Alaska moose hunt 2014

[coyote101]

Ok, here it is. The account of my recent moose hunting trip in Alaska. Once again it is long and rambling and has a lot of pictures. I hope you enjoy the story, but if not just look at the pictures.

Thursday, September 4th
Drove to Nashville and spent the night at Embassy Suites .

Friday, September 5th
Got up at 4:00 am to catch the shuttle to Nashville airport. There was a little confusion, but I got there in plenty of time to check my bags and wait for the 6:30 am American Airlines flight to Los Angeles. I had a couple hour  layover in LA then an Alaska Airlines flight to Seattle. Another couple of hours layover in Seattle, then on to Anchorage.  After fifteen hours of travel I arrived on time at 6:30 pm and Pete was waiting for me at the airport. We went to Bass Pro Shop where I spent four hundred and eighty-five dollars for a non-resident hunting license and moose tag.

Saturday, September 6th
A day of packing and a trip to the range to make sure the rifle I was going to use was properly sighted in.
I shot a moose with my .375 H&H magnum back in 1997 while hunting with Pete's then, nineteen year old son. I only have one picture of me and that moose, and the rifle I'm holding in the picture belongs to Pete's son. It is the same rifle I used this trip, a stainless steel, laminated stocked Remington Model 700 in .338 Winchester Magnum.



Sunday, September 7th
We left Pete's house around 8:30 and made the five hour drive to where we parked the truck.



It took about an hour to get the machines loaded up and ready for the trip into the mountains to camp. It's only about ten miles, but the trail is treacherous and it took us over four and a half hours and involved some pushing, pulling and winching. I haven't ridden a four wheeler since making this trip two years ago, and I was worn out when we got to camp a little after 7:00 pm.


We set up our tent and sleeping gear, had dinner and chatted around the camp fire until going to bed around 10:00 pm.


Monday, September 8th
Opening Day. We loaded up our hunting gear for the hour ride to the Little Tok River basin where we would do some calling and glassing. We saw a cow a couple hundred yards away in a little lake we passed. She didn't seem to pay us much attention.



We visited the little trapper's cabin we spent a couple of nights in two years ago.  It was still in pretty good shape and looked inviting.


We spent a few hours glassing a distant mountain side from a hilltop, but saw nothing. We spent the rest of the afternoon hunting in the river basin with no luck, so we trudged back to camp after dark.


We met a fifth member of our party, Phil, who had arrived at camp during the day while we were out.

Tuesday, September 9th
We slept in and then spent five or six hours working on Phil's machine which had developed some serious issue the previous day. It would start, idle roughly, but die instantly if you attempted to advance the throttle.


In the afternoon we rode up to an overlook on a mountain side to glass the ponds and clearings below.



We spotted a fork horn bull in the lake near the trail over a mile away.  As a non-resident, I could only shoot a bull with minimum antler spread of fifty inches, or with at least four brow tines on one side. He was not legal for me, but the other guys could legally shoot a bull with a fork or spike. We decided to put on a stalk.

We rode the six wheeler to a spot a quarter mile or so from where the moose was when we left the overlook and began moving around the lake in hopes of closing the distance. We moved through the alders and brush till we got a close as we thought we safely could and then moved out to near the edge of the lake to see if he was still there. He was. Still in the water about a hundred and seventy-five yards away. But the wind was exactly wrong and he was still in the water. Shooting a moose in the water is asking for a lot of work. As Pete was glassing him to make sure he was in fact a spike, he began moving toward the shore. And he never stopped. Out of the water, up a slight rise and gone into the trees without pausing. He never presented a shot.


A few seconds later we heard splashing from that direction. A cow, followed by two bulls with small paddle antlers came into sight in the water near where the fork horn had been. They moved slowly to the shore line near where the fork had gone and then left, each one pausing for a couple of seconds around two hundred twenty yards before disappearing into the trees.   Neither one of them legal shooters.

The stalk was great fun even though it didn't pan out. I think the wind got us, but Rob, one of our fellow camp mates had remained on the overlook and watched the whole thing play out. He said the little fork horn appeared to have spooked and left when the other two bulls and the cow entered the water , unseen by us.

A couple of swans that stay on the lake swam over near us and trumpeted for a while before swimming away.
We watched a cow that came out on the far side of the lake until dark and then returned to camp.


Wednesday, September 10th
Rob, Pete and I traveled a couple of hours to get to an old camp site on a hilltop overlooking the river basin. As we got to the hilltop we spotted a BIG bull bedded down on a hillside. Rob lased him at five hundred eighty-five yards. We also spotted three cows not far from him. Pete and I decided to try to close the distance by climbing a ridge line to the higher ground above him. We went a few hundred yards, but Rob waved us back. It seems the big bull had moved shortly after we began our little trek.


The three of us decided to split up and check out the nearby terrain and see if we could maybe jump something up from the heavy cover.  I climbed the ridgeline Pete and I had begun to go up when we started after the big bull.



We didn't see anything else and eventually made the long ride back to camp.

Thursday, September 11th
Pete and I decided to try to follow an old moose buggy trail past the cabin deep into an area where we had never been before. We went for a couple of hours to a nice looking spot and called for a few hours. 


No luck and no moose spotted today. We did pick up a large antler shed from a creek bed on our way out.
On our way back to camp we learned that Wes'  Razor had broken a rear axle and the front wheel drive was working only intermittently. It was severely stuck in a deep mud hole on the trail with only one wheel drive. With a lot of winching and towing we managed to get it back to camp around ten thirty.

Friday, September 12th
We got up late, hung around camp for the morning and then spent the afternoon on the overlook glassing. We watched a cow from about a mile away for quite a while, but spotted no bulls.


Late in the afternoon Rob spotted a black bear on a mountainside about two miles away. It was just a speck in my binoculars, but was pretty clear when looking through Rob's spotting scope. It was the first bear I had ever seen in the wild.

Saturday, September 13th
Rob and Phil went out so Rob could pickup his wife and daughter and Phil could get some help for his broken machine. Pete and I hunted the valley across the trail from our camp. A lot of moosey looking terrain, but no moose today.


Wes shot a grouse with his .22 pistol and we had bacon wrapped grouse which was very tasty.


Rob came back with Leslie and Haley. We had a big sit down pasta dinner.


Sunday, September 14th
We helped Wes pack up his rig and head out. His front wheel drive was still intermittent so we helped him through the first third or so of the trail.


We linked up with Rob and family and went back to the hilltop where we had seen the big bull on Wednesday.


Pete called a bull from around a thousand yards who came in thrashing bushes and grunting. He appeared to be a 3X2 and maybe forty-five to forty-eight inches. Not a shooter, but very cool to watch. He closed to within three or four hundred yards and we lost him in the trees.

The moose's antlers are barely visible about half way up near the right side of the photo.


We never saw him again, but we later found that he had circled around below us and showed up a couple hundred yards away where Rob and his family were. They watch him for four or five minutes from about seventy-five yards and confirmed our estimate of his size.

When we got back to camp, Phil had returned with a box full of parts for his machine.

Monday, September 15th
We spent most of the day helping Phil work on his machine.  It turns out the problem was with the instrument cluster. It looks like nothing more than the speedometer, but houses a lot of electronic stuff and controls almost everything on the machine including the starter, timing/ignition and who knows what else. Anyhow, we got it running and tightened the chains and were ready to go.

We headed at out for the area Pete and I had gone on Thursday. We decided to set up a spike camp there for the last couple of days of the season. We didn't get away till 5:30 and it was 8:30 by the time we picked a spot and set up camp.

Shortly after 9:00 pm Pete called in a bull to about a hundred yards. It was a big bull, but too dark to be sure of his size or count brow tines.  He was fairly close for eight or ten minutes then just disappeared in the darkness.

Tuesday, September 16th
We were up at 6:30 and Pete and Phil were calling from camp. Nothing showed and Phil took off into the hills on foot. Pete and I were standing around bsing and eating oatmeal about 8:00 when a nice bull walked by about two hundred yards away across the creek. He turned and went up the hill before we could get a good look at him. It is amazing how quickly an animal the size of a moose can just fade into the trees and brush.

I decided to hunt the creek bottom and surrounding hills to the north of our camp for a while. After wandering around for an hour or so I climbed to the top of a small hill over the creek sat for a few minutes. I heard a bull grunting somewhere behind me, but never got a look at him. After a couple of hours I headed back to camp for lunch.

I got back to camp shortly after 1:00 and grabbed a snack. Pete had been in camp all morning, calling off and on, but had seen nothing. We talked for a bit and I sat down by the tent to chill for a few while Pete called some more.
About 1:45 I heard a distant grunt. It was faint but clearly there. As I got up to head over to where Pete was about thirty yards away, he was motioning to me that he had spotted a bull.

I grabbed my shooting stick and rifle and headed his way. I could catch glimpses of the bull through my binos on the hillside five or six hundred yards away. He was big and slowly closing the distance as he came down the hill. He was responding to Pete's calling and was grunting as he came. This went on for ten minutes or so but he finally hung up in the trees near the base of the hill across the creek. He was still around three hundred yards away and mostly obscured by the trees. We had gotten several good looks at his right antler and were pretty sure it had three brow tines, but couldn't really be sure about the left side.

He wasn't coming any closer, so Pete switched to cow calls. Next thing we know he is on the move again and crossing the low ground . I moved a few yards left to get a better view of where I thought he would show up. I lowered the binos, got the rifle up on the shooting stick and turned the scope up to 9X. Next thing I know, there he is. About eighty yards away facing us head on. He looked enormous in the scope, but not so big that I could be certain his antlers were wider than fifty inches.

I kept checking that left antler and I could only see three brow tines. He looked like a 3X3 and too close to fifty inches to be a sure thing. I told Pete it was too close to call and I wasn't going to shoot. It had been thrilling just having him come so close responding to the calling.

We stood like this for fifteen or twenty seconds then he turned to leave. And as he was turning I caught a glimpse of a forth brow tine on that left antler and shot. He took off dragging his right front leg with a clearly broken shoulder.  I lost him behind some thick trees and moved a couple of yards to get a better line of sight where I thought he would clear them.  A couple of seconds later he did and paused broadside about sixty-five yards away.  I shot him again, he turned a circle, stumbled and went down.
   
I gave him a couple of minutes then went to check him out. Stone cold dead! His left brow tine had jammed in a clump of moss  when he went down and I couldn't see the points. I had to grab the antlers and move his huge head to get a look at them.  He had four brow tines and a little nub that was just shy of being a fifth.  A legal bull regardless of antler width. (We later measured him at right at fifty-two inches, so legal both ways.)




Here is a good look at that left brow tine


We took a bunch of hero shots and got ready for the work ahead. Phil came back to help us with the field dressing and butchering which took several hours.


Alaska has some very strict laws on salvaging game meat and a charge of "Wanton Waste" can get you a $10,000 fine and a year in jail. We ended up with seven large game bags.  One for each of the hind quarters and front shoulders, one for the tenderloins and back straps, and two for the rib and neck meat and various other pieces we cleaned off the bones. The total weight when taken to the butcher was five hundred and three pounds. Those two bags of rib and neck meat and other pieces was a hundred and sixty-five pounds. Moose are big!


We finally finished and were back in camp about 8:20 pm.

Wednesday, September 17th
The last day of the season. We were up early calling again.  Around 8:00 Pete called a little bull with paddle antlers to about two hundred yards. He was clearly not a shooter, but was the forth bull we had seen in thirty-six hours. Pete and Phil hunted till about 1:00 pm then we loaded up and headed back to the river basin to finish out the day.


We glassed and called till dark and made our way back to camp. 

Thursday, September 18th
We packed up the permanent camp gear in 55 gallon drums and chained them to trees.



The rest we load on the machines and trailers and made the trip out on the muddy, mucky, torn up trail.


We made it back to the trucks in about three and a half hours, loaded the stuff on Pete's truck and made the long back drive home. We got to Pete's house just after 1:00 am after only one near moose strike on the highway driving home. 

Friday, September 19th
We spent most of the day cleaning up gear.


Saturday and Sunday
We did more cleaning and a little sight seeing around Anchorage.

Monday, September 22nd
I packed all my gear, made a box for the antlers and prepped for the flight home.

My flight left Anchorage at 12:50 am, took me to Los Angeles, and then on to Nashville. I was home by 6:00 pm Tuesday.

Pat

[JohnP]

Great story Pat, felt like I was there with ya.  Glad you had a good hunt and was successful.

[riverboss]

Congrats on a great hunt Pat. You sure had a great trip. It sounds like its alot of work and would be hard on the back! The pics make you feel like you were along for the trip which is the only way i will ever see that kind of rugged country. Thanks foe shareing.

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[Okanagan]

Yes!  Great story and pics and told so well I felt like we were with you.

[Frogman]

Wow!!  Awesome trip and story, Pat.  What an adventure!

Jim

[riverboss]

I couldnt stand the thought of letting one walk away because he was to small. And trying to make the 50" judgment would be very hard.

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[Hawks Feather]

Great story and pictures too.  I am sure that you had a very enjoyable time and the memories will last a lifetime.  Maybe I missed it, but did you get to eat any of your moose?  I have only eaten it a couple of times but it sure was good.

Jerry

[Okanagan]

Just read through this again for the 3rd or 4th time and have to repeat:  Wow!  What a great hunt and cool story!

[Dale]

congratulations... nothing like living the dream...

[HuntnCarve]

A great trip and write up Pat!  And a fine trophy to top it all off.  Thanks for taking us all along.

Dave

[nastygunz]

Amazing pix and hunt!

[slagmaker]

OH man!! What a trip. Thank you for the wright up and taking us along on a trip of a life time.

Love the scenery pics and the hero shots.



Wonder how my stew would be made with moose 

[HaMeR]

I envy you Pat!! That place is beautiful!!

Congratulations on a fine Moose!!!!! 

[Dave]

Thanks for taking the time to write it all up!  Great hunt whether you got one or not.  Congrats on a beauty - I can't believe how massive he is. 
I think that second pic of the two of you is incredible.

Also, the one pic of Wes heading out, he has a moose rack on his machine - did he also get one?

[kyfuzzyface]

Congrats to you Pat, Really enjoyed the story and pictures, Thanks a bunch for sharing.

[coyote101]

Also, the one pic of Wes heading out, he has a moose rack on his machine - did he also get one?

Dave,

Wes did shoot a bull late on opening day (Monday) while hunting with Phil. Because of the mechanical problems he was having, they butchered and hung the meat at the site of the kill where it stayed until he got his rig partially repaired on Saturday. The antlers stayed there too, because it is illegal in Alaska to recover the trophy before all of the salvageable meat has been recovered.

I don't know the actual size of the antlers, but I do know that they only had two brow tines on each side, and were way too close to fifty inches for me to have taken the shot.  That is a hard call to make and can be a big gamble. "Are they fifty inches or only forty-nine? Only one way to find out......bang!"   

Pat

[Todd Rahm]

Looks like ya had an awesome time and a great hunt, congrats!!!

[KyBoarSlayer]

Pat,
what an amazing trip ! Thanks for the sharing the awesome pics and story, man what a bull! It is only a dream of mine to make it to Alaska, for now I'll have to  live vicariously through you. Man, what a hunt!

Billy Jack

[Msp2AK]

Great rundown and story. I was there and remember it better now!

[Frogman]

Pat is that Pete the one who came to LBL with you?  Nice guy!!

Jim