Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
After 3 long years my 1st moose hunt finally came together. I started planning this hunt in 2019 and originally booked this hunt for fall of 2020 for northern Alberta, Canada. Then covid hit and Canada shut down the borders. 2020 was a complete no go then in 2021 Canada kept pushing back the border opening date and eventually had to cancel again. Very frustrating.
Our plan was to set-up a base camp early morning on Saturday then start hunting and scouting. This was a real deep Canadian bush hunt with ~15,000 acres of raw forest land with no development. We drove to the Provincial park and traveled on logging roads for about 15 miles. Then loaded up the Side by side & ATV and travel another 4 miles into the forest to our base camp.
Moose hunting is similar to Elk hunting. Traveling along trails and scouting the logged wood cut blocks looking for sign and glassing the valley's and hillsides for moose. We were hunting just after the 1st rut phase so the bulls who had already bread a cow were on the move. Calling was real critical with both cow calls and bull grunting. We spent 5 days scouting, glassing, and calling. On day 3 we glassed a group of 3 bulls and 2 cows & a calf. There were about 1000 yards from us and we saw a shooter bull hot on a cow, The cow started to move quickly with the bull in hot pursuit. We hgh tailed about a mile ahead of them to try and intercept. By the time we got to our intercept point just in time to see the bull chasing the cow into the deep bush ... we were too late. We moved into the area and tried calling. We had several young bulls respond and come out to within 70 yards from but our target bull was a no show. It was late near closing so we backed out.
The next morning we set-up high on the hillside just before dawn as we did not want to go down into the valley and spook the bull. The bulls after breeding will stick around if they know there are more cows in the area. The plan was to call to draw that bull out. Within about 5 minutes my guide heard a bull grunting about a mile away. It was a cold clear morning and sound travels a long way. Moose also have amazing hear. My guide started with several cow calls followed up with a few grunts. The bull responded and was a bout ~ mile away down in the valley. We kept this sequence up for a bout 10 minutes and saw the bull moving in our direction about a 1/2 mile away. he kept grunting and responding to the guides cow calls. It our target bull and now it was go time as my guide called the bull to within 70 yards from us. He finally moved presenting a shot opportunity. I put a good shot to his broadside and he ran off into a thicket about 60 yards away.
We decided to back out for a couple hours and give him time to expire. We came back in and started working our way slowly to the thicket and saw lying down about 30 yards in front of us but it looked like he was watching us. We took a few more steps and he jumped up and turned and I was able to put the kill shot behind his shoulder.
He was a great mature bull moose about 6 years old and had a 41" spread. They are very large animals and we estimated him at around 1300 lbs. No came the arduous task of processing the bull. We had to remove the 4 leg quarters, backstraps, tenderloin, and other meat then skin out the hind quarters. This took about 5 hours and the fly's & bees were terrible. We also had to be on guard because there were bears & wolves patrolling the area looking for a meal.
It was an amazing experience and hunt! Moose hunting is a real rush! Camping out in the bush, stalking, chasing, and calling to locate the moose. We probably put on 8-10 miles each day on the atv & walking. Very thankful and blessed to have finally experience this hunt.
The valley top we set-up on that morning.
Amazing habitat of poplar, aspen, birch, spruce and alder...
Here is the processing side and hauling the meat out ...
The 2 hind quarters ...
Our plan was to set-up a base camp early morning on Saturday then start hunting and scouting. This was a real deep Canadian bush hunt with ~15,000 acres of raw forest land with no development. We drove to the Provincial park and traveled on logging roads for about 15 miles. Then loaded up the Side by side & ATV and travel another 4 miles into the forest to our base camp.
Moose hunting is similar to Elk hunting. Traveling along trails and scouting the logged wood cut blocks looking for sign and glassing the valley's and hillsides for moose. We were hunting just after the 1st rut phase so the bulls who had already bread a cow were on the move. Calling was real critical with both cow calls and bull grunting. We spent 5 days scouting, glassing, and calling. On day 3 we glassed a group of 3 bulls and 2 cows & a calf. There were about 1000 yards from us and we saw a shooter bull hot on a cow, The cow started to move quickly with the bull in hot pursuit. We hgh tailed about a mile ahead of them to try and intercept. By the time we got to our intercept point just in time to see the bull chasing the cow into the deep bush ... we were too late. We moved into the area and tried calling. We had several young bulls respond and come out to within 70 yards from but our target bull was a no show. It was late near closing so we backed out.
The next morning we set-up high on the hillside just before dawn as we did not want to go down into the valley and spook the bull. The bulls after breeding will stick around if they know there are more cows in the area. The plan was to call to draw that bull out. Within about 5 minutes my guide heard a bull grunting about a mile away. It was a cold clear morning and sound travels a long way. Moose also have amazing hear. My guide started with several cow calls followed up with a few grunts. The bull responded and was a bout ~ mile away down in the valley. We kept this sequence up for a bout 10 minutes and saw the bull moving in our direction about a 1/2 mile away. he kept grunting and responding to the guides cow calls. It our target bull and now it was go time as my guide called the bull to within 70 yards from us. He finally moved presenting a shot opportunity. I put a good shot to his broadside and he ran off into a thicket about 60 yards away.
We decided to back out for a couple hours and give him time to expire. We came back in and started working our way slowly to the thicket and saw lying down about 30 yards in front of us but it looked like he was watching us. We took a few more steps and he jumped up and turned and I was able to put the kill shot behind his shoulder.
He was a great mature bull moose about 6 years old and had a 41" spread. They are very large animals and we estimated him at around 1300 lbs. No came the arduous task of processing the bull. We had to remove the 4 leg quarters, backstraps, tenderloin, and other meat then skin out the hind quarters. This took about 5 hours and the fly's & bees were terrible. We also had to be on guard because there were bears & wolves patrolling the area looking for a meal.
It was an amazing experience and hunt! Moose hunting is a real rush! Camping out in the bush, stalking, chasing, and calling to locate the moose. We probably put on 8-10 miles each day on the atv & walking. Very thankful and blessed to have finally experience this hunt.
The valley top we set-up on that morning.
Amazing habitat of poplar, aspen, birch, spruce and alder...
Here is the processing side and hauling the meat out ...
The 2 hind quarters ...
