of the bow and its camo. It handles well.
The snow crunching beneath our feet awakened a pig pile of these oinkers and they slowly scattered around in the forest.
One of them stepped from the group and turned broadside at around 30 yards!
The trigger of the Thrive is a crisp 4 to 5 lbs!! Excellent!!!
At the shot, the crossbow recoiled slightly and the bolt was headed for the boar so fast that we could barely see a blur.
It hit the boar with a slap sound and the boar ran slowly up the wooded ridge. We approached where the boar was hit and found the arrow and broadhead embedded solidly in a tree behind the boar. It was a solid hit and a pass thru shot. We saw that the boar was walking slow and bleeding. The shot was further back than I liked so we hurried crunching snow beneath our feet hoping to intercept the boar for a second shot in the video clip below.
The Muzzy 4 blade passed through him like a hot knife through butter. He still ran some more! The blood trail was huge and wide. You would have to be blind to miss it! The boar ran a good 50 yards before piling up.
These wild boar are tough and so is the PSE Thrive! What a great test and a great crossbow for a great cost effective price for many hunters! I have seen it on sale too!!
A crossbow such as this can add to your hunting season in many states. I give it another A. Just glue the quiver cover on and you are good to go.
This week my twin brother Rich took his 300 Blackout to The Blue Rooster in Arizona and put some wild oink in the freezer on the cheap. Wild pigs abound and are sizable. Hunt Cost; $299
Rich and wife Ruth are retired and living nearby so this was a local treat for him. Like me, he handloads, so he had some loads already worked up. The 300 Blackout is a great semi-auto round for larger game and bullet weights that are normally 110 to 130 grain but can be much higher. Energies are well over 1300 ft lbs and good medicine for wild boar and wild pigs.
Accommodations are very wife and family friendly says Rich.
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Moose are the largest deer in North America. Most sportsmen and women hunt moose for several reasons. First and foremost is that , in my case, moose hunting is an Adventure in the Wilds of Canada! And moose meat is absolutely delicious. An adult moose can provide more than 300 lbs of boned venison for your family. A bull moose with its great antlers is a spectacle that deserves taxidermy and display perhaps over your fireplace or in your game room in remembrance of the hunt. As for me, I can afford a bucket list Newfoundland Moose Hunt in the $6000 to $7000 range and get a great representative “wallhanger” of the species too.
Newfoundland Moose (Alces alces americana) are plentiful, there are over 130,000 just in Newfoundland alone. Being such large adult animal in the 850 to 1200 pound require lots of delivered bullet energy for penetration in the sizable heart/lungs area (the size of a 10 inch paper plate) with the right bullet construction at the right angle to cleanly harvest them.
The most critical component of all is shot placement! No caliber, cartridge or energy can substitute for correct shot placement. Period!
Whatever you ultimately decide to hunt moose with, you have to be comfortable and accurate with it under field hunting circumstances, no red spot target to aim at here, and the hunter is filled with adrenaline, and heavy breathing making your scope crosshairs wiggle like a worm. A monopod, bipod or tripod rest will aid greatly here.
I have said before in a recent article, that you can kill a moose with your deer rifle given some understanding of delivered energy at a given distance and shot angle such as broadside or slight angled away. Some Fish and Game officials ascribe to 2500 ft-lbs of energy as a guideline for the a full grown largest adult Bull Moose who may tip the scales at 1200 plus pound live weight category. Using the .270 Winchester, 30-06 Springfield and 6.5 and 7mm calibers will work with good shot placement but not at the recommended energy. If you have a larger caliber you shoot well then I recommend you use it. Put them down faster with larger calibers. I highly recommend a 180 grain bullet or higher from a 30 plus caliber rifle, if you shoot them accurately, such as the 30-06 Springfield, 300 Magnums, .338 Win Mag and 375’s. The 7mm Rem Mag in 175 grain works fine but personally, I’d rather a larger cartridge-caliber as I can handle the recoil. These bullets have higher sectional densities above 0.25 for maximum penetration. A great article to read is from Chuck Hawkes. https://www.chuckhawks.com/sd.htm
Below cartridges I handload, among many others are the .375 Ruger, 30-06 Springfield, and the 6.5 Creedmoor. I like the .375 Ruger over the 30-06 for moose because I can handle the recoil and shoot it very well. A Pachmayr Decelerator recoil pad cuts felt recoil in half.
.375 Ruger, 30-06 Springfield, 6.5 Creedmoor
Try to stay under 200 yards. I will likely use my Ruger African M77 in .375 Ruger. I shoot it very well, and it does perform, delivering a 260 grain Nosler AccuBond with 2800 ft-lbs of energy at 200 yards. If I had to reach further with a good rest, it can. Still got to wait for the right shot though, and great shot placement! See Lungs and heart outline below with red dot shot placement.
Shot placement is the real hero here.
I believe, on average, there are many more moose in the 850 pound class than the 1200 lb class. At 2500 ft lbs of energy your .270 Winchester also has a muzzle energy of 2500 ft-lbs so you need your moose at the muzzle? I don’t think so but an 850 lb moose you need around 1800 ft-lbs and that gets you out to 200 yards.
You can’t put a moose on a weight scale before you shoot’em.
I arrived at the 1800 ft-lb at 200 yards using the ratio of bullet energy to harvest over the animal weight. Example: It takes 1500 ft-lbs to cleanly kill elk. Bull Elk on the hoof weigh in at 600 to700 lbs. I used this ratio to solve for energy needed with a ballistic calculator for a 140 grain .270 bullet at 2800 fps.
I cannot stress the use of a rest of some kind enough. Like a Bog Pod or Primos Trigger Stick. They are worth every penny!
In the Newfoundland bogs you are often in brush that may block your shot here and there. Patience is a virtue! Just like deer hunting!
Bullet Construction – for heavy game should be rugged and hold its weight while penetrating. Bonded, Fail Safe, and Partition or Specialty Copper bullets do a great job at maintaining weight as they mushroom and penetrate. I am a Nosler Partition and AccuBond fan though there is a new .375 caliber 260 grain solid Gilding Copper E-Tip(TM) I will test. Both have served me well on Wild Boar, Moose and Bison already.
If you aren’t snowshoeing, skidooing, skiing or out in the snow, it is a great time to handload. For me it is quiet time with a good reloading manual, your favorite powders, a reloading press and endless bullet sizes, weights, and construction for target or hunting.
I have a simple RCBS Rockchucker Reloading Press that I purchased 30 years ago and loaded many thousands of rounds for my rifles and pistols. Most all the game I have hunted with rifle were taken with my own handloads, even my African Plains Game Rifle, a 338 Winchester Magnum was handloaded with 250 grain Nosler Partitions. The level of satisfaction for me was monumental to create my very own custom ammo. Accuracy was so much better too.
If you are thinking about getting into reloading your own ammunition and you like to tinker with tools as I do, it was a lifelong love affair to be the creator of my own custom ammo. There are many video’s on the market today to teach you the basics.
I promise that with some patience you can do that too! How great would it be to harvest your game with a cartridge you created yourself!
I came by the handloading because I am a natural do-it-yourselfer. As a bowhunter, I built my own arrows from scratch our of aluminum or Port Orford Cedar, and cut my own turkey feathers. Below at my bow bench. Above the bench are a few archery trophies I have earned over the years.
We have exceeded our goal of 60,000 Views this year. The largest viewership goes to the USA with Canada as second largest but we have seen viewers from Africa, Australia/ New Zealand, Britain, Europe, Japan and South America.
On Cartridges we wrote about the 6.5 Creedmoor this year and sang its praises as a fine hunting cartridge and the bullets fabulous Sectional Density and compared it favorably with the .270 Winchester.
We tested the Weatherby Vanguard Weatherguard in 6.5 Creedmoor and harvested deer with it using Nosler 129 grain LRAB’s at 100 yards. When hit in the vitals the deer dropped in just a few feet with complete pass thru’s.
I wrote extensively about the Leupold VX-6 Scope and highly recommend it for long range shooting. It is larger and more powerful than necessary for hunting New England but for a well traveled hunter it is perfect. Just be careful to not zoom so close, at say 100 yards, that you lose field of view and becomes subject to unsteady crosshairs, especially when you don’t have a solid rest at high power above 10x, I learned that lesson!
We talked about Scent Control and the new Ozone producing products. Love them!
We worked with Sig Sauer Academy and tested the P320 and took one of their courses. I like the P320 very much. Their Intermediate Handgun skills course was excellent!!
I also tested the SIG Echo 1 Thermal Reflex sight and found that it worked well if you have lots of pigs/wild boar and night-hunting.
I joined QDMA this year and very pleased so far. They spent lots of effort on CWD education this year. Use their education to age whitetail bucks and harvested a mature 4.5 year old 11 point 144 3/8 Boone and Crockett buck in Texas at Wildlife Systems Rocky Creek Ranch with my TC Encore 50 Cal. Muzzleloader. And spent time with my friend Larry Weishuhn there.
We tested and purchased Lab Radar for Doppler bullet Chronographs. Expensive but life long use justified the price.
We are testing the PSE Thrive 400 Crossbow ( see the December article) at this time and should have more on it soon.
In total we wrote nearly 100 articles in 2018 and looking for more fun and Product Testing n 2019.
And more on the ATV ARGO for remote hunting big game in Canada….
If you are planning a trip to remote Alaska, Northern Canada like Newfoundland for Caribou, Bear or Moose and really off road from any civilization the ARGO ATV 8×8 is a big name among Outfitters. Whether carrying sportsmen and women, hauling wood or game, crossing rivers (It floats and can cross water). The Aurora 8×8 is a new model that has accumulated the best in function.
