Moose Dreams Can Come True

Big Game Hunting

Jul 8

Elizabeth was going moose hunting this fall. She was excited. She told everyone. Except Fish & Game. So they didn’t pull her name from the hat. No tag. No moose hunt. No moose. But moose fever remains.

You know buck fever? Moose fever is worse. This animal is, after all, the world’s biggest deer. Take an exceptional, oversized Dakota whitetail, stuff it inside an Alaska-Yukon bull moose and you’ll have room left over to cram in a 6x6 bull elk, two pronghorns, and a nice Coues buck.

This means when you’re sitting against a dwarf spruce in an auburn Alaskan taiga forest moaning like a cow in love and a bull steps out, you’ll wish you were standing. He’ll tower over you like something out of Star Wars. Legs the height of pasture fenceposts. NBA center stats at the shoulder hump. Antlers spanning six feet, scratching the clouds. No clouds? Hide in the antler shade. Fortunately, Elizabeth was standing when her first bull came in.

This was a 2017 hunt. We were canoeing a shallow lake in far northwest Alberta, calling to the shoreline when we heard antlers. Typically antlers don’t say much, but when one bull slams his against those of his adversary, they talk like a rack of spilled baseball bats. It’s a powerful, rattling, ringing, bone-on-bone joyful sound. Especially after six days of silence.

We paddled faster. But not quite fast enough. By the time we reached shore, the bats had been gathered up and put away. The wind was good. The woods and brush were too dense for them to have seen us. We tiptoed in. Tattered lichens, limbs, and leaves littered the battleground. Where were the combatants? Should we still-hunt, follow tracks, call?

And then someone spilled another rack of bats. The dueling duo had merely chased themselves farther away. We moaned to lure them back, Elizabeth standing with her 7mm-08 Kimber racked and ready. And here they came, ground thumping, brush crackling, wood splintering, palms rocking, flashing in the sun. The fastest bull stopped at easy bow range. Behind a stunted spruce. But not stunted enough. All we could see were antlers. Wait him out. Two steps in either direction would expose his chest.

But the wind switched. I cursed as it caressed my neck. The bull whirled, ran, flashing oh too briefly between the trees. The second one dashed through a gap in the woods a hundred yards back.

Elizabeth still hasn’t recovered from that near miss. Her fever abates from time to time, but when the aspen begin to flame so does her ardor for another crack at a moose.

I can’t blame her. I contracted my moose fever many years ago in British Columbia, up in the high basins of the Rockies a long horse ride from camp after a longer bush plane ride to camp. Same yellow poplars and hunter-green spruce. Same lichens and willows and rusty birch leaves. But more moose. A young bull prancing right in, a grunt with every step. Distant bulls cruising the mountain flanks. A stud commanding a harem of 11 cows in a high basin. That one came home with me. And others many times since.

You see, shooting a moose is no more cure for moose fever than hunting one and not shooting. It isn’t the shot so much as the attempt and the places in which you attempt it. Air so crisp you feel as if you’re levitating. Leaves like fireworks. Rivers like molten ribbons pouring into lakes as crisp and clean as the air above them.

Wolves howling, cranes yodeling, and moose whining and grunting like it’s 1492 and we’ve just reached shore in a world we thought we’d lost.

Gear for Moose Hunts

Here’s some gear I like for moose hunts. Depending on the habitat where you hunt, you might not need the waders, but they are excellent where creeks, ponds, and rain are abundant: