MOOSE DOWN!

*** FOR SOME REASON IT IS NOT ACCEPTING RETURNS RIGHT NOW AND IS RUNNING THE WHOLE STORY TOGETHER. I APOLOGIZE FOR THIS *** Well I know we've been up to a lot lately, but the only thing on my mind right now is to share how my moose hunt went. The hunt is called the Upper Ship Creek Registration Hunt. It is a hunt that is offered within a 10 mile drive of Anchorage. It is an extremely difficult hunt as only 10% of hunters are successful. Of those 10%, 9.5% of them are horse hunters (no motor vehicles allowed in the hunt area to aid in the hunt). It is so difficult because access to the hunting area is very minimal. It takes a great deal of walking up, down, and around mountains to just get in to the hunting area, let alone finding good huntable ground. This in combination with the amount of pressure the hunt area has in the accessable areas, makes taking a moose difficult. The hunt is an any bull tag and only 100 tags are issued every year. To get a tag, you must be the first 100 in line before the Department of Fish and Game opens on the designated day (8AM). For me, this meant gambling that I would get a tag getting there at 4AM. You never know how many people will show up, especially with how close this hunt is to home. There are always people sleeping overnight in tents or bivies insuring that they get a tag for the hunt. Last year, if you weren't in line by 5AM, you were not getting a tag. This year, if you got there anytime before 8AM, you were getting a tag. The hunt starts the last week of October and the area quota is 10 bull moose. As a hunter of this area, it is your responsibility to know on a daily basis if the quota has been met or not. This means calling every morning to insure you are legal to hunt. As I already said, the hunt takes place at the end of October. This is past all the other moose, sheep, goat, carribou, etc. hunts. The rut is over, and the moose have sporadic areas that they roam, making them fairly unpredictable. The other challenge to this hunt is the weather. This is the time the snow starts to fall. So either the hunt gets closed by emergency order because the quota was met, or the quote doesn't get met because you can barely move through the valley because snow conditions are too poor to ambulate. However, the really cool thing about this hunt is that I can literally see the mountains that form the outside edge of the hunt area from my house. This also means I get to sleep in my bed at night and can be in the hunt area by sunrise. SIDE NOTE - the weekend prior to the opener, Danielle and I drove up to the hunt area to time how long it would take to drive from our house and hike into my scouting area. That totaled a little under an hour. On our way home, we spotted a group of about 8-9 grouse munchin on gravel next to the road. If you don't know what a grouse is or how they act, they are pretty tame birds. They are a little smaller than a chicken and just fly into a tree when spooked. They will literally just sit and watch you as long as you stay about 30+ feet away and don't bother them. They are supposed to be descent eating, but we have never dropped one yet. Well we pulled over and I got out my sling shot (always carrying hiking with me). I shot 6 BBs at them and the first two got within 1 mm of a head. We then resorted to throwing rocks but still could not connect. We ended up chasing them around the woods for a little bit and came home empty handed. As a result, we decided to get a .22 air rifle to make sure we get some dinner without using actual bullets. Back to the hunt story - Well somehow I managed to get the opening day of the hunt off (Tuesday, October 25th). I decided that I would give it a try and see how it went. If I didn't get anything (and chances were I wouldn't) I would wait until the next week, since I had the entire thing off in preparation for this hunt. I got to my planned spot about an hour before sunrise. As I set up on the mountain side in preparation for a day of glassing, I could see many headlights on other hunters through most of the area I would be looking for moose to roam in. Dissapointed that I would have no chance of getting to a bull moose before one of the other hunters would if I actually saw one, I stuck around until first light. It turns out that morning was a disaster for hunting. It was extremely cold, extremely windy (40mph+ gusts), and sleeting sideways. I sat in the weather for about 2 hours before I decided to throw in the towel and head home. I would try it again Saturday. The crazy thing is when I left my hunting spot and drove home, I saw 42 cars that belonged to hunters on the back road. That amazed me since only 100 tags existed, there were 2 other entry points, and this entry point was soo small. The concentration of hunters in that one area must have been incredible! Saturday came and once again I was out to my spot before sunrise (there was a foot of snow on the ground now). As it started to get a little bit lighter, I spotted two moose about a half a mile away, part way up a mountain. It wasn't quite light enough for me to be able to tell if they were cows or bulls. Deciding that I didn't want to risk someone else taking one of the moose before it got light enough for me to determine the sex, I packed up my stuff and headed in their direction. I figured that I would rather find out they were cows by walking through all the snow to get to them rather than waiting that same amount of time to find out they were bulls, and then pursuing them. Well it turns out, the moose I saw were a mamma moose and a yearling. As I was looking closer at the yearling, I noticed that it had a couple little bumps behind its eyes and in front of the ears where the rack usually is. I would estimate the size of the bumps as half of a golf ball. Anyway, this got me really thinking... is that a bull or a cow? And if it's a bull, is it a legal animal? I wasn't sure it was a bull, as I have never really studied yearling anatomy or ever thought I would approach one with the slightest inclination of taking the animal. Since being here, I have set my standards as high as possible and have vowed to never shoot an animal unless I am 100% confident it is legal (this can be difficult when judging antler, sex, and horns). I was not confident that these bumps were on males only, as I could see these also being on cow yearlings as well, but they may just flatten out and never sprout a rack. Unsure if it was a bull or not, I called all of the people I had in my phone that knew anything about hunting. The consensus was 50/50. That didn't really help my confidence on determining whether or not the bull was legal. It was impossible to see it's penis and I tried to stick around long enough to watch it urinate, but that never happened. If I would have determined that it was a bull, I would have then been faced with my next challenge... How do I feel about taking a legal animal that is still coupled with its mother? Well, it was a Saturday, and we were having a party that night for Halloween, so after watching the pair from 100 yards for a good 4 hours, I decided that it was time to head back. (Shooting a moose would have meant canceling our hosted party and spending all night dealing with the meat). I returned home thinking that I may have just passed up the first opportunity for myself to harvest a legal animal. I had to find out if that yearling was a bull or a cow. To help me in determining this, I consulted a bunch of moose growth resources, looked at information on the Alaska Department of Fishing and Game, and consulted the Alaska hunting forums. In summary, I determined that the moose I was looking at was in deed a yearling bull. My next thought after making this conclusion was determining if I really would have shot the bull. I had mixed emotions about this, but basically concluded that yes, if given that chance again, I would take a shot at the moose. Granted, I would much rather take a bull with a massive (or at least bigger) rack; but if it was between not putting meat in the freezer or harvesting a legal animal that wasn't ideal, I would harvest a yearling. For those that disagree with my train of thought, I encourage you to read this post on our Alaska hunting forums. http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/showthread.php/106954-Would-you-shoot-a-quot-calf-quot It takes a poll on this subject and then people defend their reasoning. There is some very interesting information there! I was planning on going hunting again Sunday, but it turns out I had a little too much fun the night before and missed sunrise. That's ok tho; I needed a day to recover, plus, I had all of that week off. Monday comes around and once again, I'm headed hunting. I called the ADFG and they said it was a busy weekend with 7 total bulls being taken so far... 3 left! The weather was pretty crappy again and not very reassuring. In fact, I almost decided to stay home that day because I could not find my hunting license ANYWHERE. Lucky me, I purchased my hunting license online and I had a paper printout that I could carry with me (almost forgot I had it). So the time I spent looking for my license put me behind the morning rush traffic and I actually parked my car as the light was starting to come up. There was a couple more inches of snow on the ground and I knew I couldn't glass the valley very well from my normal spot since their was basically a mini blizzard taking place at that time. Because of that, I decided to just start hiking on the path toward where I saw the pair of moose two days earlier. On my way there, I noticed some very fresh tracks from a single moose on the path I was headed. Since visibility was about 300 feet, I decided to just follow the tracks and hopefully stumble across a bull at the end of them. The tracks started to head down the mountain and in to some deep snow and timber. It wasn't an ideal direction in case I happened to harvest it, but it was still generally close the truck. As I'm winding down the mountain and weaving in and out of alders, I caught myself having an extremely difficult time following the path the moose took. I am constantly amazed at the terrain and brush that a moose can navigate through without any trouble! Well after following the tracks for a good 1.5 hours, I finally came across a moose. To my disappointment, I was staring at a big cow moose. I just stood there and watched her for about 20 minutes when I noticed some more movement in the background... it was another moose! The moose came into the clearing, and I'll be damned, it was the same yearling I spotted two days ago. The tracks I was following did not belong to these moose, but somehow, they led me right to them. Already deciding before I left for my hunt that day that I would harvest the yearling if it crossed my path again, I knew my tag was soon to be filled. Unfortunately, we were in some extremely thick brush and stalking and seeing where the moose were was extremely difficult, not to mention dangerous. A momma moose is nothing to mess around with!!!! I waited patiently for the moose to move elsewhere and I probably waited a good 2 hours only to have them move a couple hundred feet. That entire time, I was fairly close to them ( I would estimate about 200 feet). They knew I was there, but moose typically adopt a carefree attitude and don't pay much attention to things smaller than them. Well after these two hours of being in their presence, they started to get a little edgy. They started trotting down the mountain and stopping to look back at me. Of course I pursued them and they continued to trot away. There was a couple times during this chase that I had my gun set up and ready to take a shot, but I could not get a clear shot of the yearling. I ended up chasing them down hill for about 30 minutes. Getting a shot on the yearling became increasingly difficult as they were now facing away from me constantly, and the moose were staying close together. I actually ended up below them after pursing for a while. This made them turn back uphill and separate by about 20 feet in an opening before some alders. This was my chance. The yearling never gave me a good broadside shot, but quartering away was going to have to do. With little time to think, I lifted my rifle, judged where the fatal organs rested, and took the shot. The yearling bolted 10 feet.... and dropped. The momma cow stood there, unknowing of what just happened. Before the cow could realize what just took place, I high-tailed it out of there. I got 300 yards away and stopped to recover myself. I noticed at that time that I had a good amount of blood dripping from my chin. Apparently, when I took the shot the gun shot back with enough force to have my scope gash my forehead open. I didn't even feel it happen, or know it was dripping down my entire face. In foresight, I really should have gotten a couple stitches to close it up, but I didn't have time and a suture bandaid worked good later on... After I gathered myself, I took a moment to pray in gratitude for the yearling giving its life to feed many mouths. The next couple hours were the longest ones of the day. I could not start to work on field dressing the moose until the cow was no longer protective of her young. It was now a waiting game. I shot the moose at 1 PM. I proceeded to climb back up the mountain, find a place where I could see the kill sight, and watch how the mamma cow reacted, hopefully and eventually leaving the yearling. In the mean time, I contacted a couple people and lined up 5 helping hands to hike in, help field dress, and pack the moose out. I sat there, watching the cow walking around wondering why her young would not get up. In between patches of fog and 20 minute intervals of sight and then hiding beneath the clouds, the mamma cow would not separate more than 100 feet from the yearling. It was a very bitter sweet moment for me to reflect on what had just happened... I would be lying if I said I didn't mourn along with the cow. Watching that, one can't help but try to relate to how the mamma cow was feeling. I do not enjoy killing. Killing is the least rewarding aspect of hunting and fishing for me. The thrill and reward is in the preparation, execution of a plan, attempting to concur various challenges, and to hopefully provide sustenance for my family and friends. After sitting in the snow and cold for a little over 5 hours, I was starting to shiver quite a bit. I had not eaten lunch that day, I was hiking the whole morning in fresh snow, and my water was completely frozen in my camel pack. I was drained. In the mean time, the cow had yet to leave the yearlings side. It was looking like we were going to have to force the separation in order to dress the moose. The crew arrived to my location on the mountain around 6PM. We slowly headed down the mountain to the location of the kill. As we approached it, we were extremely cautious as the situation and attitude of the cow was very unpredictable. Luckily, the cow was rather submissive to our presence and never once suggested any aggression towards us. The power of numbers proved beneficial here. The cow watched from 300 feet away as we walked up to the yearling and set up our field dressing gear. Danielle was on Cow patrol and myself and the guys started to dress the yearling. Soon after we started, the cow lost interest and ventured off into the valley. It was a good thing too as darkness soon fell and it would have been extremely hard to keep tabs on a pissed off moose in the dark. We put our headlamps on and proceeded to cut up the moose. After a couple hours, we had everything cleaned up and packed ready to hike to the truck. Luckily, we had just enough people to pack the entire moose out in one trip (This would have took at least 1 other trip on a full grown bull). It's a good thing it only took us each 1 load because by the time we were ready to leave, it was snowing extremely hard and accumulated a couple more inches of fun to walk through... up a mountain... 1.5 miles... with 80 +/- 20 pounds (depending on what was being carried) apiece on our backs. It was a pretty grueling hike and my legs were CRAMPING bad by the end of the hike. This was the first time I had done any kind of exercise for 6 weeks. 6 weeks prior I broke two bones in my ankle from playing basketball. Typically, I would have been conditioning myself with cardio and a weighted pack prior to a hunt... but my basketball injury prevented that from happening. Once at the truck, we relaxed for a little bit. I was pretty beat, but it was hard to ignore the beauty of huge snowflakes emptying from the sky to the top of the mountain where we stood, knowing I just had 5 good friends help me complete the challenge I set out to conquer, that very few have succeeded at. I got home at 10:30PM and I spent the rest of the night on into the late morning cleaning and preparing the meat. I ended up staking out a lot of the meat and packaging it myself. I took the quarters and ribs to a local butcher to have the remainder processed there. Overall, we got back a little under 200 pounds of moose meat.... delicious table fare that is very lean and healthy! So far, I have had the privilege of harvesting both a moose and black bear. I just entered Danielle and I's names into the hunting draws for next year. We are guaranteed a caribou tag and hopefully we get drawn for another species as well. I am predicting that Danielle will get in on the action with a caribou and bear next year... I have my next goal set on a mountain animal... a goat or perhaps a sheep.

A view of the moose taken from my iPhone through my binoculars.

He was a chubby thing... and hairy too

I tried to clean it out, but it started to bleen again. Every high-powered rifle hunter has to get scoped at least once.

Sitting on the mountain looking down in to the valley where my moose lay. The clouds kept pushing in making it difficult to watch anything for more than 20 minutes. Good thing I was sitting there for 5 hours... I got plenty of 20 minute intervals :)

Success! We didn't have to worry about the meat getting too warm since there was snow EVERYWHERE. We didn't even have to worry about the bears since they were all denned up by now.

Close up. The next one I shoot I promise will have a rack that may get in the way of me being in the picture.