Toad River Hunt

[DrMike]

Best of luck to you on your hunt. Which WMU are you hunting?

 

[Mighty Peace]

Best of luck to you on your hunt. Which WMU are you hunting?

We hunt in WMU 520. Was a good trip. Left at 7am. Camp hauled in on quads and rhinos and tubtrailers. Camp set up by 2pm. First bull moose down by about 6:45pm approx 500m west of camp in a new block :mrgreen: :mrgreen: . Second bull moose down wednesday morning.

IMO, the rut wasnt on yet. Bulls come in quietly. Seen a 50" sunday evening prior to my buddy getting the first bull. Seen the same bull in the same block the next morning, 2 of us put the sneek on but was gone into the block after an 800m stalk. Tried to suck him out...just would come out.

Went back wednesday morning same block, heard 2 shots to the NE around 9am. Not too long after had 1 grunt and trees crack and my buddy got ready, but the bull was just wondering inthe heavy woods and wont come out to play.

Anyhow, FUN had by all..another Successful trip. Group decided to come home friday after some talk @ 6am still in our sleeping bags- hunt the morning, pack up after and go home OR sleep till 9am pack up camp and go home....in order to cut, make hamburger and wrap all meat with everyone around still for another day. Started @ 10am saturday, finished and all cleaned up by 3:30pm.

One guy still has a tag till end of OCTOBER, and a 4 of us may make a day trip or 2. I picked up a late season Undersubscribed tag for November. Another bull would sure be sweet as 2 moose spread out between 7 guys doesnt goo too to far. 2 guys have cow elk tags too, so we will hasve lots of meat for a group.

 

[DrMike]

Congratulations, MP. It sounds as if you did well. As I recall, there is some pretty thick bush around you there.

 

[SJB358]

Awesome hunt MP. You Canucks are living the dream! Love to hear about your moose hunts right next door! Great hunt. Throw us some pictures and all the tech data you usually post for us! Scotty

 

[Mighty Peace]

Thanks guys. It sure is a fun time........seeing couple friends I only see once a year that live 8hrs away. We had a rookie (18year old) in camp this year....comes from a family with alot of money and his grandma thought it would be good to come out with us (one of the guy's nephew) and experience something different...flew in from Vancouver. We all had our doubts, but he jumped right in, wanting to learn skinning and was there for all of the hunt with the second moose on the wednesday morning.....the bull appearing, the 2 shots, help the dressing out, go back to camp on his own, get a tub trailer, help quarter it up and debone the rib cage. Pretty good young man in my books!!

I dont have any pics of the 2 bulls on my camera...just the quarters hanging in the trees :mrgreen: and couple camp pics.

The first bull had an antler busted off near the base on one side...maybe went 24-30" spread overall....same with the other..closer to 30"-32"........we dont care......meat eaters first. Our motto is first bull...if its legal (4" tine length min.) OR its a dandy like mine last year, it goes down!!

Even sweeter to have some pressure off on the first day sure helps. We had all the meat cleaned up, cut, hamburger ground and all roasts/tenderloins and hamb. wrapped up saturday within 5.5hours of starting. I'm going to BBQ a loin this weekend.

Here is pic of my bull last year on first afternoon/evening out. This bull come charging in, grunting, splashing thru a creek, and like a D10 Cat thru the trees to the cutline......horny as hell with about half hour of legal light...B O O M !! 180gr AccuBond reload from my 300WM.

Took pics after we dressed out the bull so we had some light to field dress.

Sorry for the big sized pics...thought camera was on email sized setting when taken not 1MB.

 

[DrMike]

Great camp, MP. Those quarters hanging on the meat pole are sure pretty! Good report of the rookie's introduction to the hunt.

 

[SJB358]

Awesome pictures MP! Those are awesome! What a great picture of the meat hanging! Scotty

 

[Mighty Peace]

Thanks. The meat pole is a good pic.

We dragged the first bull back to camp as it was taken in a new cutblock about 500m behind our camp.....then skinned out, quartered up and deboned the rib cage and put the tenderloins and backstraps in a couple of pails along with other trimming to be used for the hamburger. The second moose was quartered up and deboned in the field and hauled back to camp in the tub trailer as there was a small stretch of muskeg that was really wet and smelled bad of H2S and we didint want to risk tainting the meat dragging the bull back to camp. Thats why we have the tubs. We started couple years ago to debone the rib cage.....why haul and hoist the weight of it.

I would say both bulls were taken within 1-1.5 miles apart. Second bull was about the 1.5 miles from camp too. We had a little jet black black bear come out on a couple of us on thursday morning...come quietly out of the bush and headed thru the cut block then stopped as he seen 3 un-natural objects with rifles trained on him.....he just waited a minute then sauntered back off....I was trying to get my camera out of my waist pouch but not in time...bear was about 40 yards away.

Another group of hunters that camp a few miles away from us got 1 bull but got 2 wolves (big black and a white/grey) on the wednesday morning we got the second bull. A couple of us heard their shots and then the rest of the wolf pack howl as they would of only been a mile or 2 on the other side of a creek from where we were set up for that morning hunt.

Those guys were cow calling and the wolves came right into their calls.

I have a late season tag for moose in November and will definately make a couple day trips in by camp....take my boys for a trip (5/3.5) along with another buddy and his son. :mrgreen: Should be FUN!! Hopefully not too cold for the kids.

 

[C.Smith]

Oops wrong one.

Corey

 

[Elkman]

Loved the write up and the pics. Thanks for sharing !!!! Moose meat looks good