My moose hunt was a great success. Prior to our hunt we spent time scouting swamps and fields for moose. The first few days of scouting were very tiresome, but also very exciting when we saw moose like we did. We were just driving along and watching a field with binoculars when we saw a cow and a calf. We were waiting for a bull, so we held off and moved down the road.

The next thing I knew I was awaken by a loud holler from the front seat. Out in front of our vehicle was a very large bull moose. I jumped out of the vehicle half asleep and ran down the road. We chased the moose into a swamp full of alder trees. I was running and running until all of a sudden I fell into mud up over my knees. While I was getting my legs out of the mud, my dad was charging farther and farther into the woods. After about 45 minutes of searching for the moose we gave up.

We spent the next day searching and searching for a moose. I was almost about to fall asleep once again when, our friend, Vernon, who was driving in the truck ahead of us, waved us down. He saw a bull moose hanging in the pucker brush to his left. We dashed out of the truck and booked it up the road to where the moose was standing. Once I got to where the moose was he took off running so I fired a single shot. I hit the moose in the lungs and he went down like a ton of bricks.

We took the moose and got it weighed at the nearest weight station. They took a crane and unloaded the moose off the back of the trailer. The final weight was 684 pounds. A few hours later the moose was at the meat cutter’s house and in a big cooler waiting to get cut up. We took the last couple hours of our day to go partridge hunting. We went into an apple orchard and I shot my first partridge.

Dylan Fitzpatrick is a sixth-grade student at the Brewer Middle School