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You have four days left of a three-month hunting season. You’ve managed to get yourself out of bed early enough to drive the half hour to your parking spot; quad the 15 minutes it takes to get away from the road traffic (northern zone—no ATV/Weapons restrictions); walk 10 minutes through crunchy snow to your tree stand; and get settled in just before legal shooting light. You haven’t sat for more than five minutes when...
I’ll back up for a second and provide some history. It’s November 2009. I live a couple hours north of Edmonton and hunt mostly Crown land, so solid timber, seismic lines, and oilfield roads. The deer season starts on September 1st and finishes up on November 30th. Like every year, I purchased both deer tags and an elk tag. This year, for whatever reason, I put in for an antlered moose draw and was successful on my first try. It was for the late season (Nov. 1 thru Nov. 30), but that’s when I would be spending most of my time in the bush chasing whitetails anyway. There is no elk season in this particular WMU and the mule deer population is low, so I would be concentrating on whitetails with the off chance of running into a bull moose.
This November was another mild one, and with an early snowfall that crusted over, it made for loud morning walks. On the 14th, my wife Joanne and I headed out to see if we could find a good buck to tag. Like most hunters, my wife starts to get anxious as the season wears on, especially if she hasn’t seen any good bucks. I figure that as long as we have meat in the freezer, you shoot the deer you want. Anyway, we arrived at our spot just after first light and each took a different trail. The plan was to slowly walk/crunch along until you found a good game trail or other likely looking spot to sit and watch.
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| Joanne with her trail camera whitetail. |
I went north and worked my way down to a tree stand. After an hour of sitting and not seeing or hearing anything, I couldn’t stand it any longer and resumed a slow loop back to the truck. I’m not much of a tree stand sitter. Unless there are animals moving around, I always opt for being mobile. Joanne, on the other hand, can sit for hours waiting and watching. Many times she has sat in the stand I was going to use and saw nice bucks after I had left to go for a walk. On this morning, however, she did exactly what we talked about. She crossed a couple of heavily used game trails and then found a comfy-looking log in a small patch of spruce trees to sit on and wait. After a few minutes, she heard some crunching from behind her up on a small hill. She got up from her log and tucked in close to some deadfall. The 4x4 buck walked down the game trail and stopped broadside just 12 feet away. She shot it and the deer bounded 20 metres before stopping to look back. Not wanting to take any chances, Jo shot again and the buck fell to the ground. Tag Filled! Nice buck Jo!
As an interesting side note, we pulled the memory card from one of our trail cameras that afternoon and were surprised to find a picture of Joanne’s buck. It was from six days earlier and three kilometres away. We finally had a picture of a good buck only to find out it was already hanging in our garage.
As the season pressed on, I got into a routine of sitting in a tree stand for an hour or so in the morning, going for a walk during midday, and then returning to the stand for the last hour before sunset. I carried my video camera for most of the hunting season and ended up with some good footage. A couple of times after reviewing the clips at home, I wondered if I should have been aiming my rifle instead of the camera. Oh well, if it’s the one you’re meant to have, you’ll know it.
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| Darrell poses with his moose. |
On November 25th, I got a good surprise. One of my trail cameras caught a couple pictures of a big 5x5 buck near my stands. The buck had come through during the night but more importantly, there was a big one out there. Just the incentive I needed to get myself going in the morning.
I headed south the next day and hunted with my son Chris. It was his birthday and he had been trying to fill his tag at his grandparent’s farm. We saw several does and fawns but no bucks. At supper that night, my in-laws reminded me “It would sure be nice to have some fresh moose meat to make moose stroganoff.” I nodded and said, “Don’t count on it, but it would be nice.”
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| Darrell poses with his whitetail buck. |
We headed home that night and I made plans to head out early to try to find the big 5x5.
It’s November 27th and I had just settled into my tree stand when I heard some crashing 150 metres or so to my left. I remember thinking that it sounded like fairly big sticks breaking and wondered if there were two bucks fighting or maybe a buck chasing a doe. All went quiet and then I heard snow crunching from a hundred metres in front of the stand. It was just getting to be legal light so I couldn’t make out what was making the noise. For the next 10 to 15 minutes the noises alternated back and forth, first from the left and then from in front of me. The sounds from the left were getting closer and moving toward the seismic line that my tree stand was on. As I watched down the line, I couldn’t believe my eyes when a moose stepped out. My rifle went up quick and through the scope I saw antlers. The moose paused on the seismic line long enough for a shot but I was so worked up I couldn’t steady the crosshairs. My heart was beating so hard I could hear it!
As I tried to calm myself down, I heard the noise from in front of my stand. I looked towards it, saw that it was a deer and it looked to also have antlers. My concentration though was on Bullwinkle. I hadn’t seen a moose all season, much less one with antlers. It had carried on across the line and was now feeding in the poplars. Because of the distance and the number of trees, I could only get glimpses of black now and then. I waited what seemed several minutes (at one point I lost the bull altogether and wondered if he had snuck out the opposite direction) while the bull fed and moved through the trees. However long it was, I had enough time to settle down and get set up on an open lane that was now directly in the bull’s path. “Just take a couple more steps...” and sure enough he did.
I had the crosshairs halfway up his body on the line behind his front leg when I squeezed the trigger. At the sound of the rifle, the bull jumped and sped away.
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| In less than five minutes, Darrell had a freezer full of prime moose and deer meat. |
At the same time, I heard a noise in front of my stand. I swung my head around to see a whitetail buck standing in the open not more than 75 metres away. He was looking straight at me but couldn’t figure out what had happened. A quick survey of his antlers convinced me that this deer wasn’t the big 5x5 in the picture, but it was the one that was meant for me. All I had to do was chamber another round. Ordinarily this takes just a second, but I couldn’t move because the buck was looking right at me. Then I heard my moose crash to the ground, the deer looked toward it and I was able to open the bolt. When I ejected the casing and slid another shell forward, the slight noise snapped the deer’s head back around. The moose thrashed again, drawing the deer’s attention away and giving me the opportunity to lock the bolt and raise my gun. The deer then took a couple of steps presenting a clear broadside shot. I pulled the trigger for the second time in less than 30 seconds and watched as the deer ran 40 metres and hit the ground.
My hunt was now over, my freezer would surely be full, and moose stroganoff was back on the menu. ■
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