This year I knew my wife was due for a moose tag, so I put my usual more ambitious hunting plans on hold for the year and decided to just concentrate on hunting around home with her. We got a week off and both grandmas agreed to watch the kids... perfect!
Day 1. Between work and some home renovations this was the first day we'd not been working in 6 weeks, and it was my birthday. I got a good feeling! We hiked down a river bed a few miles. The cover was ridiculously thick, the boulders were pretty poor footing, and the river crossing's were sketchy. We saw 4 deer and a mother grizzly with her cub. After lunch we got the quad fired up, intending to try to find a way into some ridges further up stream. The river had switched channels since last year, the crossing looked deeper "Its too deep" say's wife. I drive in "Its too deep" she repeats, then the quad starts getting pushed downstream, then it really is too deep and I drown the quad. By the time we get it out of the river and started again we are wet up to our chests, I think because it was my birthday she went pretty easy on me considering. We head back home for birthday cake and beers, and to change oil in the quad.
Day 2. We hike upstream, its not as thick. We hunt some old river channels and see 6 deer and a cow moose. We find a few good concentrations of sign and. Wife is getting tired of walking, walking down the river is hard, we've done lots of walking. Tomorrow we will just hang around the good areas we've found and do some calling.
Day 3. We do some calling in the morning, wife gets cold and bored so we decide to do more walking. We walk back into the ridges I've been promising will hold all kinds of moose, they are a long way and we don't see much sign, we climb the ridges, we still don't see much sign. We loop around to the river again and do some calling in the evening. Wife is getting a bit discouraged, "We'll come back in the morning" I say, "There will be a moose here for sure."
Day 4. We come back to our spot, there are fresh tracks but no moose. "We just need some cold weather to get them moving" I say. By noon we have an all out blizzard on our hands, we hunt all day and don't even cut another track. "They have probably holed up until the weather gets better" I say. Tomorrow we will track them, I talk about how great tracking moose is going to be... sure fire, easy as pie, moose tomorrow for sure.
PA110231 by , on Flickr
Day 5. We hunt a different area, we hike a long way before we find two cows traveling together. Since there's nothing better to do we follow them, they take us to a much fresher track which also is obviously a cow. Eventually we abandon that track and do more hiking and eventually find a bull track. The bull track joins up with a cow and takes off through some terrible swamps, then eventually finds some private land and jumps the fence. Its not even noon and we've covered well over 5 kilometers, Wife isn't happy. With moral at an all time low in moose camp we head to a roadside dinner for lunch. After some hot food we head out to do some truck hunting, not a big fan but I know wife has had about enough for today, we have one day of baby sitting left.
PA110228 by , on Flickr
As we're cruising down the road we spot a moose track, its smoking fresh. "You want to follow it?" I ask. I know she doesn't but she decides to anyways. The track is fresh so we go slow, the moose cuts through some little openings and I question the probability of it being a bull, but it never takes a whizz to show me for sure so we keep going. We find a pile of warm dung and I know we're getting close. I crest a little knoll and the bull jumps up out of his bed at about 25 yards and heads to my right. I find an opening and wait for him to cross but he doesn't, I can see some movement behind a spruce tree and I know he's behind it. I motion to my wife to circle to the right, hoping she might push the bull out from behind the tree but that bull was so focused on me that he didn't even see her. Wife is a good shot but she always takes her time, well not this time, she snapped her .270 up and a couple seconds later I heard the shot. The bull comes barreling out from behind the tree, I swing the bead on its shoulder and the old Enfield barks just before he crests another knoll and disappears. After a half hour wait we go over the hill and find our little bull stone dead just a few yards further. Wife is glad its over... "We have a bull down a half kilometer from the road" I say, "We're just getting started."
PA110227 by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/153108294@N08/[/url], on Flickr
https://flic.kr/p/Zmz4Nw
Wife's first moose.
Hybrid Mode
