This year was my first time drawing a moose tag here in NB. I've been applying for years but was always putting in for the closer zones, which are also the zones with the most people and fewest tags, so the odds aren't great. The past 2 years i started to apply for another zone further up north that a cousin has a camp in.
After i got drawn we did some scouting, my cousin pointed out a few spots they had shot moose in the past and just driving around and checking things out we found a really good looking spot.
It was an old clearcut that the roads in were all brushed in with alders and a second road that T'd off and ended at a small swamp. as soon as you got past the alders there were moose tracks all up and down the road in all directions, old tracks, new tracks, all over the place. When we walked in the first time we even saw a small bull in the far side of the swamp. Things are looking good!
The last piece of advice my cousin gave me was to leave the camp at legal shooting light to drive out to our stand. In the past they've shot just as many on the drive in and out of the camp as sitting anywhere out in the woods.
Fast forward a few weeks and we pack up and head to the camp, get everything unpacked, go out and set up some ladder stands and blinds and sit back and wait for the season to start.
Opening morning is perfect, 2-3 degrees, frosty/misty and cool so we wake up and make breakfast, which takes a bit longer than expected so we're leaving the camp about 10 minutes later than we had planned, so we're kind of rushing down the camp road to get to our stand. The road goes through a few clearcuts before we get to the main road and as we come out to the second cut in my head i was thinking "we should slow down a bit here just in case there's a moose in the cut" but we're in a bit of a hurry so we don't but as soon as we make the turn into the cut i see two moose standing out in the mist and kind of yell "moose moose moose". we throw on the brakes, i hop out and load my gun, but in the mist and brush i can barely tell where they were.
I had to walk out in to the cut a ways to see around some brush to get a decent look at them, it's a cow and older calf but there's more brush blocking any shot so i creep further into the cut to find a decent sized sapling i can rest on to steady myself.
I finally find the cow in the mist about 100 yards off and touch off a shot, but she doesn't move, so i shoot again, doesn't move. I shoot a third time and she finally stumbles like i hit her and takes a step forward. At this point my gun is empty so i grab another shell, throw it in, find her in the scope and shoot and again, almost no reaction from her. Grab my last 5th shell i had on me and at this point she's quartering away a tad and wham, last shot and it looks like she goes down.
Here in NB when you get drawn you can have a designated "second gun" on your license, so since i am out of ammo my second gun runs over with his rifle and gets set up in case she pops up again, which almost went bad when the calf popped in to view in the same area the cow went down and starts walking for the tree line. In the excitement he was close to taking a shot at the calf thinking it was the cow until we yelled to stop him from shooting.
After watching a bit and not seeing her get back up i stayed to watch while everyone else boogey'd back to the camp to get all of the gear and extra help getting her out, which was when the real work started.
As we were waiting for the boys to come help we saw another 2 moose in the mist further up the clearcut and 20-30 minutes later could also hear a bull thrashing against a tree in the back corner. Later in the day we talked to some guys in the other cut just behind us and they had seem a different 4 moose at the same time as they heard my shots. With that many moose around in the area I may have been a little quick to jump at the first adult moose i saw but i've waited long enough to get drawn that i didn't want to go home empty handed.
As we were gutting/butchering and getting the meat into bags and coolers for the drive home we worked out what happened with my 5 shots. two were in the lungs almost in the same spot and turned both lungs into jelly. One round hit part of the heart a tad lower and one hit a piece of the liver on its way through (i'm guessing the quartering away 5th shot).
The last hit was kind of a mystery, it didn't hit the guts or anything below the diaphragm or any of the back ham meat but somehow took out one of her hip joints. I can only assume it hit a tree tip or something in the clearcut and deflected back to her back end or a weird change of direction off of bone somewhere. I'm guessing this was the third shot were she staggered a bit.
Being my first moose hunt it's amazing she was still standing so long. I had heard that they can soak up bullets but with 4 shots to the heart/lungs/liver and one taking out her back hip. When she didn't react to the first few shots i thought i must have knocked my scope around and be sending rounds off into the dirt somewhere until i saw the stumble.
All in all though it worked out great. Even though my season was over 8 minutes after it started we got lots of meat for the freezer and i still have the rest of the week off to relax and take it all in.
After i got drawn we did some scouting, my cousin pointed out a few spots they had shot moose in the past and just driving around and checking things out we found a really good looking spot.
It was an old clearcut that the roads in were all brushed in with alders and a second road that T'd off and ended at a small swamp. as soon as you got past the alders there were moose tracks all up and down the road in all directions, old tracks, new tracks, all over the place. When we walked in the first time we even saw a small bull in the far side of the swamp. Things are looking good!
The last piece of advice my cousin gave me was to leave the camp at legal shooting light to drive out to our stand. In the past they've shot just as many on the drive in and out of the camp as sitting anywhere out in the woods.
Fast forward a few weeks and we pack up and head to the camp, get everything unpacked, go out and set up some ladder stands and blinds and sit back and wait for the season to start.
Opening morning is perfect, 2-3 degrees, frosty/misty and cool so we wake up and make breakfast, which takes a bit longer than expected so we're leaving the camp about 10 minutes later than we had planned, so we're kind of rushing down the camp road to get to our stand. The road goes through a few clearcuts before we get to the main road and as we come out to the second cut in my head i was thinking "we should slow down a bit here just in case there's a moose in the cut" but we're in a bit of a hurry so we don't but as soon as we make the turn into the cut i see two moose standing out in the mist and kind of yell "moose moose moose". we throw on the brakes, i hop out and load my gun, but in the mist and brush i can barely tell where they were.
I had to walk out in to the cut a ways to see around some brush to get a decent look at them, it's a cow and older calf but there's more brush blocking any shot so i creep further into the cut to find a decent sized sapling i can rest on to steady myself.
I finally find the cow in the mist about 100 yards off and touch off a shot, but she doesn't move, so i shoot again, doesn't move. I shoot a third time and she finally stumbles like i hit her and takes a step forward. At this point my gun is empty so i grab another shell, throw it in, find her in the scope and shoot and again, almost no reaction from her. Grab my last 5th shell i had on me and at this point she's quartering away a tad and wham, last shot and it looks like she goes down.
Here in NB when you get drawn you can have a designated "second gun" on your license, so since i am out of ammo my second gun runs over with his rifle and gets set up in case she pops up again, which almost went bad when the calf popped in to view in the same area the cow went down and starts walking for the tree line. In the excitement he was close to taking a shot at the calf thinking it was the cow until we yelled to stop him from shooting.
After watching a bit and not seeing her get back up i stayed to watch while everyone else boogey'd back to the camp to get all of the gear and extra help getting her out, which was when the real work started.
As we were waiting for the boys to come help we saw another 2 moose in the mist further up the clearcut and 20-30 minutes later could also hear a bull thrashing against a tree in the back corner. Later in the day we talked to some guys in the other cut just behind us and they had seem a different 4 moose at the same time as they heard my shots. With that many moose around in the area I may have been a little quick to jump at the first adult moose i saw but i've waited long enough to get drawn that i didn't want to go home empty handed.
As we were gutting/butchering and getting the meat into bags and coolers for the drive home we worked out what happened with my 5 shots. two were in the lungs almost in the same spot and turned both lungs into jelly. One round hit part of the heart a tad lower and one hit a piece of the liver on its way through (i'm guessing the quartering away 5th shot).
The last hit was kind of a mystery, it didn't hit the guts or anything below the diaphragm or any of the back ham meat but somehow took out one of her hip joints. I can only assume it hit a tree tip or something in the clearcut and deflected back to her back end or a weird change of direction off of bone somewhere. I'm guessing this was the third shot were she staggered a bit.
Being my first moose hunt it's amazing she was still standing so long. I had heard that they can soak up bullets but with 4 shots to the heart/lungs/liver and one taking out her back hip. When she didn't react to the first few shots i thought i must have knocked my scope around and be sending rounds off into the dirt somewhere until i saw the stumble.
All in all though it worked out great. Even though my season was over 8 minutes after it started we got lots of meat for the freezer and i still have the rest of the week off to relax and take it all in.
