How could it be over so quickly!?!? Super grateful, excited, surprised, overwhelmed, lucky, a tinge sad... All of these things rattled through my head at lightning speed the morning of 9/6 this season.
I was one of the fortunate applicants in CO to have my name selected from the hat to hunt a bull shiras moose this year. While surprised, I was also a bit confused during the draw process with both my wife and I falling victim to some insane point creep in what we thought should have been layups for this year for other tags. Regardless, I will take this luck! Thankfully, she was taking on a lifelong pipe dream of floating the Grand Canyon while I was holding down the home front with the kiddos when I was receiving the draw details, so I had some time to digest.
Under normal circumstances, I couldn't be more excited, but given my recent lucky streak with draws, I couldn't help to think of some challenging logistics and conversations on the home front as a result of drawing yet another "once in a lifetime" tag that would easily take up lots of my attention span in the months to come, as well as the potential for a long period of time this fall. My wife now doesn't believe there are "OIL" tags... For this tag, CO has a "season's choice" tag for bull moose which allows you to hunt any or all of the seasons for archery, muzzleloader, or rifle. You clearly just need to make sure you are paying attention to the dates for when what is valid. That said, this year's combined season opened 9/6 and would wrap up on 10/14.
I was blessed to draw a sheep tag in 2023, a OIL oryx tag on range in NM in 2024 (still need to post), and then this moose tag and yet another oryx tag (broken horn). This is to simply say that over the last 3 seasons, I have been spending more time than "normal" leading up to these hunts mentally prepping, escouting new terrain, edu-ma-cating myself on habits, ranges, patterns, etc. of these new critters. This is all with two young gremlins on the home front (turned 6 and 8 this year).
So with the context in hand, I started what has become a bit of a routine for a new hunt. I started a google spreadsheet where I could organize my thoughts and notes. I jumped into the stats that CO provides, reached out to fellow hunt talkers, connected with friends, read some books, scoured the internet, made phone calls, etc. I had only ever backpacked in the area of my tag, chasing high country cutties, but had never hunted. By the end of May, I felt like I had a reasonable plan to start piecing together a plan. Before I knew it, summer time living was in full swing with the realization that I likely wouldn't be making it down to the unit for any boots on the ground scouting until late summer. I still felt good given that I had created a baseline schedule for how I would attack the season. I planned to spend the initial week with a bow, head back for another 5 day "weekend" later in September with the bow, and lean on another 6-7 day stint in October with a rifle should I need it.
I was one of the fortunate applicants in CO to have my name selected from the hat to hunt a bull shiras moose this year. While surprised, I was also a bit confused during the draw process with both my wife and I falling victim to some insane point creep in what we thought should have been layups for this year for other tags. Regardless, I will take this luck! Thankfully, she was taking on a lifelong pipe dream of floating the Grand Canyon while I was holding down the home front with the kiddos when I was receiving the draw details, so I had some time to digest.
Under normal circumstances, I couldn't be more excited, but given my recent lucky streak with draws, I couldn't help to think of some challenging logistics and conversations on the home front as a result of drawing yet another "once in a lifetime" tag that would easily take up lots of my attention span in the months to come, as well as the potential for a long period of time this fall. My wife now doesn't believe there are "OIL" tags... For this tag, CO has a "season's choice" tag for bull moose which allows you to hunt any or all of the seasons for archery, muzzleloader, or rifle. You clearly just need to make sure you are paying attention to the dates for when what is valid. That said, this year's combined season opened 9/6 and would wrap up on 10/14.
I was blessed to draw a sheep tag in 2023, a OIL oryx tag on range in NM in 2024 (still need to post), and then this moose tag and yet another oryx tag (broken horn). This is to simply say that over the last 3 seasons, I have been spending more time than "normal" leading up to these hunts mentally prepping, escouting new terrain, edu-ma-cating myself on habits, ranges, patterns, etc. of these new critters. This is all with two young gremlins on the home front (turned 6 and 8 this year).
So with the context in hand, I started what has become a bit of a routine for a new hunt. I started a google spreadsheet where I could organize my thoughts and notes. I jumped into the stats that CO provides, reached out to fellow hunt talkers, connected with friends, read some books, scoured the internet, made phone calls, etc. I had only ever backpacked in the area of my tag, chasing high country cutties, but had never hunted. By the end of May, I felt like I had a reasonable plan to start piecing together a plan. Before I knew it, summer time living was in full swing with the realization that I likely wouldn't be making it down to the unit for any boots on the ground scouting until late summer. I still felt good given that I had created a baseline schedule for how I would attack the season. I planned to spend the initial week with a bow, head back for another 5 day "weekend" later in September with the bow, and lean on another 6-7 day stint in October with a rifle should I need it.
