Congrats- on the great moose

CONGRATS, way to go!!!!

Congratulations, great moose.

Nice animal and mighty good job. I hope you get to do it again. Good Hunting.

Congrats!! Who's your guide? You should give him his "dues". There's got to be more to tell?

Score! Kudos!

Any accompanying story?
Where/how flew into the area, provisions, tactics, mis-adventures, tribulaitons, weather, non-game photos, etc.?

EKM

O.K., here's some more bits and pieces, there's just not enough room on a computer to tell the whole story. Three of us booked with an outfitter called Stoney River Lodge. The lodge is located approx. 230 air miles west of Anchorage AK. We flew on a land otter, seen below at the lodge.

The otter can carry about 8 passengers and all thier gear. It has 1000 horsepower, and it was very impressive how quickly it can get off the ground and how short of a run way it can land on. From the lodge, we were flown to spike camps on Super Cubs about 60 miles!
Anyways, we requested for the 3 of us to be with one guide, which actually helped make the hunt a bit cheaper. Each of us had different tags. And we only took two guns, and planned on videoing as much of the hunt as we could. I had the moose tag and caribou, my buddy had a griz and caribou, and his dad had a black bear tag. We booked a 10 day hunt and had set a goal of taking either a big moose or a big griz, so we told the outfitter that we wanted to focus on griz and moose.
Our guides name was Dennis C., 51 y.o. and had, at one time, owned his own outfitter business, and was only working for this outfitter this one year. He dissapointed us in a couple of ways but exceeded his duties in a couple of ways. For instance, he had been at spike camp for 2 days before we arrived, but yet he had done no more scouting than looking through his bino's from camp. So, he had no idea what was over the hill any better than we did when we arrived and he had seen no game from camp. But, he did do a fine job in preparing our meals and seeing to it that we had full bellies and were comfortable. And we were dissapointed in the fact that we spotted all the game animals before he did every time. Not once did he spot game before we did. On the trip while hunting, we saw a total of 5 bull moose, 2 cow moose and 1 calf, 10 caribou, 1 wolf, 1 wolverine, and 5 black bears. Our camp was as simple as two Bomb Shelter tents, not heated, which it wasn't that cold anyways, and we were set-up on the border between tundra and a mix of forest, hills and swamp land, as seen below.

Off to the right of that pic. is mostly tundra.
On the first day of the hunt it rained steady until about noon, then we hiked up a hill behind camp. I spotted 4 caribou, all cows and calves, and later I spotted a black bear about 1.5 miles away and it was feeding on blueberrys, which are very good to eat. After closer inspection of the bear, I decided that I wanted to try to take it, as I also had a caribou tag and in AK you can fill a tag with any lesser animal than the tag was purchased for. Again, this is when we learned how slow our guide moved, he was actually taking time to eat blueberrys while we were cutting down the distance to the bear. Well, the bear was still there when we were with in about 1/4 mile, but he was not there by the time we, in my oppinion, took the long way to finish closing in on him. I was dissapointed, but hey, that is hunting. I felt let down by the guide at this point.
So, on the 2nd morning, I was first out of the tents, and that's when I spotted 2 moose, one is now mine. We skipped breakfast for the stalk, which was pretty simple, and spent the rest of the day packing moose. In the price of our hunt, meat packing was included, but we had requested packs so that we could "help". But, our guide said that if we wanted to pack it out, and not wait for an airplane to come and check on us, we could and he'd help. This is where the guide shined, as I swear his packs of meat weighed 120+ pounds apiece, and he never complained once. You can't hunt another animal in AK until a downed animal is fully taken care of. Taken Care of= having the meat to a place that it can be picked up by an airplane. It turned out that an airplance never got to our camp for another 2.5 days do to bad weather, so us packing the moose out saved us that time for hunting.
Well, my buddy got a real nice caribou on day 8. We saw two other legal moose, but things just didn't fall into place to score on them, as my buddy would take a moose if the chance would've presented itself, and put his griz tag on it. We actually stopped his dad from shooting a black bear, as we spotted one of the other big moose just before we were in postion for the shot on the black bear, and we so we pulled off the black bear, went after the moose, and lost them both.
To us this hunt was the result of years of planning, saving, hoping, dreaming, and preparing. But, there was one guy at the lodge that was there when we were that was on his third trip in as many years, so to him, the cost wasn't a factor. Although he had only shot a black bear on this, his third trip. He admitted that he had passed up many animals, because they didn't meet his expectations. For us, this trip exceeded ours, and it will be at least a few years before we get to do it again.
Would we do this again with this outfitter, yes if we could afford to. My buddies dad won't do it again, as it was to physically demanding for him. He stayed in camp several mornings to rest up. Most of the other guys in camp agreed that they too would do it again, but they also would need to wait a few years to get the piggy bank fueled back up.
One other thing, we were hunting in a fighter plane practice area. We heard sonic booms daily, one of which landed right on top of us and scared the pp right out of us. We also had a "fly by" that I got on film. This pic. is blurry, but it gives ya an idea of how low he was flying. We loved it, but the outfitter was less than impressed when he saw my footage.

What an awesome moose!!!!