A time to laugh, learn and hunt Friends, food enhance quest for Maine moose

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TOWNSHIP 4, RANGE 15 – When you’re planning “the hunt of a lifetime,” as Maine wildlife officials like to call it, a few things are essential.

Food, for instance. Lots and lots of food.

And friends (who may or may not have any real hunting expertise, but who are willing to pitch in, laugh at bad jokes, and add to the general moose-camp atmosphere).

You’ve got to have a plan … and (as we all found out) be willing to change it.

That was the case this week, as my moose-hunting party headed into the woods for my own hunt of a lifetime.

Meeting the characters (a word which defines them in a variety of ways), I suppose, is the first order of business.

The Lander boys are born hunters who truly know their way around the woods of Maine.

For the record, the Lander boys are also exceptionally unlucky when it comes to moose-permit lotteries, and despite entering for the past 26 years, none has ever had his name pop out of the state’s electronic hopper.

Not Chris, my sub-permittee, who learned his woods craft from his father, Bill, and his brothers.

Not Billy, who lives in Dedham, nor Timmy, who resides in Eddington.

But on Sunday … thankfully … they were there, loading trucks and heading northwest along the Golden Road to our hunting grounds near the Cassidy Deadwater, located seven miles north of Northeast Carry, which is at the northern tip of Moosehead Lake.

Pete Warner, whom you often read in these pages, tagged along for moral support (and, as he’d tell you, comic relief). He doesn’t hunt … yet … but we’re working on that.

Mark Kingsbury of Dedham is one of the owners of the camp we stayed in, and he came along for the ride, and to share his knowledge of the area.

Bridget Brown, a BDN photographer who was assigned to document the expedition, and quickly became a vital part of the team, rounded out our group.

On Sunday, we loaded up two weeks worth of food, a couple firearms, a magic digital game call, and other sundry supplies, and headed into the woods for what could have been a one-day journey … or could have stretched on for days.

And we did have a plan: Shoot a moose. Get a story. Eat too much. Laugh. Live. Learn. And most importantly, enjoy the moment … however long that moment takes.

Wish us luck. This could get interesting.

Sunday preparations

Cassidy Deadwater is beautiful, in that desolate, murky, moosey way that seems to exist only in the T-whatever, R-something-or-other locales where moose hang out.

Old timber operations are evident, if you look hard; most of those clearcuts have since grown up into thick stands of moose-hiding alders, or stands of spruce and hardwood.

Our base camp, which was built in 1993, sits high on a ledge overlooking the deadwater. It’s a perfect place, one would think, to spy a moose … or something else.

And it is.

Not an hour after unpacking three truckloads of gear and supplies, Brown made the transition from “photographer” to participant.

“What’s that over there?” she asked, pointing at a distant shore, a mile or more away.

A stump, we figured.

“But it’s moving,” she told us.

It was … and after scrambling for binoculars, we found that moving stump was a monstrous bull moose.

Kingsbury smiled and told us he knew a road that would take us near that bull’s location. We would hunt it the next morning.

And the hunt will be over, I thought. This will be easy.

That’s what I thought. The moose, it turned out, had his own plan.

At this point, it’s important to note one small fact: I didn’t really want the hunt to end Monday. Honest.

My reasons were purely selfish.

The saga of a five-minute moose hunt, I figure, wouldn’t fill much newsprint … and we were, after all, looking for a tale to tell.

Tuesday would be better, Wednesday ideal.

That’s my story, anyway.

Encouraged at Brown’s moose-spotting effort, we ate pan-fried spaghetti carbonara (I know … that’s not the way Emeril would prepare it, but I was the chef and had a hard time thawing out my masterpiece). Not long after, one by one, we began heading to bed.

A moose awaited. Our moose awaited. The hunt was upon us. It was time to get down to business.

Monday moose mania

Moose hunters go about their work in different ways. Some prefer what they call “traditional hunts,” and take a canoe into the wilderness, packing the moose out after quartering it.

Others like to drive the roads, checking out clearcuts and bogs for their quarry.

And others – like us – begin our hunt with a plan to hit likely spots, set up, and call the moose to us.

Old-time moose hunters did their calling with birch-bark megaphones, through which they bellowed like a bull, moaned like a cow, and (hopefully) lured a moose within range.

Many still use that tactic.

My moose-calling skills, however, are still rudimentary, and my best efforts probably sound more like the screams of a skunk with a head cold than a moose of any size, shape, or gender.

That’s where Peter Brown comes in. Brown, who went to Brewer High and Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, is a co-founder of Extreme Dimension Wildlife Calls, based in Hampden.

We had one of his Phantom Pro-Series calls, and all of us were eager to give it a try.

For the record, most of us were so eager we took turns firing off salvos of moose noise on the digital wonder while we were still sitting in camp.

It didn’t take long for the Phantom to pay dividends … almost.

Standing in the woods along an old timber-harvesting road, Kingsbury set up the call and began pushing buttons.

From the direction of a nearby stream, the answering calls of a lovesick bull began.

Distant at first … then closer … then closer.

Then they stopped.

For a half-hour, we waited. No grunts. No bellows. Nothing.

The moose, it seemed, had figured us out.

Discouraged, we unloaded our weapons and hopped back in the truck.

Bad idea.

Two hundred yards up the road, we met Mr. Moose. Our intrepid photographer swears it was the bull she spied Sunday night.

And he didn’t plan on hanging around to see what we had in mind.

A few seconds later, as Chris Lander and I performed a less-than-graceful dismount from the truck, the moose disappeared into the woods.

“I guess that shows the importance of patience,” Kingsbury told us.

The rest of the day featured more of the same. Much more. The moose wanted to talk to us about our hunt, but they had no interest in actually participating.

High on a hill – a location we tried three different times over the course of the week, and began calling “High Above Courtside” – a bull answered our calls loudly … and frequently.

But he never stepped into view.

Determined to be patient, we worked that area for three hours, until the setting sun forced us back to camp for the day.

Over the course of an enjoyable day, we had seen two moose (including one before sunrise), three grouse, two deer that frolicked in the shallows of Cassidy Deadwater, a rabbit, and two coyotes that seemed more interested in finding the source of our calls than the moose did.

We ate like kings (and a queen): Sandwiches for lunch, and pork loin for dinner.

But at the end of the day, it was a no-moose Monday.

Just like I planned. Honest.

Terrible Tuesday

OK. Maybe terrible isn’t the word. We did have fun. We did hear some interesting things. And we did have one cheap thrill, when a logger drove by and told us that a huge bull moose was wallowing in a bog, not a mile away from the spot we were hunting.

But at the end of the day, we had nothing to show for our efforts but this: Knowledge.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.

We tried everything we could think of, went to a few new places (and some of the old ones) and hunted much more diligently than we had the day before.

But before we talk about that, it’s important to talk about this: Alpo.

The highlight of an otherwise unremarkable day, I figure, was the Alpo.

Breakfast in moose camp (or deer camp, or fishing camp, for that matter) is always impressive. Put Chris Lander in charge of cooking it, and you’re bound to eat exceptionally well.

Lander, you see, cooks up a mean skillet of Alpo.

Alpo, of course, is not really Alpo. It is, in fact, actually prepared with human consumption in mind.

But the only time I eat it is when I hang out with the Landers, and we’re miles away from civilization.

“Alpo” is a Landerese word for corned beef hash. I could tell you the brand name, but don’t care for the legal troubles that might bring. All you need to know is this: When it slides out of a can into a sizzling skillet, you’d swear it looks as though the morning menu includes dog food.

Trust me, though: It’s far better than dog food. Just don’t ask me (or my sister) how I know.

Breakfast was Alpo and eggs and sausage and bacon. Lunch … well, we hunted through it. But dinner? Pete Warner’s patented pasta-in-a-pot, which we took to calling Petey Pasta.

Picture lasagna, without the flat noodles, and add about three times the recommended meat and cheese, and you’ll get a fairly accurate picture.

But back to the hunt.

As it turned out, the logger’s tip didn’t pan out: Mr. Moose had vacated the bog before we could get there.

And the wind blew all day, making calling difficult.

We even tried tuning Chris Lander’s satellite radio to an all-Elvis channel to change our hunting karma. The first song we heard seemed appropriate: “That’s All Right.”

“That’s all we needed was a little Elvis,” Chris told me with a grin.

As it turned out, the moose didn’t care much for The King.

It got so bad at one point that we began to go a bit bonkers. Warner, in fact, admitted that the hours of waiting for the faint call of a distant moose were taking their toll.

“I’ve been straining to listen so much that I’m starting to hear people laughing,” he said. “And voices.”

Later that day, I started to experience the same sensation.

But the day wasn’t a total loss: Warner did see an otter swimming in the Deadwater.

And we did hear real moose making the sounds we’d been trying to replicate on the Phantom.

The cow was urgent. The bull answered back.

Every 10 seconds or so, the cow would moan. And moan. And moan.

The lesson for the day: We weren’t calling nearly as aggressively as real moose do.

And on Wednesday, we planned to change all that.

I did, after all, want to get a moose on Wednesday. Did I already mention that?

Wednesday wonder

On the way out of camp on Wednesday morning, a few big deadlines loomed.

First and foremost was the one placed upon us by Bridget Brown: If we didn’t shoot a moose before 8 a.m., we wouldn’t get photographic evidence of our expertise … or lack thereof.

She had to get back to Bangor.

Kingsbury was heading out at lunchtime. Warner had to leave by Thursday morning. And by Friday, Chris and I each had to be back in Bangor.

The clock was ticking. But we were ready, thanks to our secret weapons: Billy and Timmy Lander had been very, very busy boys.

While we had been hunting for the past two days, the older Lander boys had been scouting. Periodically, we’d meet up and they’d tell us what they’d found.

And on Tuesday, they found two spots that were full of moose sign, with no evidence of having been hunted.

We went to one early in the morning, then headed back to the bog the trucker had told us about.

Neither of those spots panned out … it was 8 a.m. … and Bridget Brown headed to back to town.

We were on our own.

As you might assume, that’s when things got really interesting.

At the second spot the Landers had found, we parked at the end of a long, grassy skidder path and walked a half mile, just as they directed.

We set up our call … hid behind some brush … and got to work.

Encouraged by the tryst we’d overheard the night before, I began pushing buttons feverishly.

The cow was in heat, I reasoned. And the bull had to be interested. Every 15 seconds or so, I hit another sequence of buttons. Estrous cow. Bull grunt. Bull grunt. Cow. Bull. Cow.

As I looked at the control panel, trying to decide on my next mating salvo, an urgent voice in my ear told me my efforts wouldn’t be needed.

There he is, someone said. It could have been Kingsbury. It could have been Lander.

When I looked up, I saw what they had seen: A modest bull moose, broadside, 50 yards away.

Trying not to fumble, I handed Kingsbury the call’s remote control, unslung my rifle, lay it on my shooting stick, and took aim. One shot rang out. The moose dropped where he stood.

After two minutes, he regained his feet, and Lander and I fired at the same time, and the bull fell for the last time.

The entire episode happened quickly, I thought. Warner wasn’t so sure. When the bull appeared, he wasn’t holding the call. He had heard the crack of a twig. And he had been staring at the opening in the trees when the moose stepped out.

“I’ll tell you what, buddy,” Warner said. “Between the time we saw that moose come out and the time you shot him, it seemed like eight days.”

It was 10:25, and the hunt was over. Just in time for our respective deadlines.

Moose hunt postscript

The old maxim of moose hunting holds that all the fun ends when you pull the trigger. In this case, that wasn’t true.

The bull fell four feet from the skidder path, and we were able to drive a truck right to it.

From the time we pulled the trigger, it took us an hour and 12 minutes to field-dress the moose and load him into the truck.

Yes, I was counting. (I did have a story to write, after all).

All the credit goes to the Lander boys: They are experts at the field-dressing process, and took over the messy chore.

By 1:30 p.m., we had tagged the moose at Raymond’s Country Store in Northeast Carry. By 2:30, we were eating heaping helpings of Billy Chili, Billy Lander’s food offering.

And by 6:30, we were eating again, feasting on the baby back ribs that Timmy Lander had brought. (I know, it sounds gluttonous, but we took a lot of food with us, and we decided to get rid of as much as we could).

For the record, I’m not exactly sure how much the bull weighed.

The scale initially said 636 pounds … but there was a lot of ice involved in that unofficial measurement. After removing all the ice I could reach (one bag was pesky, and I couldn’t extract it from the moose), the scale read 589 pounds.

That’s the weight I’ll remember, and that’s the story I’ll tell … and tell … and tell.

The moose had an eight-point rack with a spread of just under 30 inches. Modest, to say the least, but we weren’t complaining.

In fact, as the sun set that night, all of us kept reliving the hunt. Each part of the week was fair game, and repeating our own tales to those who were there to witness it all didn’t seem in the least bit redundant. In fact, it seemed necessary.

Eventually, we turned in … and after that, we returned to town.

We learned. We laughed. We ate too much. And at the end of the day, a moose even decided to take part in our hunt … on Wednesday.

Just like I’d hoped.

Honest.