2020 Father/Son Moose Adventure

mooster

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Dec 2, 2018
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Did my first AK DIY last year to take a caribou. Decided to go back this year after a moose, or two. With an 11 day season two would be unlikely, but a possibility.

Got there a few days early to go up the haul road to scout some grounds and see if it makes sense for a future low budget caribou hunt. So bought a bou tag just in case we saw a good one, but also knew we could apply the tag to a black bear during our moose hunt if I didn’t take a bou.

We saw moose,wolf, Artic fox, caribou, dall sheep as we drove all the way up and above Happy Valley. Caribou were still just ones and twos, we didn’t want to go any further as we still wanted time to fish. We found the grayling to be abundant and hungry. We also suffered the typical flat tire on the haul road, but our windshield survived intact.

Got back to town and spent a day checking our gear in and weighing with the air taxi (came in 18 lbs lite) , also shooting the rifle on range. So we were flown into the field the next morning, a day and half early which allowed room for a weather delay w/ch isn’t uncommon in AK, but also to set camp, do some pike fishing, and scouting before the season opened.

Didn’t see any moose until the season opened, but then only a cow for a day and a half, mostly in same place each morning and evening. No real bull sign to be found, but did find some sheds.



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After five days with not a moose seen, we moved to the opposite side of the lake, about a mile via our packraft. We’d found good sheds there and an area we could hike to a smaller secondary pond and some additional
Marshy fields and swamp holes. I did manage to take a small black bear, fresh meat in camp was awesome

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Enjoyed some great scenery and literally thousands of ducks on our lake. Also found some huge black bear scat! (yes, that's what we told ouselves to make us feel better!)

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On the night before our last hunt day, we finally have a small bull come to our calls and gets to within 50 yds of camp. We’d been 8 days since last seeing the cow, so we were excited to finally seeing something with a rack and not going home completely skunked.
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Last morning of our hunt, and finally a small & medium sized bull showed up, but definitely not 4 brows or 50" wide. Snap med bull.jpg
And then we had a cow come out across the lake from us, but she didn't appear to have company.
So after the cow left we continued to call but saw nothing. We decided to hike about a mile further from camp.
 
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mooster

mooster

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And call at the second lake. After an hour of nothing, moved again, but this time closer to camp, maybe a 1/2 mile. As we set up to call, we saw a great moose raking across the wet grassy area about 350 yds away. We'd found this shed almost in the same spot where we called from.
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After what seemed an eternity, and in reality was likely just minutes, we managed to call the bull to our side of the opening. He literally destroyed brush and trees all along our wood line but didn’t present a shot. I'll never forget how he was so loud as he thrashed the trees and brush. We could also hear him making intermittent grunts.

He hung up at a 100 yds or so, and seemed content to stay there and rake. As he worked our tree line, he always seemed to be behind enough brush that we were convinced he'd slip in the woods and circle us downwind and be gone. And then he'd move again giving us a little more hope this thing might happen. I called again softly, and he slowly cut the distance to 60’yds or so, my son shot him with 7mm RM and he finally tipped over.

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What an amazing feeling to hunt 11 days, 13 days in field, and finally connect with a 54" bull, a bull of a lifetime, and only have just over an hour left in the hunt. We spent the next 9.5 hours cutting and packing him out. The hardest and greatest time we’ve ever had.

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We ended up staying a couple extra days in camp due to weather and pilot delays. We had plenty of meat and memories to bide us over. We were really most impatient to be able to reconnect with friends and family and share our grand adventure.

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mooster

mooster

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Dec 2, 2018
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Congrats! How wide is that bulll? Looks big.

Moose hunting is a grind, way to stick it out
Thx, it was 54" wide. Def looks wider. SInce it had 4 brows I didn't have to guess width, but I thought for sure it was 60".
 

AKDoc

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I absolutely enjoy reading about and pictures of hunts with family. I'm very happy for you guys...memories for a life-time TOGETHER!

Glad you got a chance to do some grayling fishing, sir...on a 4wt fly-rod they are especially a blast.
 
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That’s incredible! What a feeling that must have been to nail a stud bull in the last day of the hunt!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Wapiti1

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Sep 18, 2017
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Great story and glad you could do it with family. Nothing like an 11th inning connection. Sweet bull. I love the wide paddles on him. Thanks for posting your adventure.

Is that the Alpaca Forager? Good photo of it to get a read on it's size verse load of stuff.

Jeremy
 
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mooster

mooster

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Dec 2, 2018
Messages
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Great story and glad you could do it with family. Nothing like an 11th inning connection. Sweet bull. I love the wide paddles on him. Thanks for posting your adventure.

Is that the Alpaca Forager? Good photo of it to get a read on it's size verse load of stuff.

Jeremy
Yes it’s a Forager. That’s w/ ~320lb of gear. With the two of us it was 703 lbs, as that’s what we weighed before getting on the air taxi. We had to sit atop the gear which was stable enough to paddle 3/4 to camp, the later we moved another mile. Paddling in heavy wind was work. In light to no wind a mile lake crossing took 20 mins. In 20 mph winds it took one day an hour & 20. We used a 3 piece paddle that we made adaptors to convert to two canoe paddles or one kayak paddle depending upon if it was one or two man using it.
 
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Congratulations on a great adventure and memories. Thanks for sharing. It helps most of use get through the off-season and dream about next year.
 
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