A
Anonymous
Guest
I just returned from the field with a pickup load of moose meat, how it got there was the result of some of the worst hunting decisions my partner and I ever made, that is except one...using enough gun.
It started on Friday evening...from our glassing vantage we spotted a couple of moose in a pond eating vegetation with only an hour of light left. We hiked out the ridgeline until we could spot antlers on them both. Not monsters- but a couple of 3 year old "meat moose"....our favorite kind. We took off as fast as we could to close the distance before the sun set.
The terrain was a nightmare- a mishmash of floating peat bogs, tussock and pressure ridges. By the time we got into position to shoot we were on a slight rise with 300 yards of willows between us and the moose and they were still happily munching on plants a solid 150' from shore in about 4' of water.
The conventional wisdom is that shooting moose in the water is a bad idea. It is, for very good reason. I threw out a couple of cow calls, trying to draw one of the bulls to the shore...but they ignored me profoundly. With failing light, my partner lined up on the largest bull with the 33 Nosler and asked me how bad it could be. I told him that I was in the game for better or worse but one moose was enough given how this was going to go.
With seconds of useful light left, the moose turned and my partner pulled the trigger. The 250gr AB entered behind the front shoulder, exited the paunch and shattered the rear leg at the knee. It managed to turn 180 degrees and the second shot entered behind the last rib and popped out behind the offside shoulder. Dead on its feet, it turned again- broadside and my .300 hit it behind the shoulder and shattered ribs on the way in and out and taking the top of the heart with it. With the last piece of light, my partner notched his tag and we could confirm one antler sticking out of the water.
We hiked back to camp and got equipped for a long and miserable night. Equipped with chest waders, a Coleman lantern, and a couple coils of rope we returned to the moose and I waded out into the water. By the time I got a rope around the moose's rear legs..it had achieved a nice buoyancy. I was able to tow the moose (all 1000 pounds of it!) back to the shoreline single handed. Deeper water and I'd been out there in my skivvies at 35F swimming to the moose, shallower and we'd have had to drug the moose along the mire in the bottom. 4' deep was perfect.
We got the moose back to the shore, which was some floating peat bog and we worked into the early morning (up to our waists in water ) by headlamp with the lantern hissing. A cold wind blowing and an brilliant aurora overhead just made it uniquely Alaskan. We packed it all out the following morning back to camp. Once the moose was down, it was just time, effort and misery to get the meat recovered- now hanging at the house awaiting processing.
Last week I published a piece in The Alaska Life about the perfect moose rifle...several commenters spoke out condescendingly about my treatment of the small bores. Yeah- this moose represented how I formed my opinion exactly, an imperfect angle at distance, in failing light, with the real possibility of a moose getting in deeper water or reaching the brush line on the far side of the lake and running off to die in grizzly country..in the dark. This was just no job for a small bore- we needed to not only kill the moose, but break him down in place or potentially lose him. As much as my partner and I both shoot and appreciate rifles like the 6.5s, the 270 and the 257WBY...neither of us would have attempted it with any of them.
It started on Friday evening...from our glassing vantage we spotted a couple of moose in a pond eating vegetation with only an hour of light left. We hiked out the ridgeline until we could spot antlers on them both. Not monsters- but a couple of 3 year old "meat moose"....our favorite kind. We took off as fast as we could to close the distance before the sun set.
The terrain was a nightmare- a mishmash of floating peat bogs, tussock and pressure ridges. By the time we got into position to shoot we were on a slight rise with 300 yards of willows between us and the moose and they were still happily munching on plants a solid 150' from shore in about 4' of water.
The conventional wisdom is that shooting moose in the water is a bad idea. It is, for very good reason. I threw out a couple of cow calls, trying to draw one of the bulls to the shore...but they ignored me profoundly. With failing light, my partner lined up on the largest bull with the 33 Nosler and asked me how bad it could be. I told him that I was in the game for better or worse but one moose was enough given how this was going to go.
With seconds of useful light left, the moose turned and my partner pulled the trigger. The 250gr AB entered behind the front shoulder, exited the paunch and shattered the rear leg at the knee. It managed to turn 180 degrees and the second shot entered behind the last rib and popped out behind the offside shoulder. Dead on its feet, it turned again- broadside and my .300 hit it behind the shoulder and shattered ribs on the way in and out and taking the top of the heart with it. With the last piece of light, my partner notched his tag and we could confirm one antler sticking out of the water.
We hiked back to camp and got equipped for a long and miserable night. Equipped with chest waders, a Coleman lantern, and a couple coils of rope we returned to the moose and I waded out into the water. By the time I got a rope around the moose's rear legs..it had achieved a nice buoyancy. I was able to tow the moose (all 1000 pounds of it!) back to the shoreline single handed. Deeper water and I'd been out there in my skivvies at 35F swimming to the moose, shallower and we'd have had to drug the moose along the mire in the bottom. 4' deep was perfect.
We got the moose back to the shore, which was some floating peat bog and we worked into the early morning (up to our waists in water ) by headlamp with the lantern hissing. A cold wind blowing and an brilliant aurora overhead just made it uniquely Alaskan. We packed it all out the following morning back to camp. Once the moose was down, it was just time, effort and misery to get the meat recovered- now hanging at the house awaiting processing.
Last week I published a piece in The Alaska Life about the perfect moose rifle...several commenters spoke out condescendingly about my treatment of the small bores. Yeah- this moose represented how I formed my opinion exactly, an imperfect angle at distance, in failing light, with the real possibility of a moose getting in deeper water or reaching the brush line on the far side of the lake and running off to die in grizzly country..in the dark. This was just no job for a small bore- we needed to not only kill the moose, but break him down in place or potentially lose him. As much as my partner and I both shoot and appreciate rifles like the 6.5s, the 270 and the 257WBY...neither of us would have attempted it with any of them.
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