Moose Lockdown
The moose was in a clearcut 75 yards from the truck when we spotted it. Don drifted to a stop and we slowly opened our doors and eased out onto the gravel. Jeffrey quietly loaded his magnum and I handed him the shooting sticks. Taking his time, he adjusted the height of the bipod and set the rifle on the padded U. Finding the bull in his scope he gave it a long, careful look. Jeffrey is careful in all that he does. After a minute or two he looked back at me – I had my fingers in my ears.
But I’m jumping to the end of the story. Let’s go back to the beginning, and at the beginning of every Maine moose hunt is the lottery. Back in 1999 I won a permit and harvested a tasty young six-point bull south of St. Agatha – 465 lbs. of tender moose succulence. In 2005 my son drew a tag and we (both of us) shot a monster bull in Wytopitlock – 968 lbs. of chewyness, but a great MASTC trophy. So in 2012 I wasn’t really that excited about getting another trophy for the wall, however, a good friend of mine from Wisconsin was. So I listed Jeffrey as my sub-permittee and filed my application online. In June, at the end of a long family dinner up at the lake I remembered that the drawing was that day so I got out my iPad and looked up my name in the lottery results. “OMG!” was all I could say (or something to that effect). I immediately called Jeffrey in Wisconsin and he had the exact same reaction.
We came to an agreement: I would supply the permit, find the guide, bring the truck and trailer, and he would pay for guide, accommodations, and shoot the moose. I immediately gathered guide recommendations and selected Don Burnett at #9 Lake Outfitters in Bridgewater. Jeffrey and I talked regularly that summer and into the fall, planning every detail of the hunt. Jeffrey has a cabin in Northern Wisconsin with an elk on the wall that he shot in Montana – his goal was a trophy moose to go up on the wall next to his elk. I told him that the hardest part about a moose hunt was the lottery – I’d tagged out on Monday in 1999 and Tuesday in 2005. It got to the point that the only concern in Jeffrey’s mind was whether the moose on his wall should be looking to the right or to the left.
Before booking the hunt I talked to Don and quizzed him on his hunting techniques. As far as I know there are two strategies for hunting moose and I’ve used them both. You can drive around on the logging roads and hope to find a bull crossing the road or standing in a clearcut, or you can scout the area, know where the big bulls live, and call one in by emulating the sounds of a lovesick cow moose. The little bull in 1999 was browsing in a clearcut, oblivious to the rut or the sounds of the do-it-yourself-ers piling out of the Suburban, and allowed me to walk up to 30 yards and shoot him in the neck. He wasn’t the trophy I was looking for, but I had spent the whole day driving the logging roads and was just fine filling my tag and getting out of that truck.
In 2005 my 14 year-old son, Haven, and I hired a guide that knew every road and swamp in the miles around Mattawamkeag, and on opening day of the October week “Bird Dog” had us back in what he called a spider web. An area that had been logged a few years prior. The spider web was a maze of old skidder trails and bog about half a mile from the closest logging road. Bird Dog showed us a moose wallow – a depression where the local alpha bull had urinated in the mud and rolled in the mixture. He directed us to sit at a trail crossroads near the wallow in a spot that had good shooting lanes while he hiked over to the far side of the spider web to call the bull. He told us to watch the trails and if a moose came we should hit it in the shoulder or spine to “break it down right here” – he didn’t want to have to recover it from the thick stuff.
The call Bird Dog used was nothing more than a cone of birch bark he’d made to amplify his moaning imitation of an estrus cow looking for a date. We couldn’t hear him call, but the alpha bull sure did. We’d been waiting less than 15 minutes when we heard a huffing sound approaching from one of the twitch trails. I motioned excitedly to Haven that a moose was coming (I used the universal sign for moose – you know, hands above your head with palms spread wide) and we got ready for the shot. The monster bull came into view, walking fast with purpose (imagine how fast you’d be moving if your once-a-year girlfriend finally called), and as the trail turned he was moving broadside to us. I put my gun up and was just finding the moose in the scope when Haven fired. The moose went down into the tall weeds like a sack of potatoes – game over, just like that.
Or so I thought. I couldn’t see the bull through all the weeds, but I’ve shot deer in the spine and expect a little thrashing around as they expire. I was focused on Haven, making sure his gun was on safe and congratulating him for making a great shot. To my absolute shock, the moose jumped up and ran full speed back the way he came – moving faster than you can ever imagine a 1,000 lb. animal could move.
For the rest of the day we searched the entire area for the bull. There were a few drops of blood, but nowhere near the amount you’d expect from a seriously wounded moose. At one point we thought that he actually circled us as we pushed through the thickest parts of an overgrown cutting. At the end of the day an exasperated Bird Dog said “don’t expect me to come up with another setup like that one.” We never figured what part of the moose Haven could have hit to knock him flat, draw superficial blood, but allow him to run off like a freight train – I shouldn’t have to tell you how many times I have replayed that event in my mind.
We were out the next morning with Bird Dog calling in a swampy area that had promising sign, but to no avail – even though this was the second week of the season, the rut hadn’t fully kicked in. We loaded into the truck and were driving to another calling spot when a mature bull crossed the dirt road in front of us. He lingered long enough for Haven and me to get out, load our rifles, and sneak up the road to a place where I had a shot. I fired just as he was passing into thick woods and we ran down a parallel skidder trail to head him off. When we got down into the woods we could see him immobilized by my first shot, so we both shot again to finish him off. He was a giant specimen that fortune, not clever calling, had sent our way, and I admire him every day as he graces the wall of our family room, head turned slightly to the right.
Before booking the 2012 hunt with Don Burnett I made sure that he would be scouting for big bulls ahead of the season and would call one in for us – I wanted Jeffrey to get the full experience, rather than just a drive-by shooting. So on opening day we were deep in the woods well before first light, at a spot where Don had seen three bulls during the September season two weeks beforehand. He had guided two clients that week to harvest 50-inch bulls - the width of the trophy moose’s antler spread is commonly used to denote its size. As the sky got light and legal shooting time arrived, Don started to make estrus cow sounds using an electric call.
And so started a routine that went on for several days – Don would call, we would sit, we would wait, call again, repeat until it was obvious that no moose was going to respond, and then relocate to another spot. We took all the precautions of scent-free clothing, stealth, and using the wind to our advantage, and Don knew absolutely every moosey spot in Zone 6 – we visited them all. He even borrowed a vintage electronic game call that played a bootleg tape of a bull moose actually chasing and mating a cow in a swamp. There we were, three guys sitting back in the Maine woods, listening to the splashing and grunting of fine moose porn – and my wife wonders why I love hunting so much!
For three days we stuck to our moose calling plan, but on Wednesday afternoon we’d had enough – at Don’s suggestion we decided to get in the truck and drive the roads. The moose were obviously on “lockdown,” the phase of the rut where bulls and cows are paired-up and mating, not moving. Our only option was to visit all the likely spots with the hope of either catching a pair near the road, or a bull moving from one cow to the next. We cruised the woods, fields, and everywhere in between. At times we were so close to the Canadian border that my cell phone started racking-up roaming charges. Each day we would see one bull moose from the truck, and each night Jeffrey would be on the phone explaining to his kids why the moose wasn’t big enough for the cabin – he has eight-year-old triplets, so by the end of the week it got a little repetitive.
We joked that we had an allotment of one moose sighting per day – the problem was that the moose were getting progressively smaller. I always hear the sage advice “don’t pass-up on day one what you would shoot at the end of the week.” I don’t think that old saw works – our standards for a trophy bull got lower and lower each day, to the point that I’m sure Jeffrey would have shot Monday’s bull on Saturday. Which brings me to the beginning of this story – the moose in the clear cut, Jeffrey looking through the scope, and me with my fingers in my ears. Unfortunately the bull was a four-point and Jeffrey wasn’t going to have it on his wall. Our hunt was over and Jeffrey would be returning to Wisconsin empty handed.
A month later Jeffrey and I met in Ohio to bow hunt for whitetail deer. He shot a nice eight-point and that night on the phone the kids convinced him to have it mounted for the cabin. As we loaded it into the truck for the trip to the processor I asked him “are you going to have him looking to the right, or to the left?”