An Anchorage bow hunter has killed a bull moose that may have the widest antlers ever recorded.
Randy Huff, 42, told the Associated Press he shot the moose with three arrows on Sunday in a meadow west of Mount Susitna. The animal’s antlers, measured at Hunter Fisher Taxidermy in Anchorage, are 82 inches wide. The book “Records of North American Big Game” – the Boone and Crockett Club’s internationally recognized standard for wildlife trophies – lists only two other moose racks wider than 80 inches.
A moose with antlers 80 5/8 inches wide was shot near Redoubt Bay across Cook Inlet. That animal is 33rd in the world-record standings, which factor in the width, height, shape and points on the antlers to determine ranking.
A moose with antlers 81 ½ inches wide was shot near Lake Iliamna in 1972, but ended up ranked only No. 143. The top-ranked moose was shot near McGrath in 1978. Its antlers were 77 inches wide but stood over 4 feet tall with palms 20 inches wide. Antlers, which normally shrink, must dry for 60 days before official measurements are made.
Because of the shape of the antlers on Huff’s moose, some experts doubted it would become a world record. It is, however, a whopping eight inches wider than the biggest moose shot by any other archer, according to Pope and Young, a Minnesota-based organization that maintains separate records for moose shot using bow and arrow.
Both Huff and Brian Carlin, the pilot who dropped the hunter off on the west side of Cook Inlet to hunt moose, refused comment to the Anchorage Daily News.
Here is the story Huff told Associated Press reporter Jim Clarke: Hunting alone near Beluga Lake, Huff was having little luck in meeting a goal of getting a 60-inch bull on his last hunt before leaving Alaska. He planned to leave today for Berthoud, Colo., where his wife and daughters have already resettled.
Finding no moose in a brushy area, he began walking through a series of meadows. His trophy was spotted in the middle of a meadow more than a mile from the campsite on a lake where Carlin had deposited him with a floatplane.
Crawling through grass, Huff got within 90 feet of the bull before an unsettling thought occurred: The bull hadn’t moved so much as an eyelash? Could it be a grizzly kill?
With no evidence of a bear in the vicinity, he crept within 30 feet and shot an arrow six inches into the moose’s shoulder blade. “Man was he ever alive then,” Huff told the Associated Press. The moose leapt up, and Huff shot a second arrow through the moose’s torso, apparently hitting both lungs. The moose spun around 180 degrees, and the third shot went through the torso from the other direction.
More than a mile from camp, with more than 1,000 pounds of meat to pack out, Huff spent all of the next day hauling loads to his camp on a small pond couth of Beluga Lake.
Huff said he plans to continue his passion for big-game hunting in Colorado. “I’ve got an African wall in my house.” He told the Associated Press. “I’ve got an Alaskan wall. Now I need a Rocky Mountain wall. I’m already thinking of places to get a big elk.”
But he said he’s not sure whether this rack will be measured and submitted for record consideration.
I’m not in it for the notoriety,” he said. “I don’t care if somebody sees that Randy Huff is an archer.”
CUTLINE: Taxidermist Tom Elias, who stands 6-foot-3, holds up the 82 ½-inch moose rack, which he said weight about 80 pounds. Bow hunter Randy Huff took the moose on the west side of Mount Sustina.
PERSONAL NOTE: In an earlier e-mail correspondence I sent to the outdoor editor of the Anchorage Daily News, requesting a reprint of the photo and story, he wrote,
”The story you remember is true. The fact that nothing has appeared in any of the hunting press, however, is most interesting. The hunter in question has a poaching conviction in his past, and though he has entered other animals in Pope and Young, I don’t see where he has entered this one yet. I always thought there might be something fishy about this hunt (for instance, the hunting partner who happens to he a helicopter pilot, refused to talk about it, and I can’t remember ever running into that sort of thing before), but I was never able to prove anything, so we didn’t do much with the story but wonder. I’d still love to know more about the details of this hunt.
