...and a little thinner as well. Just returned from 9 days of pursuing the elusive Alces alces(moose) with 3 good friends. We hunted an area in north central BC that we've been to before and have always seen plenty of animals. What a difference a year makes! 5 days of 4 pretty good hunters scouring a lot of bush and finally found <u>a</u> bull moose. I was walking down a hill and stopped to put my bino's on yet another stump-moose when I realized that, standing off to one side, was a pair of gray legs attached to a black rump and, yahoo, there were antlers sticking out either side. I watched him from about 1/2 a mile away for about 15 seconds before he slipped into a thick patch of black spruce.

I met up with one of our crew and we returned to camp to discuss stategy. We only had one &quot;any bull&quot; tag in camp and fortunately it belonged to the best caller in our bunch ( we other 3 could only hunt spike/fork bulls in this particular area).

Long story short, the bull wouldn't break cover that evening but next morning Stu finally convinced him that romance wasn't coming to him and that there was also a rival in the area. After an hour of marching back and forth in the heavy bush the bull finally tried to make an end run around him to get up wind. He almost made it. Stu (he was rifle hunting) anchored him with a double lunger as the bull ran out from a willow patch.

11 hours later we had 600 pounds of future roasts & steaks hanging on the camp pole.

Had only one more moose encounter in the next 4 days- another fellow bumped a bedded one as he was still hunting through heavy timber.

But, a great trip to catch up with old friends (we're all from different parts of the province) and hunt some pretty country. And only one grizzly sighting this year, a beautiful 700+ pound silver tip, that fortunately was observed at hundreds of yards instead of 20 yds (like last time)

RC

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