I bought a Remington 700 BDL in 8MM Remington Mag the first or second year they came out in 1978. I bought it in the Base Exchange at Eielson AFB, AK. In September 1979 I took a bull moose with it on Birch Creek, 50 air miles from the nearest road and 150 from the nearest town. We were 4 days into a 160 mile float trip and still had a long way to go. I climbed a ridge to do some spot and stalk and had a great horned owl use me as a bird dog. Every time I moved, the owl would swoop in and land over my head. After I moved for the third or fourth time, I flushed a vole and the owl swooped down and grabbed it. As soon as the owl flew off, I turned and saw a bull moose raking a willow about 500 yards away. (Since that incident, I've always considered seeing an owl hunting as a good omen!) I didn't have a scope on the rifle; so, I came down off the hillside and made a stalk across the tundra toward the moose. I had one little tamarack tree between me in the bull that I used for cover. If you've ever tried to stalk across tundra tussocks, you know what the stalk was like. I finally slipped off one of the tussocks and my foot stuck in the mud below. I couldn't get loose without a lot of movement and noise, so I unsnapped the hip boot from my belt and closed the last 20 yards to the tamarack tree with one boot on and the other off. The bull was about 200 yards away, facing me as I took a rest against the tree and centered the front sight midway up on the bull's chest. I touched the trigger and the bull dropped like a rock. I went back and got my boot out of the mud and started walking toward the bull.
He was right beside the creek we were floating, literally less than 10 feet from the water. I got to about 50 yards, and the bull managed to stand up. I put another 220 gr. bullet through his ribs and he went down. I walked a little further and he managed to wobble to his feet again. I put another round through his chest across the top of the heart. Down he went. I got to about 25 feet from him and he managed to hobble up again, except now he's less than 5 feet from the creek and the creek was about 20 feet deep right there. I put a final round through his neck and that ended his escape. When we were skinning him out, we found my first round had completely penetrated the moose lengthwise and was lodged under skin of his right hip. It was a 220 gr Corelokt that still weighed 165 grains and has expanded to about .65 caliber. He was dead on his feet after the first shot, but didn't know it. The load was a hot handload, the 220 grain Corelokt (that was all I could find in Fairbanks at the time) on top of copious amounts of IMR 4831. I had the rifle free-bored 1.5 diameters so I could make use of all that powder.
The previous posters are all correct about the recoil from the big 8- it's brutal and well deserving of a muzzlebrake. A couple years later, we were on a spring bear hunt in the same area north of Fairbanks and my good friend Larry, who weighed about 135 lbs soaking wet with rocks in his pocket, kept bugging me to shoot the "8". I told him many times that he was too light to shoot it. I think he took that as a challenge. After the 100th time he asked to shoot it, I finally relented. We were camped on a bluff above Birch Creek and it was about 250 yards down to the water. Breakup ice was floating down the creek so I told Larry to take a shot at one of the ice chunks. I stood beside him with my right hand about 8 inches above and behind his shoulder. Sure enough, when he touched it off, I caught my rifle as he went back on his ***. He got up, rubbing his shoulder, using all kinds of four letter words about the recoil.
