Michael Strahan
webmaster
Hi folks,
Story time. I have a good friend whom I've known since we were kids, and his heart's desire has been to take a moose. He first hunted moose with me about 15 years ago, and just last week he finally fulfilled his dream with a larger mature bull he and I hunted in Western Alaska. He's been here four times over the last fifteen years and he finally has a moose! Our first hunt together was a grueling affair involving a floatplane drop-off in a dead zone out in a huge valley, then an overland hike through trackless wilderness about twenty miles, just so he could shoot a caribou instead of the moose that weren't there. Following that, we floated nearly a hundred miles of a very remote river (we were the only ones there). We had six Super Cub loads flown in to a bald ridge top and packed it all three miles to the river (took us three days). Though we saw some moose, numbers were few. He had a grizzly tag also, but the one opportunity we had came when he decided to take a short walk to look off the other side of the hill. I videotaped the bear as it walked by and later played it back for him when he came back for snacks. Isn't technology wonderful? This time, from the time we were dropped off, we swatted bugs (the temperature was really warm) and glassed for an entire day, and the next morning about 11:30 we broke out into a slough with good visibility, where I broke some branches and raked the tree a bit, then gave a few bull grunts as I had with this guy hundreds of times before. But this time was different. The bull stepped out of the willows about 600 yards away and looked right at us. We made a short stalk and he shot the bull at about 250 yards with his .338. My friend was so happy he even kissed me on the cheek! We walked over to make sure the animal was dead then got the raft and rowed to the other side of the slough where he had fallen and began the work of processing. The joke, as I told him, is that this moose wasn't even born when he started hunting him!
I'll post a series of photos of the hunt so you can see how it all went down.
This first shot is the first morning of the hunt. There is lots of water where we were dropped off (this wasn't a float hunt, but we needed the raft to get around).
-Mike
Story time. I have a good friend whom I've known since we were kids, and his heart's desire has been to take a moose. He first hunted moose with me about 15 years ago, and just last week he finally fulfilled his dream with a larger mature bull he and I hunted in Western Alaska. He's been here four times over the last fifteen years and he finally has a moose! Our first hunt together was a grueling affair involving a floatplane drop-off in a dead zone out in a huge valley, then an overland hike through trackless wilderness about twenty miles, just so he could shoot a caribou instead of the moose that weren't there. Following that, we floated nearly a hundred miles of a very remote river (we were the only ones there). We had six Super Cub loads flown in to a bald ridge top and packed it all three miles to the river (took us three days). Though we saw some moose, numbers were few. He had a grizzly tag also, but the one opportunity we had came when he decided to take a short walk to look off the other side of the hill. I videotaped the bear as it walked by and later played it back for him when he came back for snacks. Isn't technology wonderful? This time, from the time we were dropped off, we swatted bugs (the temperature was really warm) and glassed for an entire day, and the next morning about 11:30 we broke out into a slough with good visibility, where I broke some branches and raked the tree a bit, then gave a few bull grunts as I had with this guy hundreds of times before. But this time was different. The bull stepped out of the willows about 600 yards away and looked right at us. We made a short stalk and he shot the bull at about 250 yards with his .338. My friend was so happy he even kissed me on the cheek! We walked over to make sure the animal was dead then got the raft and rowed to the other side of the slough where he had fallen and began the work of processing. The joke, as I told him, is that this moose wasn't even born when he started hunting him!
I'll post a series of photos of the hunt so you can see how it all went down.
This first shot is the first morning of the hunt. There is lots of water where we were dropped off (this wasn't a float hunt, but we needed the raft to get around).
-Mike
