Month: October 2019

Sunrise found me slipping through the willows and alders on the East side of the valley, staying out of sight, while glassing the opposite slopes. This was the last day of the trip. I was putting everything on red and decided to concentrate all efforts on one little area where we had seen a lot of moose, and the scene of our first close encounter (see “Your mother mated a donkey!”). Once I had climbed high enough, it didn’t take long to spot three moose in the aspens above the bottom meadow. It took a while longer to confirm that one was a bull; a small one, but a small bull tastes better than no bull.

The prevailing winds were doing their usual: swirl, switch, stop, and then gust, change direction, and then do it all over again. An approach from the bottom seemed ill-advised, so with a climb, a ridge walk and a short descent, I was across from the moose, about 200 yards away. The bull was small indeed, maybe on his second set of antlers, one of which he broke off, leaving a stub. With the above assessment about the taste of bulls in mind, I tried some cow calling. No reaction. Against better judgement I did some half-hearted raking, which made the little guy take off. So much for that plan.

But wait, there were still three moose in that cover. Must have missed one from afar. A medium-sized bull appeared, maybe 40″ in spread. Surely this one would be in for some sparring. More cow calling, more grunting and raking, trying to create a scene worthy of investigation. I don’t think he even blinked. I skirted the edges of various thickets to see if there was a way I could get closer. One hundred and eighty yards to their cover was about the best I could find.

That lone pine tree was not big enough to block the view of both the cow and bull moose that were bedded in the aspens behind, so I abandoned the idea of crawling closer along this route.

After picking up my pack that I had dropped on the first approach, ingestion of some food and water, and more fruitless calling sessions, and with this being the last day, I decided the situation required some courage on my part. The moose had bedded down, facing downhill (no approach), with the unpredictable wind mostly in their backs. The only way to get near was to cross the 180 yards of open hillside.

Two-step, glass, two-step, glass, move when the wind covers the noise, with their noses and ears out of the equation I only need to fool their eyes. When I started the stalk I couldn’t see any of the moose. About halfway through I spotted the cow. So I moved uphill, as I had seen the bull bed above her. About 50 yards from cover I spotted two moose: the bull another 50 yards into cover, and the calf in front of him but much closer to the edge.

After a lifetime of weighing options, I figured closer was the only way, keeping the trunks of two six-inch aspen trees between me and the bull’s eyes. I could see antlers sticking out left and right, but I could not see his eyes. Half an hour later I was 20 yards from cover, when the calf got up to feed. The stage was set, I couldn’t move now, so I settled in and hoped the bull would get up too at some point and feed the edges. A small chance, but a chance anyway.

Twenty yards from the cover where the bull was moving back and forth without presenting a shot.

Fast forward 90 minutes.  The calf had been within 30 yards but fed back into cover. The bull had been at 50 yards at best, but had now turned around and was feeding away. Six hours into this endeavour, I figured one more all-in gamble couldn’t hurt. I flattened out behind 6″ tall grass, and grunted. The bull stopped. Another grunt. He turned. This was going well! One more.

The bull was not buying it. He turned and walked away. A cow call then. He started trotting uphill! The cowardly bastard (or just a very smart bastard) was having nothing of it; he left his cow and her off-spring to face whatever was making those noises.

A little defeated but full of excitement of having spent so much time so close I hiked out, and drove back to camp to pack up. One more evening stalk around another ridge didn’t produce any moose, but a whitetail doe and her fawn dropped by to say hello as I was still hunting through the trees underneath the crest. They could just not figure out what I was. Wearing a plaid shirt for camo works.

The next day another snow storm pounded the hills. Prospects of finding a bull within longbow range are diminishing, as the rut winds down, but hopefully I can squeeze in a few more days before rifle season starts.

FD

After our close encounter with the rutting moose, which honestly, had I possessed a little more experience, skill, confidence, and/or killer instinct would have resulted in a dead moose, meat on the table, and set of antlers too big to conveniently put on anywhere in my house, Kyle and I were eager to get going again. A record snowfall and work obligations kept us away till Thursday night. I managed to arrive with plenty light, finding the campground covered with wet, melting snow, the kind that gums up your tires (especially if you opted to put on the ones with less-aggressive tread, so you have a more cushioned drive on the roads). I paid for that desire for comfort instantly, as the truck slid off the gravel pad, into a foot of snow. Subsequent over-zealous application of the gas pedal, and city-driving skills got me out of the predicament, but not without ever so lightly clipping the little post that holds the camping permit, resulting in a busted tail light and bumper corner. I may have screamed and slammed some doors a little. There were no witnesses to that behaviour.

The first morning we glassed hard but could not find a bull moose. Early afternoon we tried a new property, a little further to the North, and a little higher. Reportedly teeming with moose. Perhaps it does; we never found out. After battling waist-deep snow for an hour, and not even having reached the ridge behind which said moose would be teeming, we decided that we really wanted no part of having to haul hundreds of pounds of meat that far.

Back at the Plan A area, we decided to explore the next valley over, and found it equally empty, until, closer to dark, one of my wailing cow moose calls was instantly answered by a grunt! Another wail, and we could see and hear a bull come down the other side of the valley, wasting no time doing so. Excited we got ready for an encounter, but instead of coming right into our trap, the bull appeared to hang up in the willows at the bottom. Emboldened by our success with using the rake-and-shake technique last week, we hit the surrounding bushes hard with the elk shoulder blade, and ended it all with resounding grunt. That did the trick! We could hear the bull smash bush as he approached the two-track mud slide  behind which we had set up (some would call it a trail, but that would be too much honour to bestow upon what melting snow, cow hoofs and tractor tires had made of it).

We raked some more ourselves, and after demolishing the foliage of one more willow bush, the bull emerged, looking for love and a fight. Unfortunately, as bulls do, he started to get down wind of us, and I tried to bring him around with one more wail. He froze in his tracks, 35-40 yard away, with his on-side leg stretched backwards, and slightly quartering to us. I had fingers on the string but could see a double-lung shot only if I managed to place the arrow ever so tightly behind the shoulder. A little left and I might miss the off-side lung, a little right and the arrow would have to deal with the shoulder. Since my set-up is probably on the lighter end of the spectrum for hunting moose, I declined the shot. The moose continued on his way, and never presented another opportunity.

In this video I am to the right of Kyle making the angle a little different. In retrospect, I stick with my decision to not shoot, but I think I should have either called at him later, with the intent to stop him and shoot, or, have Kyle create a ruckus with the shoulder blade, while I snuck off to my right trying to get an open shooting lane there. In which case the bull would probably have turned broadside on the road, with me not in position. What do you think? How could we have played this differently?

The next morning we went back to the same spot, and called for a bit, but no moose answered. Once we hiked over a ridge into another valley and started glassing, it didn’t take long before we saw a cow moose climb out of the bottom, followed by a fairly agitated bull. He shadowed her, cut her off, pressured her, leading to the odd distressed wail by the cow. They moved up and over rather quickly, and the one or two cow calls I produced got duly ignored.

A little later, a smaller bull appeared and seemed to be following the same invisible trail. With a nothing ventured nothing gained attitude I started sending the neediest cow calls across the valley that I could conjure up. The bull was probably half a mile away, but once the sounds reached him he stopped and turned. A few more calls and he hesitantly started moving down hill. Two more, and he was running! Not counting on this success, we had to run too, to reach some cover, once the bull’s line of sight was blocked by a stand of poplars. We set up with arrow nocked, shoulder blade at the ready, and hopes high.

The bull never revealed himself. We don’t know what happened, or where he went. In the afternoon we spotted one other hunter below us and a small bull that we tried to intercept, but his long legs propelled him much faster and with seemingly a lot less effort than our stubby legs could bring us to the edge of cover from where we’d hoped to call him in.

On Sunday we hunted another property, saw lots of moose sign, and found a cow and two calves bedded under some aspens. Once they noticed us, they looked at us for the longest time before moving off down into the timber. Unfortunately we found no  bull moose there. Kyle had to return to work in the morning, so he left after the evening’s hunt, allowing me all the living space in the tent, which I utilized by putting up a chair close to the heater, and reading Adam Shoalts’ latest book “Beyond the Trees” on his travels in Arctic Canada.

Read on: More moose hunting (Part 2)