Another interesting twist to the story that I failed to mention:
After taking the Moose out we noticed that there was a truck and quad trailer parked at the top of the road, it was there Monday evening, and then Tuesday from early morning until last light, and again on Wednesday. Well the Vet's decided that the 4 of us would hit that area hard for the evening hunt on Wednesday as it was a large area and we had not seen any sign of the other hunter other than his truck and trailer. We spent the evening in there with no luck and one of our party (I'll call him "M") left ahead of the rest of us. M apparently met up with other hunter at the top of the road loading his quad and started talking to him.
The other hunter asked M if we had any luck in the area, not wanting to give anything away M initially told him that No we had not had any luck. (The gut pile was in a conspicuous area and anyone that drove the road would have come upon it). The guy asked again "Are you SURE you haven't had any luck in this area?". M then replied "Welllll....that gut pile down there miiigghht be one of ours".
The guy then got quite excited and stated that he had come upon a Moose, head on at about 60yds on opening day. He said that he had taken a head on chest shot, something he said he normally wouldn't do, but because it was so close he chanced it. Apparently the Moose ran off into the bush and he had been looking for it since then.
We get back to camp and M tells us the story of why this guy was in that road all week and then I remember that when I was gutting the thing, I went to pull the trachea and esophagus out and the top rips right out with a deflated lung attached that had a hole in it. While my partner and I were gutting it I mentioned that I had taken the 3 headshots and wondered how a hole got in the lung, I had heard stories of bullets doing funny things once inside the animal so I chalked it up to a weird ricochet internally and never really gave it any other thought.
The 4 of us looked at each other and just started laughing, we realized right then and there that the Moose I shot had been hit the day before by this other hunter but had obviously survived until I came upon it and that he had been looking for a Moose that was hanging in our camp for 2 days. Needless to say his truck was not back on Thursday as I think he also realized what had transpired.