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I have a good friend, Kirk, who lives up in High Level, Alberta. He knew that I had never taken a bull moose before and encouraged me to enter the draw last fall (2014). I would hunt with him and his friend Harv.
After a very slow start, we decided to try a river hunt for a day to see what came of it. We ended up approximately 100 kilometres north of High Level.
We were only on the river for a short amount of time and it was obvious the river levels were lower than we expected. Kirk and Harv both said it looked to be the lowest in a number of years.
We started getting a lot of sand bars and low spots, which made for very slow going and lots of pushing with the oars. We were 10 kilometres down river when we decided to pull over on shore for lunch and consider going back because of the low water. There were a few good tracks here and there along the river, but what we did see a lot of were beaver on the river and lots of wolf tracks. Not very promising.
We built a fire and started cooking lunch. I happened to look down river and there was a large bull moose walking across to a sand bar. We all scrambled for our guns. Where my gun was sitting in the boat, I did not want to muck up Harv’s first shot. They each got a shot off. The shots landed short, which in the end helped me range him. The bull had no idea where the two shots came from and stopped. I dropped prone on the shore and had a rock to rest on. I shot and he flinched right away... he was hit! He started heading back to the west side of the river. Harv and Kirk pulled again and he was hit a second time. We knew he would be going down. He had trotted behind a point. Kirk and Harv took off up shore. I stayed by the boat for 20 minutes to see if he would double-back. I pushed into the river and started floating towards where it was. The bush was crazy thick. Kirk had seen twice where the moose had lay down and lots of blood. He wouldn’t be going far.
We agreed that I would keep floating on the river to glass and he would track on the bush line against the shore. The best way to describe it is that there was heavy, thick forest, and then 30 metres of heavy willows, saplings, etc. that was “flat” between the forest and the edge of the drop to shore. The beavers did that. All kinds of waist-high logs lying crisscross from the beavers. The edge was 15 feet higher than the shore and very steep to the water. I floated down river for 30 minutes and stopped to get out to glass. I saw something move and there was the moose standing 150 metres across from me in a thicket on the edge. I got Kirk’s attention to make sure my line was safe, based on where he and Harv were. I knocked the bull down with a finishing shot.
We field dressed it and opened it to cool. This was all done by 3:30 pm. We talked about what to do next. I said that I would stay with the moose while they went back up river to meet someone bringing a second boat. The thinking was that with a lighter load, they would be faster to get the second boat, come back, quarter the moose, load it, etc.
Sometimes the best laid plans...
I built a fire right away when the decision was made. Let’s face it, with all of the wolves and bears in the area and a dead moose carcass, it was much like a dinner bell ringing. We put the coolers and my gear near the fire, Kirk left me his rifle (with another clip), and they left at 3:45 pm, hoping to be back just after dark.
I started getting as much firewood as I could, not knowing how long it could be. Of course, as luck would have it, it started pouring rain for about 90 minutes. Luckily, I had a poncho in my small gear bag. For the next three hours or so, I made sure I kept hydrated and tried to cut as much dry wood as possible. I would slide down to the shore every 45 minutes or so to check if I had a cell signal. I wanted to let my wife know what was going on. This was all the while thinking that I would be heading back just after dark.
It got dark around 7:30 pm. The beavers were angry and kept smacking their tails to warn each other and “scare” me off. The moose was right in the middle of three slides on the bank. It was obvious they had been doing a lot of work there. I kept gathering wood. At about 8:30 pm, I thought I heard a boat, so I fired two shots in the air. At about 9:30 or 10:00 pm, I started to think that maybe they ran into trouble and did not know if my wife knew anything. Ironically, now when I went down to shore, I was getting no signal to speak of. I had a text from Kirk get through that he sent around 8:30 pm. He was checking if I was okay and said they got to the truck just before 8:00, after dark. I was quite concerned Kirk and Harv would make every effort to get back to me and did not want them to run into trouble in the dark. I hung my reflective vest on a tree hanging out over the water. I have a LED headlamp that flashes, so I hung it out on the tree as well so someone might see it. I kept getting wood.
I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time in the backcountry, but with a bull moose carcass, bears and wolves in the vicinity, I was looking forward to seeing some friendly faces. As I was sitting by the fire, I did think with all of the beaver in the area the wolves would possibly be well fed and hopefully the large fire would act as a deterrent. I was a little more concerned a bear might pick up the scent of the moose, wander near, claim it, and then think I was after it. What was funny is that around 11:00 pm, I went down by the shore to a signal for a text. My battery very low now and no signal at all. Just as I got to shore, a beaver slapped his tail. I had completely forgotten about them and it scared the $#@& out of me! I almost fell in the river. With it hovering around 2 Celsius, it wouldn’t have been very nice.
At midnight, I started to think that I might not see them until daylight. I was struggling with being overtired, so I set my GPS alarm to go off every hour. If I dozed off, I didn’t want the fire to go out or get too low. I had just cut some more wood and was considering cutting some spruce boughs when I heard a yell at 12:30 am! They got to shore at 12:40 am. Kirk was visibly relieved and I must say that I was very happy to see them both. They said, “The three of us went out together, so dammit, the three of us would either come out together or spend the night on the river together.” We decided that we would sleep by the fire. We would finish quartering the moose and load it in the morning.
I found out that they had all kinds of trouble getting back to the truck. It also took much longer than expected getting back in the dark as well. The boat that I thought I had heard earlier was their chainsaw trying to cut a path in from an old road. They were stopped by a huge swamp. We had a small bite to eat, cut a whole bunch of spruce boughs to sleep on, and tried to get as much sleep as possible. It was by far the closest I have ever slept to a fire. We listened to the wolves howling throughout the night and took turns keeping the fire up. We figured the next day that we easily burnt three cords of wood, as it was a huge fire and had been going from 3:30 pm the day before until we left that morning.
We got up at 6:00 am, still dark, worked at skinning the moose, quartering and loading it. Lots of work, but well worth it! We were on the water just before 10:00 am and it took just over three hours to get to the trucks. Needless to say, we were dry when we got back.
It could have ended up a lot worse, but it didn’t. We got a nice bull moose, had a hell of an adventure, and a great story to tell! ■
For previous Reader Stories click here.
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