Close Encounters of the Moose Kind

"I went to Sportsmans to get a new shirt, a belt, and some Depends. Quite a story. See you soon."

Do I have your attention?

After a lot of preparatory work for the past couple of weeks, I was able to embark on the first hunt of the year on Labor Day. I arose at 0330 in order to be able to get my shit together and be at a predetermined spot (that I’ve been monitoring for the last two months) before the sun came up and before anyone could poach “my” spot. All went according to plan…except I found out my camouflage shirt has shrunk and is now uncomfortably short. But, I was on the hike in at 0430, spooking something big on the way in…figured it was probably a moose I’ve seen in that spot before.

I got set up and rapidly realized that long johns would have been a good idea as I began to tremble with cold and excitement. My trail cam had shown elk in that area consistently for the past couple of weeks (except when a lone wolf made his way through…after he appears they usually disappear for a couple days.) I pushed the cold out of my mind and continued my vigil as the woods started waking up. It began with the squirrels, who all lit up to see who made it through the night. Then the birds started in as 0530 rolled around. The forest was FULL of noise and it was tough separating footfalls from heavy White Pine cones being flung from the treetops by the busy rodents. Do we call squirrels rodents? Hmm. Needless to say, every noise became elk moving around and I heard a lot of sticks breaking in the draw I passed on the way in where there was a major trail… “no worries, they’re probably on their way up here” I thought.

I was sitting there, silent and still, when I heard a squirrel rustling around a couple feet behind me. I must have moved a little bit because the brush behind me BLEW UP!! Once I knew that I wasn’t having a heart attack and climbed down out of the tree near me I realized it was a pair of grouse who had come to check me out. After an hour or so, everything started quieting down and the squirrels were busy picking up the cones they threw from the treetops. I finally was able to differentiate the sounds of cones dropping and squirrels in the brush from actual big game….since I hadn’t seen or heard anything of the latter in three hours of sitting. But then the unmistakable, guttural “eeeUHNK” noise from a rutting bull moose reached my ears…I thought, “Wow, he’s only like 40 yards behind of me from the sound of it! I’ll let him walk past and get some photos on my trailcam!” That’s where the trouble began.

When I first spotted the black and grey mass moving down the road I had the thought, “WTF? That’s not a moose, that’s a grizzly and it’s HUGE!” Illogical thoughts were dismissed when I confirmed it WAS a moose by finally being able to make out his antlers with their approximate 36 inch spread. (Actually, thinking about it now, he kinda looked like the bull I shot with two more years of antler growth on him…odd.) He stopped and sniffed where I had walked into my “blind.” Hmmm, he’s only 10 yards away and he already looks like a horse with a couple end-tables attached to his head. How many hands is a six foot tall horse?

Now, critters move through the woods much differently than people…meaning they move extremely SLOOOWLY. He’d take a couple steps and stop, listening and smelling. He mosied up alongside me at 4-5 yards and eyeballed ME. He wasn’t looking beyond me, or at the small tree between us…he was staring into my bugged-out eyes. He moved forward a couple steps and stopped again….smelling and listening. He calmed down enough to start chewing his cud, while staring at me sideways almost like he was thinking, “Hmm, what IS that lump? What should I do to it? Maybe I should push it over…” That’s when I blinked twice…too quickly. He stopped chewing and turned his massive head to have a staring contest with me. I made myself into a frozen rock for the next two eternities. I thought again about the moose I killed two years ago and figured this was my punishment for killing him on a road. I was going to get killed by a moose while sitting helplessly on my ass. FINALLY, he moved further away and in front of me, but still at 10 yards. Now there were no small trees between us…there was only some dead alder that formed the front of my blind. Clear shot.

This went on for a long time, probably two more years, while he kept circling around me…seeming to head down the other road that dove down the hill. I wanted him gone. I wanted him gone NOW. But he strategically moved to where he had an even clearer shot at me (thimbleberry won’t even slow down a butterfly) while my mind was churning furiously. Why did I knock an arrow? He’s TEN YARDS away…there’s no way I can draw and loose an arrow if he decided to come at me! So, I managed to use my peripheral vision to locate a tree I could clamber up or at least get behind. Now, I did what everyone does in a terrifying situation…I pleaded with God to move the moose and as it turns out, God has a sick sense of humor.

The wind kept changing direction that morning and he must have caught a whiff of me or just got frustrated with not being able to figure out what a frozen rock was doing where it never was before. He ran over in front of the camera (and about 30 yards from me) and started destroying a tree with his antlers. I was thawing out having him a little further away and gloried in the fact that the trailcam was picking up some GREAT shots of the action! Nonetheless, I slowly reached down into my pack and got the .40 caliber out…which coincidently had been an afterthought that morning.

When he was rolling around in the dirt he just tore up with his huge hooves and paddles…and grunting like a gorilla…I managed to eeease a round into the chamber…just in case he came back. He was really working himself into a frenzy and got up to “ripsnort” around like a dog does (or a cat, after they just pooped. My cat is weird that way. Her pupils get completely black, her ears lay back, and she just tears around with absolutely NO common sense.) Making this connection in my mind and knowing the kind of damage a cat can do…I was trying to imagine what a bull moose could do. I trained the CZK on him but luckily he ran further away and around the corner, still making those gorilla noises. “And stay gone!!” I thought in a very macho manner as I lowered my weapon.

My mind was getting the inkling that it could begin to process the situation when I heard those damn gorilla noises again. OHH SHIT.

Safety off, finger on the trigger, I drew a bead and tracked his forehead as he barreled to me. Not angled to go BY me, or NEAR me, he was heading DIRECTLY at me…full throttle. 50, 40, 30, 20 yards…not slowing…nothing but some piddly dead alder between me and 1200 pounds of fury. For some reason I stood my ground and was trying to figure out a.) How close do I let him get before I start shooting? b.) How many times can I pull the trigger in that distance before he hits me? Luckily I found myself unable to do mathematics at that point and didn’t do anything at all. When he was 10 yards away; he changed direction and veered back up the road he initially came in on. He stopped at 5 yards where there was the same small tree between us and again eyeballed me. I found my mind completely focused; there was no cold and no shaking, there was no thought to footing and escape routes, there was only my front site tracking this irrational, sex-starved critter. But I didn’t see the rage I usually see in my cat’s black eyes when she gets like that…I saw the calm in him as well. It was bizarre. Did I just pass a test? Did we just make a connection? “Waaait a minute…was that a devious glint I just saw?”

He moved on up the road and started into the brush behind me. “Oh HELL NO! That leads to a corridor pointed straight to me!” In order to keep this guy covered, I finally arose and was thinking of ruining my hunt and putting a round into the ground to get him moving along when he finally turned tail and took off up the road…disappearing around the bend. I thought I heard him crashing up the hill, so made my way out of my hidey-hole and onto the road. “Clearing it” in a sense. I tried to walk back to my chair, but didn’t make it. I began a violent shiver that you typically only see in people with severe hypothermia. There was no part of my body that wasn’t shaking uncontrollably and I developed an intense, burning desire to urinate NOW.

I managed to let the hammer down gently and put the pistol on the ground. I frantically fumbled around with my zipper and luckily got it down before I lost it. I’m sure it would have been funny to watch, as I was still shaking while I was going. But, I peed on the road where he first came around the corner and figured if I was going to ruin my scentless area, I was going to make damn sure the moose knew it was me there. At least the aggressive shaking helped me cover the road, the adjacent trees, the brush, and nearly all the squirrels.

It took me close to an hour to calm down. I wanted to leave immediately, but stuck it out like a little trooper and nothing at all came by. I timed the wind shifts and noticed it could do a 180º direction change within 15 seconds…that’s not good for ground-blind hunting! When I started to fall asleep, I finally just got my stuff together and headed out. On the way, I saw this moose bedded down in the road! “You sonofabitch! You are NOT blocking me from my truck.” (I still don’t know what caused the changed reaction…I was actually mad.) That’s when the dark shape and antlers became a flock of turkeys and they flew into the trees down the hill. Yep, it was time to be out of the woods.

After dodging all the holiday traffic, I got home and Sarah was off walking the dogs. I wanted to go to the store, so I left her this note on our whiteboard. “I went to Sportsman’s to get a shirt, a belt, and some Depends. Quite a story! See you soon.” Talk about a captive audience for a storyteller dying to get something off his chest. I’m sure I got on her nerves as I recounted pieces and parts of the experience all evening.

Unfortunately the trail cam had stopped taking photos at some point and I have no coverage of the moose. However, after fiddling with the batteries I was able to get it to “wake up” and get a picture of a tree.

You get some of the most interesting experiences bow hunting…and I guess sometimes they are yours and yours alone.