A moose hunt story

Share your tales (tall or otherwise) of hunting adventures.

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Kevin
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2005 8:55 pm
Location: Uncompahgre Valley, CO

A moose hunt story

Post by Kevin »

Hey folks, I’ve been inactive on these forums for quite a while. So much so that I had to solicit Lucinda’s help to regain active status a couple of weeks ago - thanks Lucinda!

So, better late than never, I thought I’d relate a Shiloh Sharps moose hunt for you.
Moose tags for bulls are notoriously hard to come by in Colorado where I live, but in late May 2018 I found myself the dumbfounded recipient of one of those precious tags. It was my 18th attempt. I had long hoped to chase moose with Sharps in hand, so here was my chance! My Shiloh is a mid-1980s vintage #3 sporter with no frills, no extras. It’s chambered for 45-2.4, and in the early 2000s I had the Bryan family rebarrel it with a heavy (and non-freebored) barrel. I also have a simple globe front site with an open crosshair insert matched with MVA’s #130 tang site. For hunting, I use a grease groove 485-grain bullet cast 30-1 from a Paul Jones mold, seated with all SPG-filled grease grooves covered over 77 grains of Swiss 2F powder. I can shoot this load with hunting accuracy out to 250 yards if I’m seated and on cross-sticks - at least on elk or moose-sized game.

The tag was issued for Unit 6, about 6 hours from where I live. Therefore, my opportunities to scout were limited to one occasion in July, plus a number of conversations with Parks and Wildlife folks about good hunt areas and strategies. On the plus side, the season was the first 14 days of October and I arranged to take the entire time off work, figuring that could help overcome the limited scouting. I recruited my son to hunt with me. He was working a seasonal job in Wyoming, and fortunately he worked for an acquaintance who is also an avid hunter himself, so he understood fully Nathan’s request for the time off. I also had a hunting buddy from work who volunteered to join the hunt for the first few days. The season started on Monday, the three of us arrived the previous Saturday to find a camp site and set up a tent camp while watching the smoke from a sizable wildfire just across the state line in Wyoming. We spent Sunday looking the country over near the Colorado/Wyoming state line. My buddy from work split off on his own for a while too, in order to cover more ground.

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To keep the story from getting too long, we spent the first three days up near the state line, and while my friend spotted a cow/calf pair on Monday, my son and I saw nothing. My friend had to move on to a pronghorn hunt on Wednesday, so after that it was just Nathan and myself. We moved south a ways on Thursday, and drove right past a cow and her calf in the dark on our way in to this new area, then had the treat of watching a nice 6-pt bull elk and his harem feeding out in the sagebrush flats for a while about 400 yards away from our initial glassing spot. Shortly after, we finally spotted a bull moose walking parallel to a road about 500 yards away, but on private land out on the flats near the access road we had used. I tried my hand at calling him, and it got his attention enough that he paused and looked our way, but then went on along his original path. After exploring this area a bit, we pulled out and drove down to the HQ of the Colorado State Forest State Park to get a vehicle pass, thinking we’d eventually hunt on the state land. Then back north toward our camp, stopping to glass in an area called the Sand hills, reportedly a good area for moose.

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On Friday we returned to the area where we’d seen the bull elk and the bull moose walking the road. Glassed the country for a while, then decided to spend the rest of the morning hunting the drainage that ran past our glassing spot, and finally encountered some fresh moose sign, but no animals. Might have been the cow/calf pair we passed on the way in the day before. Later in the afternoon that day we were back at the vehicle, glassing again, when I spotted a pair of moose about a mile away on a pretty flat area adjacent to some aspen woods. Able to tell that at least the bull was a mature one, we took a drive that got us closer, and thought we could execute a stalk by dropping through the drainage that separated us and working our way up a steep slope to the flat. It worked, and when we got the moose in sight they were about 180 yards off. However they were now aware that something wasn’t quite right, with the cow getting particularly nervous. I thought the bull was a nice one, so I tried to get set up, but my behind was downhill with my rifle facing upslope and I couldn’t get comfortable for a shot. While I was trying to settle in they began to mill around and I tried my bull calling best again, to no avail. They walked off into the aspens. We followed for a while, but it was getting late and we thought maybe it would be better to revisit the area the next day.

Saturday - this was day 6 of the hunt and I was starting to think hard about the statistics that said the average moose hunt for Colorado lasts about 3.5 days... Well, we didn’t spot the bull from the previous day in the morning but decided to walk into that area, circling west and hopefully downwind of where the two moose had disappeared into the woods and then working up the shallow drainage that was covered by those aspen woods. On our way into the area we spotted a solitary moose in the late morning. Glassing revealed a young bull, so small his antler spread was just barely bigger than his ear spread. We got within about 140 yards, but with half the season left I just wasn’t ready to shoot such a small bull. We nicknamed him Junior. Continuing our plan, about 1 in the afternoon we laid eyes on a bull that we thought was the same as the day previous. We spent quite a while getting closer, so that just after 3 we were within shooting distance but once again in a situation where a good shot wasn’t possible. This time, it was due to the maze of small twisted aspen trees on the slope he was occupying. Eventually, he moved off, revealing that he still had the cow with him. Their movements took them further north again, further into a roadless area between the access we were using and the Sand hills access.

Not wanting to keep pushing that bull, we decided to give that area a rest on Sunday. We went back up near the state line for a morning hunt, then just took it easy during the afternoon, listening to a football game and resting around camp. On Monday we hunted for a short time in the morning but it turned into a blizzard day. Being very cold, tired, and maybe a little discouraged, I took my son to dinner in Walden and then we checked into a motel for the night so we could shower and spend a warm night.

On Tuesday we decided to take advantage of the Parks pass I had bought and spent the day in State Forest hunting in fresh snow. We saw a young bull and later a cow, but there were no shooting opportunities. There were also more people around in that area, not all of them hunters, so on Wednesday we went back north. We started the (very cold) day in the Sand hills access, hoping to maybe see the bigger bull from the other direction. He was still the only nice bull I had seen throughout the hunt. The morning was fruitless in terms of moose sightings although the country seemed good. So by now I was beginning to think I might take a shot at Junior if I saw him again... we went back to that area for the afternoon and entered the country in pretty much the same way we had on Saturday including walking through the area where we’d seen Junior. Well he wasn’t anywhere to be found on this day. So then we decided we should just walk into where we’d last seen the good bull, hoping he would have moved back south a ways in the 3 days since we’d bumped him north. We walked up toward the flat on which we’d originally seen him on Friday. My focus was to the north and west as we approached the crest of the hill. Stopping to breath for a minute, my son spotted the bull off to the northeast of us! And not up in the forest or on the adjacent flat, but down in the drainage that we crossed further downstream in order to access this area. This was about 4:45 in the afternoon now. He seemed unaware of our presence, so we got low and started working our way toward him just below the crest of the slope to keep from sky-lining ourselves. No cow in sight, but I was pretty sure this was the same bull. My sneaking cover was drying up, so I pulled out the rangefinder and determined his distance to be 174 yards. My tang sight was set for 150, but I was also shooting downhill at him. So (if I recall correctly) I decided to leave the setting there. Got set up on the sticks, very comfortable, nice and steady, a nice clear sightline... my son was watching from behind... I let fly. I rarely hear bullet strikes like some folks do, but I could tell I hit him. My son confirmed he had seen the hit. He lurched forward a few feet, but went down probably less than 30 feet from where he was standing when I shot. I could still see him, and now we could see the cow as she’d appeared after the shot. So I chambered another round and we watched for just a minute or two to make sure he wasn’t going to get up again. He didn’t, and the cow went on up the drainage, so we moved on down to get to work.

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We discovered dead moose are pretty hard to move around! It took the two of us almost 3.5 hours to break him down to our satisfaction and to store the bags of meat for retrieval the next morning. The bullet had passed through, so no assessment of weight retention or degree of expansion. I called a buddy who lived in Fort Collins and he rounded up two others and drove up on Thursday to help us pack out the meat. It was a steep but fairly short pack-out, but after 10 days I was very grateful for the extra help!

In Colorado a successful moose hunter must present the animal to a Parks and Wildlife office within a few days, so on Friday we accomplished that task in Walden. They take a tooth and some measurements, the officer who examined my bull measured his maximum spread at 40 1/4 inches. Later, I was able to look up the tooth aging information to see that CPW had estimated the bull to be 4 or 5 years of age. I had the skull turned into a Euro mount and hung it in my gun room. I am done hunting bull moose in Colorado - there is a lifetime 1 animal bag limit for bulls. Although the bull isn’t huge for moose, I consider it a true trophy and a wonderfully memorable hunt. Especially since I got to share it all with Nathan. And it was generally mighty fine eating!

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Sorry that I couldn't figure out how to make the images show up within the post, hope you all don't mind too much having to view them off site.
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desert deuce
Posts: 3843
Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:51 pm
Location: Rio Rico, Arizona

Re: A moose hunt story

Post by desert deuce »

Great Story Kevin, very well written, thank you for sharing.
Sometimes you get the chicken, and sometimes you get the feathers!
Randy Bohannon
Posts: 350
Joined: Mon Aug 21, 2017 2:00 pm
Location: Buffalo WY

Re: A moose hunt story

Post by Randy Bohannon »

Nicely done and done right. I wouldn’t want it any other way than to have earned it.
Kevin
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2005 8:55 pm
Location: Uncompahgre Valley, CO

Re: A moose hunt story

Post by Kevin »

DD, Randy - thanks for the kind words. It did feel like we earned it in the sense we had to hunt hard.
By the way, although the lifetime limit is one bull, that's not the case for cows. This year I'll be applying with the 3 preference points in hand that are needed to stand any chance at all for a cow tag. Odds are long, but not as long as for bull tags.
pete
Posts: 2258
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2002 10:16 pm
Location: Colorado

Re: A moose hunt story

Post by pete »

Congratulations Kevin that's a great Sharps hunting story. It makes a hunting trip even more special. Just curious though. If you drew moose either bull or cow as your first choice how do you still have 3 points for moose either cow or bull?
Kevin
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2005 8:55 pm
Location: Uncompahgre Valley, CO

Re: A moose hunt story

Post by Kevin »

Hey Pete - the hunt occurred in October 2018, so I've had applications in '19, '20 and '21 to accumulate the 3 points I now hold. I wasn't too quick about sharing the story... but only because I allowed my forum access to go quiet because it was linked to an email address that went out of service some years ago.
pete
Posts: 2258
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2002 10:16 pm
Location: Colorado

Re: A moose hunt story

Post by pete »

Ok Kevin I got it. Good luck on the new draw. Hope to see another story.
bobw
Posts: 3841
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2004 12:52 pm

Re: A moose hunt story

Post by bobw »

Congrats and well done...bobw
bobw
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