2011 ND Moose Hunt: Once in a lifetime tag

[Powerstroke]

Impatiently waiting.....

[Scoot]

Sorry guys, my photobucket account keeps blowing up every time I try to do anything with it. I'm kinda stuck...

[harvey lee]

Congrats on the Moose Scoot. A real trophy with a bow.

if you have issues with posting the photo's, you are more than welcome to e-mail them to me and I would be more than happy to post them for you. That of course wouls cost you a moose roast. JK.

You know the address.

If you can get them to me by the end of tomorrow, I can get them posted before I leave for God's country at the ranch for the muzzleloader opener.

[Scoot]

Thanks Tom- I finally got photbucket to cooperate. Good luck at the ranch!

[Scoot]

The “gun season” opened up on Nov. 18th and I was back at it. Although it’s called the “gun season”, the great state of ND allows hunters to use either a gun or a bow. I’m a bowhunter, so I chose to continue using my bow in this late season. I’d have to wear hunter orange, but I could bowhunt, which made me happy.

Many hundreds of thousands of acres of corn had been combined since the archery season and the moose hunting would be very different this go-around. I’d received a lot of phone calls, e-mails, and PMs telling me of moose sightings in the weeks before the season started. This really elevated my level of optimism from the tough hunt I had in Sep. Some locals here on this HSOforum helped out with e-mails, calls, PMs, and making phone calls for me: cbrooks, huntnfish, TylerS, and Harvey Lee all put in an effort to help me and I really appreciate it.

Fri started out with me checking out several leads I’d recently gotten. I looked for moose near Erie, Galesburg, and Hatton. All of these reports were recent, but none of them panned out. Friday came and went pretty uneventfully, without a single moose seen. I heard a cow and a small bull were taken near Galesburg by rifle hunters that day though, so at least some people were having a little luck.

On Saturday my buddy Gabe decided to tag along. We started the day up by Hatton, but that didn’t turn anything up, so we headed for Clifford to look for a good bull I’d heard about. On the way there we discussed my options and whether or not I should shoot a cow if given the chance. I had two big strikes against me: 1) I had a lot going on during most of the weekends of the late season, and 2) I was committed to using my bow. Given these two strikes, we both agreed that I’d be wise to go after a cow if the opportunity presented itself. Not ten minutes after this conversation Art, a gentlemen who was helping locate a moose (more on him later) called with a report of a moose sighting near the town of Ayr. We tore off after it in hopes of finding it before it bedded down in a tree row, slough, or farm yard. We may have even exceeded the speed limit on the way there!

When we got the area Art had directed us to, we immediately saw the moose. She was a big cow and walking in a plowed field.

We drove ahead of her and ran down a tree row that it looked like she’d cross after a bit. Unfortunately, the moose veered more South and we ran out of tree row. This is the end of the little row of trees we’d hoped to use for cover.

Eventually she wandered into an old abandoned farm yard. It was posted, but soon we got permission to go in after her.

We carefully slinked into the tangled mess of an overgrown grove of trees and slowly stalked along, trying to find the moose before it found us. Some spots were very thick and overgrown, other spots were more like CRP grass.

After slowly moving for over half-an-hour I spotted her- she was about 80 yards away and was completely unaware of us. We carefully moved in as far as we were able. In the pic below she’s directly behind the big tree, just on the left side. There’s a fence post there and she’s above it and between the post and big tree- you can only see a tiny section of her. Her hide stood out as very dark brown, compared to most of the gray colors in the woods at this time of year.

We devised a plan, which basically went something like this:

Scott: Huh, I wonder what I should do???

Gabe: Maybe you should sneak up there and shoot it? I’ll stay here and take pictures.

Scott: OK, good idea!

OK, there was a little more thought that went into it, but honestly, not a lot more. I started to carefully move in, being careful to not make a sound.

Closer…

Closer…

[Scoot]

But that was it- I couldn’t get any closer. There was a brushpile in front of me that I couldn’t quietly go through and I couldn’t get around it because I’d be seen. We sat there in a stalemate for almost half-an-hour. The moose had no idea we were there- we’d been almost perfectly silent and the wind was great. We’d come at it from directly behind the big tree in the pics above, so it couldn’t see us either. However, it could have just as well be 1000 yards away, because this scenario wasn’t looking like it’d come together. We decided to back out, go around and come in at it from the side while using an old farm building for cover. The plan was perfect, right up until the moose saw me at 60 yards and busted out of there! Dang it! We were 40 yards from the moose, but had no shot! I second guessed everything I’d done and wondered where the critical error was or if things “just didn’t work out”.

The moose ran into another farm yard and we got permission to go after it there too. The long-story-short is that we sneaked in to about 50 yards from it, but had no shot and couldn’t get any closer without getting busted. Gabe decided to loop back around and try bump the cow towards me. It worked perfectly- she came right through my shooting lane inside of 30 yards. I came to full draw before she got there and was ready. However, she was moving at a fast trot. I put my pin on her, tried to stop her with a grunt, and watched hoping she’d stop in the open. Of course she didn’t- she went five yards past my shooting lane and stopped behind a pile of brush. I let down my draw and watched her trot away. Again, so close but no dice…

Once again the moose had narrowly escaped. It wandered out of the farmstead and eventually made its way back to the grove of trees where we'd made the first sneak on it. We hustled into the NW corner and located it. She was moving along the North side of the trees and had a bit of a headstart on us. We slinked back out, then ran around to the SE corner of the trees in hopes of intercepting her. We carefully made our way towards the outside edge of the grove of trees on the E side . We were moving at a snail's pace. When we were 40 yards short of the rows I spotted the moose headed on a line that'd put her about 30 yards in front of us and broadside- for the moment, it looked like we'd guessed right. I sneaked up as far as I dared, but couldn't go any further because it was wide open after the last bit of cover. I sat and waited to see what would happen next.

FYI- the pics below are the "real deal". They're not staged or recreated after the fact- you can see the moose "moving" from left to right as you look through the sequence of pics. Gabe took them all and did an awesome job, IMO. I'm extremely appreciative of him coming along, getting in such a good spot for pics, and taking what I think are some really cool, over the should, action pictures of an up close and personal moose encounter.

At one point the moose's head was behind a tree so I quickly ranged the tree I thought she'd go past.

Slowly, she proceeded towards my shooting lane and as her head went behind another tree I began to draw.

Her head cleared the final tree to get into my shooting lane and I was at full draw. She came to a stop and realized something wasn't quite right. I could see her head, neck, and front shoulder. This pic is blown up a bit and is pretty pixelated, but gives a little better feel for what I was looking at. In this pic she's turned a bit and looking towards us. She looked a little more to our right on the shot, offering a slightly quartering to shot.

I had a narrow window that'd clear her shoulder bone, but I really wanted her to take one more step to feel really good about the shot. I sat at full draw for what seemed like an hour, but was probably close to two minutes.

I finally decided two things: 1) she's not going to move before i can't hold my bow any longer, and 2) I have a three inch wide gap to put an arrow. It was a shot I felt confident I could make. I put my 30 yard pin two inches right of the tree, took careful aim, and let 'er rip!

[harvey lee]

As always, great story and the photo's were awesome.

[Scoot]

Thanks Tom. Some more to come, but I have to run to get kids picked up. Hopefully that'll be enough to keep people busy for a little while...

[muskiemanAD]

Very cool Scoot! Sure looks different from the Moose country that I picture!

[sticknstring]

Awesome! I had a hunch you'd get that coveted moose tag punched! Hunting moose whitetail style! Can't wait to catch the rest of the story in the morning! Early congrats!

[Powerstroke]

And then????

[cbrooks]

Nice work Scoot

[DonBo]

Way to go Scoot, can't wait to hear the rest of the story and see the pics. So far, so good.

[Huntin&Fishin]

"No prize is greater than the effort it took to achieve it" - Aldo Leupold

im hoping to hear the rest of the story, thought that quote fit this hunt perfectly

[fishuhalik]

congrats scoot! glad you filled that tag!

[Scoot]

The shot felt good, but I watched my arrow borrow just a little too much distance away from the tree. I wanted to be 2” from the tree and I was more like 3” or 4”. I saw the arrow fly and hit very clearly, much clearer than I usually see. The arrow appeared to hit the back of the onside shoulder blade and angle back into the lungs- but I knew I’d caught at least some shoulder. I could see a reasonable amount of penetration, but I also could see plenty of arrow sticking out when the moose turned and bolted back to the North. She ran out of the trees and into the field.

I wasn’t overly happy with the result- I either should have held off or tried to slip my arrow slightly closer to the tree. However, the shot was made and we had to deal with it at that point. We went up to where she had been standing and I discovered that my shot window was much smaller than I had realized. I thought my only two concerns were the tree and the moose’s shoulder, but I was wrong. The pic below shows there was more “stuff” to the right of the tree that I hadn’t seen. However, I’d fortunately missed all of it and my arrow made it to the moose “clean”.

About ten feet from where the moose was shot, I found the back 2/3 of my arrow.

We didn’t see blood on it or on the trail where the moose ran, but when we sneaked out to the field, we saw the moose and could clearly see considerable blood from the shoulder area.

Soon she bedded down in the field, so we backed out and waited. It took a while, but eventually she got up and wandered into a farm yard. We got permission to go after her and put a finishing shot on her there. I was not happy it took the couple hours it did and wanted to make a quick, clean shot to begin with, but she was down and I had myself my once-in-a-lifetime North Dakota moose!

I much prefer pictures without the orange, so I ditched the orange and took a few with camo.

I’m not a big fan of pics that are set up to make the critter look larger than it actually is. However, I did the pic below because I wanted to give some perspective of how big this animal actually was. She was huge- somewhere between 850 and 900 lbs, by Art’s guestimation. The pic still doesn’t show how big it was, but trust me when I tell you she was enormous. I’ve taken care of seven different elk in the field and this moose made all of them look little.

[Scoot]

I called Art and told him what happened and he offered to not only bring over his trailer to haul the moose off, but he also offered to call his grandsons and their buddy to help get it on the trailer. Gabe, Art, Art’s two grandsons, and I all had everything we could do to get the moose on the trailer! It was a snowmobile trailer, so it tipped down and we could slide it right on without lifting it. However, it was tough duty for the five of us.

Here are a couple pictures of the arrow. As you can see, it broke off about 6-7” from the tip. Inspection of the shoulderblade and the broadhead showed that I had just clipped the back edge of the shoulder bone. It shattered one broadhead blade and doing so stopped the arrow very quickly. The broadhead was lodged in the middle of the onside lung. An interesting fact about moose anatomy- they apparently are different from other deer family members and if one lung is perturbed, both are (so I’ve read from credible sources at least). So, there was no doubt this moose was going to die from the first shot. However, it was good to get her down that night and not have to wonder if coyotes would steal all of her meat over night.

FYI- if you’ve never had it, moose is excellent table fare! We at moose loins on Sunday night and all four of us loved it! Mushrooms, onions, a little seasoning, and some spuds on the side- delicious!

A couple final things: First, if anyone out there ever draws this tag, I’d be more than happy to help you the best that I can. I kept a careful record of the moose I saw and had credible reports of over the course of the season. Here’s a map that includes most of these sightings/reports. Besides these, there were also moose reported near Oriska, Hatton, and Gwinner.

[Scoot]

Finally, most of the people I met and got to know a bit during this hunt were absolutely great! I already mentioned a few folks from this site who helped me out, but there were many others. Erik Holverson, Warren Gjelton, Ben Kirkeby, and a number of other people were doing their best to help me out and I really appreciate it! I got help from many people whom I never even knew their names. We stopped and talked to deer hunters frequently and without exception they were helpful and friendly. I knocked on many doors and everyone was nice and helpful to me. Many people made calls, talked to friends, and generally “snooped” for me. Some guys were even nice enough to drive around and look for moose for me. During the archery season I got a couple calls saying “Hi, my name is _____ and I live at ____, I’m looking at a moose right now. Can you come and get him?” These were mostly people who didn’t know me from Adam and were just helpful and kind people.

At the top of the list of these kind and generous people, though, is Art Bucholtz. Art did everything in his power to help me get a moose, even though he’s not a guide and wasn’t trying to make a buck from his efforts. He was generous beyond description and after the moose was down, we loaded it on his trailer, gutted it in his yard, hung it by his tractor/bucket, and used his facility and gear. After we were done Art took us inside and we swapped stories and visited for quite a while. He fed us and gave us celebratory refreshments. Really, Art, his bride Beth, and their family and friends treated us just like family.

All of this, of course, was after he had put in a ton of time and effort to help me find the moose in the first place. Art didn’t know me one bit before the season began. I called him because a previous tag holder for zone M6 suggest I call “Mr. Moose”, as Art is known by the locals. Art is certainly deserving of that title and really the feather in the cap of this whole moose hunt was getting to know all of the great people I met, especially Art and his moose crew. I can’t thank them enough and can’t say enough good things about them. It’s really refreshing to meet people like them and I firmly believe it’s people just like them that make the Midwest great and make ND a wonderful place to be. Here’s a picture of Art being Art- positive, fun, and likable.

That’s it folks! I got a once-in-a-lifetime moose tag in ND and I punched my tag. I struggled with the decision to take a cow, but given my time restrictions and insistence on using a bow, I definitely made the right choice. I hope you enjoyed the story and pics.

[Bear55]

AWSOME SCOOT!!!! Congrats on a once in a lifetime hunt!!!

[DonBo]

Great story (again) Scoot! Congrats one that huge trophy. It really sounds like all the people involved were what made the hunt the great adventure it was.

WTG!!!

[slimngrizzly]

Super story and pics! Way to go! Thats quite an accomplishment! Congrats!

[sticknstring]

That's a beautiful cow - what a trophy! Congrats Scoot & thanks for bringing us along for the ride!

Did you save that scapula? Curious to see how thick it was where you broke through.

[Surface Tension]

Great story and pictures. thank you.

Congrats on the hunt as well.

[bigbucks]

Congrats, great story & great pics. I knew they were huge, but man does she look enormous in those pics. It had to be so satisfying after the hunt you went through to put that second arrow into her & know she was definitely down. Pretty sure I'd be pinching myself to check for being awake.

[Jim Uran]

Wow!!! another great story from Scoot!!! Excellent work!