I was extremely lucky last year. My sister drew a moose tag out of the moose lottery up here. Her daughters boyfriend wanted to be her sub and our mom suggested she would be better off picking me to be her sub. Her husband had died of cancer and she had previously suffered a bad heart attack. The heart attack left her with around 45 percent of her heart not functioning. She didn’t dare to shoot a rifle and the sub can shoot for her as long a she is there and within sight of each other. Our mom ordered out a sweatshirt for her and a t shirt for me and died a couple of months later.
So I had two weeks vacation. The week before for scouting and the week of our hunt. During the scouting I saw a few young bulls and some cows and calf’s. Nothing to be that impressed with but with her condition we decided that the first antlered moose we saw was the one we were going to take. I also communicated with wood cutters and log truck drivers during my scouting to help figure the best place possible for a quick hunt.
Finally the hunt we were waiting for came up. The first day of the hunt was to foggy were we went and set up at. So we waited for fifteen minutes for the fog to lift a little. Then I told her it was time for me to give a couple of calls. Then the wait was on. It took 15 minutes for a cow to come out and behind her stood what looked like a huge brush pile in the fog. I grab my binoculars for a better look and could clearly see the brow times of a big bull standing there looking at us. I grab the rifle and the clip as I was getting out of the Jeep we were setting in. I loaded it up and shot. Down it went like a ton of bricks. I could clearly see it thrashing and hurried in to where it was. As I was around 10 feet of it trying to get behind it for a behind the ear shot it stood up and lowered it’s head looking straight at me. That’s a sign of a charge about to happen. So I very quickly hauled up and shot him halfway between his nose and his eyes. He turned and run slightly quartering away from me. So I tried to get a shot behind his front shoulder not wanting to hit him in the rear end and missed him. Around 80 yards he turned and stood broadside. Unfortunately I only had a 3 shot clip and on my part the other rounds were in the Jeep. So back out to the Jeep I go and grab some more rounds and loaded the clip back up. Back in I go and the moose was no where to be found. The tracking then started. I knew that he was hit hard and I had no intention on leaving him in there. Overall he traveled roughly 3 miles and expired. He was around a half a mile in on skidder road. Actually he was at the end of it and around 100 feet off it heading into a very large alder swamp. He expired just on the edge of it. We went to get my trailer and an atv to try and get him out. On the way she called my niece and told her excitedly that we have an eighteen pointer down and was going to get the trailer and the atv. They were bird hunting a few miles from where we had shot the moose and waited for us to get back with the trailer. Then we soon discovered that my atv wouldn’t haul the moose out. So her daughter’s boyfriend Who had an older Jeep with skid plates under it went down the skidder trail as close as he could and hauled it out for us.. The moose had 18 points with a 50 inch spread weighing 851.5 pounds. The 50 inch spread was done at the tagging station but it was actually scored at 51 inches. It never made no record but did go in The Biggest Bull Moose in Maine Club. It was an awesome hunt with a lot of work..
