90% of my close encounters have been moose hunting as well.

Over the last 18 years, we have hunted moose in alaska about 12 times. We have a real good area that we'll float and it has really produced over the years for us. The first few times were really a learning experience for me.

Lets see...

1) You can actually be calling more than one Moose. While one guy is thrashing the brush or dumping a bucket of water and the other guy is calling and focused on the moose that "you are calling", it is amazing how another bull sneak up and surprise you at 20 yards from the side or from behind. Oh, btw, the stand up tall w' your arms over your head thing, that they tell you to do with bears, doesn't work on moose in the rut. In fact, it may just piss them off.

2) While we hunt in teams of 2, skinning and quartering a moose is a 1 man at a time job. Over the years, the kill site has become a "grizzly buffett" a couple of times. The first time it happened, me and my friend were rolling the moose back over* and we heard a woof. Bam, 30 yards away was a big interior griz. It scared the cr@p out of me. We fired a couple of shots and he ran off but was just laying in wait for the carcass. I finished the last 2 quarters, we loaded 1 on to the raft, about 50 yards away, and came back to the site. The Griz was on the kill site. We backed out and took off.

3) My favorite was the Brown Bear that followed us what had to be 20 miles over 3 days of drifiting. We would see him walking down the banks once or twice a day and then he would hit the meat cache every night w/ no regard for the citric acid & pepper spray on the meat or the little bags of moth balls hanging from the branches or the "human scent circle" around the cache. It was the first and only time we hunted that much more heavily used river.

SA

* - you don't gut large game, you skin one side. Take the quarters for that side. Then roll that side back onto the hide and do the other side.