PART TWO:
After being picked up at the hotel we were brought to the lodge which was about an hour down the highway and another hour down dirt and gravel logging roads. Our main source of transportation were going to be ATVs, or bikes, as they call them. They were very nice and well kept two-seater Can-Am 500s. The lodges were recently renovated and kind of set up in a cottage style. Much nicer place than I anticipated, we even had cell signal boosters, wifi, and satellite TV. My fiance and I were the only two hunters in camp and these folks did a great job of making us feel welcome and wasnt awkward at all (like I feared it would be).
Morning one we set out to a location that we would come to be very familiar with. A glassing point that was about 30 minutes from camp that was touted as their honey hole. This one bog, or series of bogs really, was where they harvest nearly half their moose on any particular year. We started out at this location every morning, the guide was sure that if we kept at it we would see moose there.
As mentioned on my hilltop post, the weather was sour for us from Monday-Wednesday. Gusting winds and heavy rains made for bad hunting conditions and poor animal movement but there was hope. The forecast for Thursday and Friday improved and gave us two good, clear, frosty mornings that proved to make all the difference.
Along with our old-faithful morning glassing spot we hunted a number of different ways. We hiked out into some bogs near the roads and had calling sessions. We rode and hiked way off the reservation into untouched country and glassed. We hunted from a blind over a large bog. We even climbed up into some treestands. We also did quite a bit of what most would consider road hunting, essentially riding straight up to bogs in hope that there would be a moose standing there. The hunting style was not quite what I had expected, I think quite a bit of the moose hunting in Newfoundland takes place from the seat of a motorized vehicle. Speaking to a few hunters at the airport that were in other camps it sounds like the most common, and successful, tactic. I think most of the hunters they get prefer to stick close to the roads, so thats their default method. With that being said, any time that I suggested hiking in or getting away from the bikes, the guide obliged without question or complaint.
When the weather finally turned, things started looking up. We had a pretty neat calling session with some bulls on Thursday morning. There was lots of grunting back and forth and it felt like any minute a bull would clear the treeline and present a shot, but it didnt happen. Thursday afternoon proved unproductive, and come to think of it, all of our afternoons were void of moose. All were spotted between 6-9am.
Friday came around and at this point we had essentially come to terms with the fact that we likely were going home empty handed. I put off bear hunting the whole week to be with my fiance hunting moose and the chances of turning up a moose on our last morning were slim. We were in good spirits, probably the highest all week really, and after a nice breakfast we headed out once more to our old faithful glassing spot.
Things were different that day however.... as we approached the crest of the hill we noticed extremely fresh moose tracks in the sand near where we had the caller set the day before when we had the back and forth with the bull. We topped the hill, pulled up the binos and started checking things out. Our guides spidey-senses were tingling so he side stepped about 15 feet to the right to get a different angle than us and, then quickly, chaos ensued. A bull was standing about 150 yards out in the bog, hidden behind a tree from me and my fiances view. The guide not so subtlety called out the location of the bull, offered his shoulder as a rifle rest, and a shot rang out. It was a hit. She racked another round, fired, a miss. Trying to get an angle for the third shot, she fired off hand and hit the bull, which was now running. This one put the bull down.
Rifle/ammo was a Tikka T3, 30-06, 165 gr. Nosler Partition. Complete pass through on shot one, shot 2 got stuck in the spine and dropped the bull immediately.
Success
