Idaho Moose Pics

[grizzly_]

My wife was lucky enough to draw the Idaho Unit 78 bull moose tag last year and got a B&C bull (see pics below). If anybody else is lucky enough to draw that tag, let me know and I'll help in any way that I can.

PS. Take a look at the harvest stats for moose last year. Unit 78 is pumping out some big bulls right now.

 

[Southern Elk]

Congrats to her on the trophy of a lifetime.

 

[choc dogs]

That is indeed a nice bull. Once in a lifetime, and she made it count. Congrats to your wife.

 

[MN Public Hunter]

Nice rack !

 

[Roamer]

Congratulations to your wife that is a great bull.

 

[Joe Hulburt]

Very nice! I just read the story in Eastmans last night and it sounded like you guys really worked for that bull. Well done!!

I'll be chasing a moose in 10A-4 come September and October. Headed up to check trail cams and scout around more in a week....

 

[duckhunt]

Congrats thats a awsome bull

 

[Graves14]

Dream come true there!

 

[What Map]

Congratulations to you and your wife. Thanks for posting the pictures. Story? How about Cliff notes here for those who don't get Eastman's.

 

[Oldgoat31]

That's an awesome moose. Congratulations to you and your wife.
I will be in unit 77 this year for moose.

 

[grizzly_]

Joe and Oldgoat31, congrats on the tags. You guys are in for a real treat. I don't know anything about unit 10, but if you want help in unit 77 just let me know. I only live about 30 minutes from there and would love the opportunity to look for moose again.

The condensed story (and not edited for a magazine) still requires a little bit of background about my wife. Andrea, bless her heart, is a picky girl (hence her sexy husband, haha) and was not going to shoot something unless it was a true trophy. But anyway, she is so picky that she actually once passed a 185" buck with a drop tine during archery season at 42 yards because we had seen a 235" gagger earlier in the hunt (this was in 2B in NM a few years ago), so that gives you an idea of what I was up against.

After around 40 days of hunting/scouting and hundreds of miles of hiking, we still hadn't found a single big bull and only one decent end-of-season shooter. We had met a few of the other 4 tag holders and everybody was chasing a big bull that had been seen in the area for the past few years. Leaving the other hunters gathered in one area looking for this big bull, we were hunting a few miles away since there is nothing I hate more than "combat hunting" with other people.

We finally found an area with a few cow moose and spent a night in the area hoping a bull would show up. That turned out to be a bad idea because we were too close to the moose to see much country. So the next morning we staked out a ridge line a few miles away and glassed where the moose had been instead of getting right in the midst of them. It was the 25th of September and would soon warm to over 90F and by 9:30am the sun was already pretty high and the lone cow moose on the sage ridge was all we had seen that morning. As we picked up our gear to head back to camp and have some breakfast we caught a glimpse of horns that had stepped just a few feet out of some dark timber and then the cow started trotting down the mountain towards the bull. My guess is that he was hanging in the timber but had grunted at her to come down and that is why she started running towards him.

It only took a second for us to realize he was a shooter and we loaded up our stuff and took off towards him. He was on the south facing slope in some dark trees and my plan was to head down the valley and then cross onto the bare north-facing slope and possibly get a shot across the canyon at him. As we hit the area below the bare spot and began our climb up the hill, I told my wife to drop her pack because we were going to have to run for it. Standing up after taking off my pack, I looked up and the bull was standing over a false horizon about 30 yards away. Hissing at my wife that he was right above us, and knowing he would spook up the hill, we ran away from him through a little clearing trying to get a better shooting angle but ran smack into a small stream which slowed us down. Looking through the quakies growing along the stream, we saw a cow moose about 20 yards away and closing fast. Instead of running up the hill away from us, the bull was right on her tail.

We huddled by the stream to wait for them to clear some trees but they kept walking straight towards us and she ended up shooting the bull at only a few yards and he dropped right there in front of us. It was truly one of the neatest experiences of my life as she got tears in her eyes from the overwhelming emotion of everything that had just happened. I still have no idea how we were able to cover all that distance and get there before the moose had made it back up into the timber. As we stopped and got the bull checked at the house of the F&G officer, he asked to take a picture of the bull in the back of the truck and said that bull was often seen during the summer and after the season but nobody knew where he went during hunting season. We just happened to get lucky and be in the right place at the right time.

I didn't know it at the time, but I had made a crucial error by even hunting moose on a day when the temps were in the 90s. Luckily, we had made some new friends that were hunting elk down the canyon and they heard the shots (which was during archery season except for moose hunters) and immediately came to help Andrea butcher the bull while I ran back to camp to get the truck. If it wasn't for John H, and his son Johnny, we never would've gotten that bull cut up and on ice quickly enough to save the meat and cape. It was another example of luck coming together to make it a very memorable hunt.

PS. I know some guys are anti-'trophy hunter' but our view is that we love the hunt more than the kill and the success of the hunt is not based on punching a tag so we might as well be selective and hunt longer as opposed to just tagging out early in a season. Sorry if that offends anybody, just trying to explain.

 

[Caseknife]

That is a whopper of a bull, congratulations to your wife, Andrea. If the right antler had been as large as the left, it would have truly been a monster. I need to go read the your article in Eastman's right now.

 

[Idahoarcheryhunter]

What a toad

 

[MtnWest]

Great bull!

 

[YoungGun]

Giant. Congrats!!

 

[T Bone]

Pretty wife, huge bull!

 

[Nameless Range]

Wow that is a heck of a bull. Congrats to your wife and thank you for sharing.

 

[Trial153]

That's a tremendous bull, congrats

 

[Baerman]

good grief!!!

 

[MT_elk]

Congrats on a dandy bull!