Tale of moose hunt finishes with lot of bull Animal dresses at 734 pounds

Two weekends ago, when we last got together on these pages, it was the Saturday before the September moose season. I wrote about how through the benevolence of a friend – after failing to be selected personally for more than 22 years – I had a bull-moose permit for zone six and was going to be among the lucky 769 sportsmen trying to bag a bull the first week. I also mentioned that unless it got down to the final day or two, I wasn’t going to settle for a small moose in the 4- to 6-point class. At the time I made that statement, my confidence in finding a good-sized moose was high, but that all changed as the week wore on.

Due to unforeseen misfortune, my much awaited and anticipated moose hunt nearly didn’t take place at all. Buddy Horr, my longtime waterfowling partner and benefactor of my bull-moose permit, as well as the luckiest guy I know (2-for-2 on the moose lottery), ran into a misfortune. He was scheduled to work the night shift at the paper mill Saturday night, then he would sleep most of Sunday and make the 31/2-hour drive to my house in the early evening. During his meal break at the plant Saturday night, Bud was to call me to go over final plans and an equipment list for the dawn start of moose Monday.

When I finally heard Buddy’s voice that Saturday evening, it was shaky, in gasps and racked with pain. He was calling not from the mill, but from a Bangor hospital. On his drive to work, less than 10 minutes from his house, an oncoming car swerved into his lane leading to a head-on collision. Despite the fact that Bud got his car almost stopped, the impact was severe, and the seat belt, steering wheel, and dashboard really gave his body a beating.

Thankfully, nothing was broken, but the whiplash, bruises, and contusions made it tough to get a deep breath, let alone move around. I opted to cancel the hunt. Buddy wouldn’t hear of it. I proposed postponing our start a few days. Out of the question. He would be at my house as planned, Buddy informed me. I suggested we wait and see what the next day brought. He agreed to a check-in phone call but was firm in his resolve to see the hunt through.

When Buddy arrived at my home Sunday evening, he walked and moved like a very old man. Getting in and out of vehicles and chairs was slow and painful. Buddy’s 8-year-old son Brian, along for his first-ever big-game hunt, had to help his father in and out of bed each day. Bud couldn’t even shoulder a rifle, let alone stand the recoil of shooting it. Regardless of the pain, suffering, and moans and groans, the hunt was on. “I’m just an extra set of eyes,” Bud informed me, “and you’ve got no backup shooter, so you better not miss.” At 0 dark hundred Monday morning, our moose hunt go under way.

Helping hands

Let me cut right to the chase, avoid all the suspense, and tell you right now that I got my moose – eventually, and a pretty good one at that. But that’s the last page of this book, and like any good suspense novel, the real intrigue and anticipation is in the telling of the plot. In this account, there are a lot of people involved before, during, and after the hunt. So many, that if we have to assign a theme song, it would be the Beatles’ old standard “With a Little Help From My Friends.”

Throughout the summer, during daily travels, it seemed like I was spotting moose a few times each week, and sometimes these were the bad type of sightings that take place up close and personal after dark. Suddenly, during early September moose seemed to become scarce, spending more time in the woods and less time visible in the fields. Since late September is rutting season, I knew using a moose call to imitate a lonely cow looking for a mate should bring the bulls trotting from the trees. I turned to the experts for advice.

Roy’s Army and Navy store has been a fixture in Presque Isle for more than 75 years and remains a daily gathering site for sportsmen and guides from throughout Aroostook County. For a few weeks before the hunt, I spent more time than usual at Roy’s, asking a lot of questions, doing a great deal of listening, and making some new acquaintances. It really paid off. Guides Ben LeBlanc and Jack Hersey offered great insight on calling and even shared a few ideas on where and when to hunt.

Ryan Hayes, a carpenter from Easton who spends every available hour afield, gave me daily moose sighting reports. Despite not having a permit himself, Ryan was out every day at dawn and dusk during the short season looking for moose with my cell phone number at hand. Tom Closson of Fort Fairfield guided his sports in filling three cow permits on Monday and Tuesday, yet had time to keep me informed about bull sightings each day.

Tom Tardiff, an old friend who spends every day outside traveling and trimming fields of Christmas trees, kept in constant touch as well. Darrel and Glen Leach are friends who travel constantly throughout the County and each had my truck cell number. Farm managers Scott Smith, Lane Smith, and Randy Leavett oversee hundreds of acres of potatoes, grain, and broccoli, and all promised to keep an eye open for a bull and call me.

My cousin John Graves was guiding a father and son from downstate with a bull permit, but he called to tell me to let him know when we got a moose down and he would come and help us. Another friend, Jay Peavey from Mars Hill, was hunting for a bull as well but promised to keep in touch with sightings or if we needed help. Allie Sullivan, another friend from Perth Andover, New Brunswick, and a very experienced moose caller, spent two mornings and an evening with us trying to sweet talk a bull out of the woods.

Despite the fact that most of these friends had no moose permit of their own, and no real vested interest other than a sporting spirit, each and every one offered their help and support. I understand how they feel. Helping someone else tag a moose, a rare feat for most of us, is almost like being on the hunt and a heartfelt sportsman’s contribution. I’d helped others in the past, and now it was my turn, and next season it will be another hunter’s. It’s the “Pay It Forward” theory, and it’s an outdoorsman code that works for everyone involved.

Slim pickins’

Monday morning, within 10 minutes of leaving the house, we spotted two black blobs in a roadside field that turned out to be a cow and calf. Twenty minutes later we came upon two big cow moose grazing through a second-growth pasture of high grass and brush. About 8:30 a young bull trotted across the road and into a hillside potato field. We stopped, snuck up a hedgerow, and I checked him out through the scope at 75 yards. A slick-looking 6-pointer that I decided to pass up that early in the hunt. Ryan Hayes called near dusk and had a nice bull in sight, but by the time we arrived 10 minutes later, it had just gone into the woods and refused to respond to calling.

Tuesday we traveled far and wide from dawn ’til dusk and the only moose we spotted were on other hunters’ trailers. Wednesday, the early-morning fog cut vision to 50 yards in most places and didn’t clear until 10 a.m. We saw a cow and calf late in the morning, and that was all for the day, despite a call from Tom Closson about a bull sighting, which was gone when we arrived. By Wednesday night, the Monday 6-pointer was beginning to look pretty good.

Moose morning

After sighting another cow and calf early Thursday, we tried calling at a couple of likely spots but got no results. We were heading for Easton where a big bull had been hanging out when the phone rang. Tom Tardiff was on the line telling me a friend of his who was driving a broccoli truck had just called to report seven moose in a field toward Washburn. I made a beeline for the area and Tom said he and his trimming crew would meet me there.

By the time we arrived, only four moose were in the field. I made a stalk along a hedge to within 300 yards before running out of cover. Plenty close for my scope to reveal that all the moose were cows. Hot, sweaty, and frustrated, I trudged 400 yards back to the road through thigh-high weeds and brambles mumbling to myself. My feet had no more than touched the gravel road beside the truck when one of the guys standing high in Tom’s pickup bed yelled, “There’s a bull now!”

Apparently, he had been laying down in the grass and brush on the far side of the field, but when the cows began to make their way toward the woods, he decided to follow along. Panting and puffing back down the field I went, Tom by my side carrying my monopod shooting rest and Buddy very slowly bringing up the rear. The moose got closer and closer to the woods and we ran out of cover, so it was time to take a shot, despite the long distance.

I supported the Ruger No. 1 .270 on my telescoping shooting stick, steadied, leaning in to the rifle as I squeezed – and just as the rifle went off the monopod collapsed, sending the bullet into the ground somewhere between the moose and I. While I reloaded the single-shot rifle, Tom gripped the shooting stick and held it together at the joint. I rested the .270 again, aiming through the scope, but the bull kept meandering among the cows and I couldn’t get a clear shot. Then, just when I thought the moose would make the woods without presenting an open shot, the bull hesitated.

At the report, the bull’s rear legs collapsed followed quickly by the front quarters. My neck shot with the 140-grain Federal Vital Shok cartridge downed the big animal without a twitch. After the shot, Tom stepped off the distance at 226 paces, somewhere between 225 and 250 yards, and downhill to boot. Farther than I prefer, but I was out of options. Buddy went to get the trailer, Tom went to get his truck, and Jon Clayton, who was riding with Tom, secured my knife and began dressing out the moose. We hooked a rope to the antlers and dragged the bull uphill through the long field to the edge of the road.

Tom Griffin just happened to be operating his large excavator, digging a hole for a foundation right alongside the field. When the trailer arrived, Tom moved the machine over and used the long arm and bucket to easily lift and load the moose, saving us a lot of strain and pain.

Our next stop was the Ashland check station where we tagged and weighed our moose and had a tooth extracted to determine age. Then we had the bull skinned and quartered at the mobile unit of Windham Butcher Shops, a big chore that took the four meat cutters only 15 minutes. Thirty minutes later we wheeled the quarters into the Bates Thriftway store cooler for storage and aging until Dan Rooney and John Fletcher could work their meat block magic, creating steaks, roasts, and stew meat for tasty tablefare.

My moose had a dressed weight of 734 pounds, a 40-inch rack, and 15 points. Although I was the shooter, all my friends and acquaintances truly made the experience, and each was genuinely happy for my success. They will be even happier when I share a few delicious steaks with them.

Outdoor feature writer Bill Graves can be reached via e-mail at bgravesoutdoors@ainop.com