Soooo here goes
I’ve always heard about the moose in Kamchatka. How they are the biggest in the world. And I never thought in a million years that I would ever go hunting for one.
Well I found a hunt at one of th big auctions and figured if it goes for this, it would be worth doing. Low and behold I won.. Now what lol
The planning began almost immediately, from making flight arraignments, to pick the right rifle, then the right caliber. You have to remember that Kamchatka is frozen in time around the middle of the Cold War. New technology like binoculars aren’t very common. Then making sure you have enough gear to cover a very wide variety of conditions. It was search and search and search for the right gear. Not just any gear. Stuff that wouldn’t let you down 4/5 ths on the other side of the world.
I’m pretty lucky, I can make 2 phone calls and get first hand experience on virtually every hunt on the planet. I was making those calls.
My outfitter was great to work with. They helped out with a bunch. But there is a lot of things that must be done correctly or your not going to be going very far, or having very much fun. Little things like picking which airline you fly with can cost you a lot of extra money in the long run. Learned a lot of invaluable lessons.
So the day comes to leave and I start flying
If your flying with a firearm you have to go through Moscow
So I fly to Toronto, then to Europe, then off to Moscow. Land in Moscow, do all my paperwork and off to the hotel. The direct flight to Kamchatka leaves at like 2 pm and there’s no way you will get your paper work done in time. It’s like the 80’s here with the way they do business. They have computers but everything is hand written and there’s tons and tons of paper work and security checks. The customs officers don’t move very fast either. Think of a Canadian govt worker in slow motion... if they can pass the buck onto someone else they will.
So fly out from Moscow to petropavlosk
Flight number 4, nice short one. Only 9 hours
We land in petro, do our customs stuff again. Head to the liquor store for supplies. If your drinking beer, get the bubba kegs. They are tougher and won’t break or freeze. I found that the cheap $3 vodka was just as good as the high end $14 bottles lol. Get lots, your guide will love you. But don’t let them help themselves or they will get dickered by themselves when your sleeping.
From petro is a short 6 hour drive To camp
Most of the road is paved to milkovo and from there it’s gravel.
You get cell service for about a 10km radius of milkovo then it’s gone for good.
My outfitter and a German couple go to one camp mine is just down the road. Only about 10km back on the main road and then 45km into the bush on a glorified atv trail lol. Welcome to Russia lol. Road is surprisingly good, and we spot 3 bears in the way in. Time to get hunting!
We when we pull into camp there is 2 moose skulls from the previous hunters stand up as we pull in. I’ve seen what I thought were big moose before and these were off the charts! One was low 60’s with incredibly long pans, the other was what I was hoping to find! Really wide, good size pans, deep and long, tons of mass and the one side had was curved in and had crazy mass! They measured this guy and he was 70”’s. Tons of character! Never seen anything like it before!
Meet the main guide and his wife, who is our cook and interpreter. Start asking them about the 2 moose that they had shot already, and the guide just shrugs his shoulders and says that they are average? I’m wondering if they were playing a joke on me, but they were 100% serious about these bulls not being anything special. Now I’m getting really excited to start hunting!
There’s 3 ways to hunt moose out here
1 get them calling in the rut on foot
It’s the cheapest way and can be very successful
This is what I planned on doing
2 Hunt then in dec on skidoo
Find a fresh set of tracks and follow it in the deep deep snow
It’s a few thousand more but Guys get some really big bulls
Only downside is the moose shed their antlers in dec and they have had bulls lose their antlers before you could get them
3 helicopters
Not really the most ethical. But holy cow do they get some monsters! I have some pics of ones that they got this year and they have to be pushing 80”
This kind of “hunting” is not cheap! Take one of those Yukon or Alaska moose hunts. And that’s your rental of the helicopter alone for 2 days. Never mind the cost of the animals. Guy sharing camp with me is a neurosurgeon from Spain. His buddies took the chopper for 3 days. They got a big bull, a smaller brown bear and a few snow sheep. They didn’t see as many moose as I would have expected. But that one alone made up for it in my mind
We arrived on the 28th to camp and we just missed the rut
The 2 bulls the group before us got were shot 3 days before we arrived to camp
They were responding to the call very aggressively and as soon as we arrived It went cold
We were hunting the foot hills of the mountains and the bush is very thick. We were hunting “newer” and old forest cuts
I was expecting that there would be lots of glassing and maybe some similar terrain to bc or Yukon Alaska.. Wrong.. your typical shot out here is 50-100 yards. There isn’t many areas where you can even see much further. Since you can’t see very far you put on the miles on your boots. We averaged around 14 km the most in 1 day was 20km. Walk call.. walk call.. walk call. Day 4 I got lucky. I was able to talk with my hands enough to get my Russian only speaking guide, to go check out the closest thing I seen to a cut line. We come up over a hill and there he was.. My Kamchatka bull! He was about 350 yards away and walking our direction. We hit the bush and creep up about 50 yards To a good vantage point and he’s still coming our way. Now I’m trying to talk with my hands and get my guide to get the f out of the way because I’m going to blast this moose. It’s hard to explain how a muzzle brake works to someone that has never seen one and can’t speak the same language lol. So the moose is still coming our way. At about 175 yards he turns broadside, I got a good rest with the shooting stick and I’m solid pressed up against as spruce tree. First shot, right behind the shoulder. The bull sucked up that 200 gr a-frame like it was 1 of the bizzillion flys out there. He runs about 25 yar[IMG]http://imgur.com/hWW6, I light him up again. He goes another 20 yards towards the bush and I can see the steam coming from his lungs. I drill him again and he goes into the bush. FYI these things are tough!
I ranged where I thought he went into the bush from where we shot and it was 257 yards We rush up there since light was fading and i wanted to at least find some good blood before it gets dark! No need to look for blood, he only made it 10 yards into the bush! Big bull down! Ended up being 62”, nice pans. I was more than happy.
I’ll include some pics
More to the story to come
Phones going to die
I made a mistake and I’m stuck in Moscow for a couple days
http://imgur.com/hWW6GfR
http://imgur.com/bLrGVX5
http://imgur.com/G4C2BzY
http://imgur.com/UBhfARG http://imgur.com/a0xofE9
Kamchatka moose Hunt
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