My 2016 Idaho Moose Adventure

[Joe Hulburt]

Well my wife and I made our second trip up into the panhandle to scout the unit and try and see a few moose. Last trip up we never saw a single moose but found tracks and hung a couple trail cams by some ponds we located. This trip we saw some cows and calves at least. Man, if it wasn't for hearing over and over that you shouldn't expect to see many moose in the summer I would be stressed. It's a thick unit with little glassing to be done so I expect to do a lot of calling. Stay tuned for hunt report come early October. I'm counting the days now.....I cant wait to actually have a moose tag and rifle in hand!

Here is a video I made of some footage of a cow moose and most of the trail cam pics from a month soak.
https://youtu.be/0RaFfHrzCJM

 

[duckhunt]

Cool video. I seem to have just as much fun scouting as I do hunting. Good luck on your hunt.

 

[mixedbag]

Good luck on your hunt.I'm hoping to draw I'd someday and would love yo hear about your experience

 

[Joe Hulburt]

There are a lot of these ponds around and the moose seem to like them...



My moose scouting partner loves the trees... She has a bunch of cool pictures on her camera I will try and post once she gets them downloaded.

 

[Joe Hulburt]

Question for anybody who has hunted Shiras Moose who happens to see this. Is next week too early to expect much rutting activity? I've heard the peak starts around Sept 25th and have a good chunk of time to hunt then but I'm also off work for elk hunt right now and I'm debating heading North to look for a bull moose and saying heck with the elk. What would you do?

 

[mdhunter]

I am not a self proclaimed moose hunting expert but I have killed a bull Shiras in Idaho. I shot it on Nov 7th up in the panhandle. I beleive we were in unit 10 but it has been a few years. PM me and I can pull the file and confirm if you like. My phone says I was in Orofino, ID but I think the word Orofino was an indian word with the meaning "middle of nowhere".

My best advice is dont kill one in the bottom of a canyon like I did...Good luck!

 

[SteveE]

The one I got in Montana was about Oct. 20th Joe.

Seemed it started around Sept 25th but peaked closer to the middle of October in this area.

Moose tags are hard to draw. I would say the heck with elk and focus on the moose hunt.

 

[Mica Man]

Moose is once in a lifetime in Idaho so if you got the time and don't have your head in the game with elk I would hunt moose. With that being said the rut is at the end of September, beginning of October. Check the weather and if it's not too hot, hunt moose!

 

[SPOTTED OWL]

Question for anybody who has hunted Shiras Moose who happens to see this. Is next week too early to expect much rutting activity? I've heard the peak starts around Sept 25th and have a good chunk of time to hunt then but I'm also off work for elk hunt right now and I'm debating heading North to look for a bull moose and saying heck with the elk. What would you do?

Call me crazy but I saw a huge bull in full rut on nov 7. Was with a cow and was checking her every 30 seconds. I somehow blew the stock, but it was a sight to see.

 

[Joe Hulburt]

So the story picks back up on September 28th. My son Ben and buddy Ron head east at 4:00 am in hopes of getting camp set up in time to make an evening hunt. It took forever to get wolf tags in Lewiston so we ended up pressed for time to get out for a look around before dark. I had a trail cam my wife and I had left from last trip I wanted to check so Ben and I headed up to check it right before dark. On the way if we heard something very large in the creek beside us and pretty soon he started grunting. Our first few minutes of actual moose hunting and we had a bull going! He was only 20 or 30 yards away and the wind was screwed up so we ended up backing out without checking the trail cam at dark. In the morning we checked it and there had only been a few bull moose around in the past month....




And a few cows....




And some competition.....


Not the parade of trophy bulls I had dreamed to find but the one was interesting.

 

[Reeltime]

Looking forward to the rest!!

 

[fishing4sanity]

Sorry Joe, patience isn't one of my virtues (if I have any). Great pics so far, looking forward to more.

 

[Joe Hulburt]

I'm on it, I've just been kind of busy the last couple days.

Once we finished the hike in to check the one trail cam I had left up we headed up into a big bowl that had another pond in the center of it. It was going to be a warm day and getting late in the morning so I was really just in scouting mode at this point. As we are coming up a creek bottom my son Ben say's "did you hear that?". It takes me a few seconds but finally I hear another "Rumph" (my best attempt at typing out a bull moose call) and it sounds like it's coming from the creek bottom up from us about 150 yards. Things are looking good with downward thermals still but as soon as we move closer the sun comes out and the wind starts to blow up the draw. We decide we need to try and circle above the alder thicket the moose sounds are coming from. It was a good plan but the wind was switching direction often and as soon as we got above the sounds I spotted a calf and cow moose busting up the hill at about 50 yards. I was thinking to myself that the bull would be soon when out stepped the first bull moose I have ever laid eyes on. Ron was standing next to me and I told him right away he was too small as he walked away to catch up with the cow and calf. At this point we circled higher to try and get another look at them and before long Ben was able to spot them in a small clearing on the top. The cow was tired of being pestered by the bull and bedded down out in the full sun in the middle of a clearing which surprised us. I was scrambling to get my video camera going and finally got it set up and zoomed in on the moose. I was getting some really good footage! Sadly once the moose left I reached for the pause button and saw it was in pause mode......I had neglected to hit record. Damn, filming is hard!

Luckily Ben is quicker than I and he got some quick photos of the moose in action.



You have to remember this is the first bull moose I have ever seen and I've never been good at passing up shots at animals so I start trying to talk myself into him being big enough but I am able to get a grip and enjoy the show. He was really wound up and carrying on! Very impressive looking animal....

 

[fishing4sanity]

I've never hunted moose, but I'm guessing the massive body size makes one start to think, "that's a big animal, maybe I do want to shoot him." I've missed the record button or had the camera set wrong for some of those amazing moments in nature too.

 

[Joe Hulburt]

I've never hunted moose, but I'm guessing the massive body size makes one start to think, "that's a big animal, maybe I do want to shoot him."

It sure does with me! Given how hard each moose sighting is to come by and how badly I wanted to lay my hands on a moose antler it did make me wonder if I should pass but it was the right call.

 

[Joe Hulburt]

That day the weather was still pretty warm so we spent a few hours in camp laying low waiting for an evening hunt. Camp was at a gate in a saddle that should be renamed windy saddle!


View at night....


That evening we made our way down the closed road behind camp to the bottom of the canyon across the creek and up the other side.



On the way back up once again we are above the creek and we located a fresh "wallow" or maybe you would call it a scrape. It's apparently what rutting bull moose do anyhow...


We could tell it was really fresh so I made a few cow moans down into the draw and a bull grunted back immediately! Right away we can hear brush and limbs breaking and he is coming. Unfortunately the wind (during prime time to hunt) is always going down and it is pretty much impossible to get below the moose which are all in the bottom of brush chocked draws so at about 60 yards he goes silent. We got a lot of video of him grunting and possible even the brush moving but we never got a glimpse of moose. I saw brush moving in binocs anyhow...

Not trying to drag this out longer than necessary but I need to download the video to continue the story so it may be a day or so before I finish.....kind of busy dealing with "stuff" since we got home.

The canyon he was down in....

 

[Joe Hulburt]

Well I decided to skip the video part and will get to the ending of this journey. A few more days of calling at bulls and getting responses passed with another really close call on Oct 1. I was able to get a bull going right after daylight and he was coming right in until I could see brush moving at 66 yards at which point he went silent. Now I am getting really frustrated with my calling skill! At this point we decided to go back up into the pond area where we had watched the bull pestering the cow a few days previous to see if any new bulls had joined in. To get there we had to go past the "Bunny Mart". Not sure what it was but I imagine it to be a snowmobiler shack from years ago.



The trip in started out warm but by the time we got up there the temp had dropped 20+ degrees and we could see snow above us and heavy fog patches blowing thru. We glassed a while then it started to rain so we decided to head back to camp but on the way down I threw the binocs up one last time to glass a hill about 625 yards away and saw a moose move thru the trees! We got the spotting scope out and confirmed it was a cow and looked all around for a bull in between banks of fog that were rolling thru but couldn't see one. Finally we headed down into the creek bottom below her and set up numerous times to call with no luck. We finally decided she must be alone and started up the creek to head out. About 200 yards up the hill I looked down and see this guy looking up at us....


zoomed in a little....


He saw me before I saw him and was already locked on us so I felt like I needed to make a quick decision. I had shut the video cam off and closed up the tripod so Ben was scrambling to get it on and running and when he zoomed in he said 'He looks pretty big to me" and I agreed so I put the crosshairs right behind the front shoulder and hit him with a 165 grain Accubond from my .308. He lunged forward and stopped so I got on him again and was about to hit him the second time when his head raised up and his back end went down. Moose down!


Sorry for drawn out story. Like my buddy Ben said after his recent Alaskan Moose Hunt. Cutting up a moose is like mowing your lawn with a pair of scissors. I have been busy! Sure is good eating though, we had heart for dinner last night. Impressive to say the least! That is a regular size dinner plate.



Here is another angle that shows just how massive these little Shiras moose are.


I can't thank Ben and Ron enough for all their help! I can't imagine skinning and quartering even a Shiras by myself. Amazing critters.....thanks for following along.

 

[----]

Great bull! You should be real proud of that one.

How bad was your pack out?

 

[1_pointer]

Super job! Good looking moose.

 

[Joe Hulburt]

Thanks guys!

Great bull! You should be real proud of that one.

How bad was your pack out?

Really happy my son was able to take his one week of vacation and come along and share the experience and I am very honored to have the bull.

The pack was not bad at all. The area we were hunting is mostly Potlatch Timber lands and there are gated roads all thru it that they allow 4 wheeler access on. This is of course a blessing and a curse. There were a fair amount of joyriders around on the summer scouting trips I made over there but at the same time we were able to cut a few miles off the pack by having a 4 wheeler along.