An old friend of mine had a Moose draw and asked me to come along with him, “in case”.
After spending the day glassing and moving around the area we had permission for, it was looking bleak. We hadn’t seen anything but 3 coyotes and they were on the move.
We were almost ready to give up and call it a year but the last area we thought we would check out was not far and we headed over there.
Now it’s like 3 in the afternoon, last day and what do we see? Three Bull Moose bedded down across a ravine a bit below our vantage point, only about a 265yrd shot.
One had a reasonable rack on him, the other two were stunted, one had only one side spiker, and one had a small 3 point paddle and the other side was just a 2 point spike.
(
As viewed through the spotting scope)
Now the fact that both of us have been 69 years on this planet. I am thinking how are we going to get to him AFTER the shot???
We himmed and hummed for about 20 min. analyzing the situation and visualizing the effort that was going to be required of these two old farts.
Then BANG, he throws the shot, moose down, he picked the “Medium” sized one with the paddle as time was running out, and being they were getting up and down and moving between themselves a clear shot on the larger racked one was not presenting itself. We have about 1hr before dark.
Fortunately my buddy brought his chain saw, and had a little bit of rope, and a good thing we had headlamps and a couple flash lights.
I will spare you the details, (it’s not pretty) but about 4-1/2hrs later we had the 4 quarters in the back of the truck.
(
The overview, it doesn't look near as bad from this view)
I am thinking “This One” is going to taste good. I didn’t know I still had it in me to drag a moose down through the bush and back up a ravine.
Making for a long day, as it was then a 3-1/2hr drive home and we had to also skin the quarters and clean him up, I think it was 1:30am when all was done.
(
Was too dark for the obligatory photo op but snapped the rack)
I am sure I will recover before my late season ELK tag becomes active late December – haha.
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