Slooshark1
CGN frequent flyer
Nipigon Moose Hunt 2006
Well this year’s moose hunt was an adventure right from the word “go”. I had scheduled sales calls in New Liskeard so that I would have a shorter distance to travel at the completion of my day. I had planned on driving through the Field cut-off road and stopping in Warren to have the clip for my .35 Whelen modified slightly so that it would feed more reliably.
When I arrived close to Temagami, the traffic was stopped in a blinding snow storm and I sat in my truck for 45 minutes waiting to see if the line would stop moving. I turned around and began driving back to New Liskeard. I had only been about 7 kilometres from Temagami but the roads were closed. My plan was to return to New Liskeard and take Highway 65 through Elk Lake and come out at the Watershed and then meet up with the rest of the gang who were traveling from Sudbury.
On my way, I saw a bull with three cows. It was pretty exciting to see that many moose standing all together. I arrived at the Watershed Restaurant around 6:00PM and had to wait until 7:30PM for the rest of the crew to show up. I had planned on dropping my dog “Wilson” off at my Dad’s place in Sudbury for the week but that all changed and now “Wilson” was going to be coming up to Nipigon with us. We drove all night through blinding snow storms and slippery roads and arrived at the Husky in Nipigon and gassed up and ate breakfast. From there we began our trip into our secret hunting spot.
Once we arrived we began setting up camp and getting all our chores out of the way. We had to assemble the camp and the sleeping quarters and put the sauna together. This year the group had chipped in and bought a couple of Porta-garages which we modified to have an end wall that we could put the chimney of our wood stove through. It was real cozy all week. Keven and Wayne went and got some firewood while some of us finished off some of the finer details like building the outhouse and selecting the right stones for the sauna stove (Finnlander’s are real particular).
That afternoon everyone headed out to our usual hunting area and found a place to watch until nightfall. I was itching to get out and do some walking and try out my new GPS which was a Garmin Etrek. I was moving along real slow and spotted some old moose tracks in the snow which were really not that old since it had just finished snowing that morning. I followed them slowly while searching ahead with my eyes but realized that I had been made when the tracks became quite fresh and started circling around me. I walked out to the road and caught a ride back to camp with Henry.
Sunday morning, I got up and had a great breakfast of sausages and eggs and toast washed down with several cups of coffee. We headed back to our spot and I headed off close to the area where I had been the day before. I was sneaking along through a bunch of blow-downs when all of a sudden I heard a whole bunch of branches snapping about 90 yards in front of me. Unfortunately, it was just out of sight. I began approaching where I had heard the noise and discovered that I had just jumped four adult moose from their beds. I began tracking them knowing that someone would certainly be watching the trail up ahead. But, as so often it happens, they gracefully crossed the trail and nobody saw them at all.
Monday morning, I went on the other side of Moose Road and began still hunting in an area that showed lots of promise from fresh tracks and browsed gads. I had developed a bad cough and was trying to subdue the coughing with Buckley’s mixture. It tasted awful but I still kept coughing. I put up a cow and calf and heard them taking off but they didn’t go in the direction of any one of our guys. No luck again.
Tuesday, poured rain. It was pouring rain when we woke up. It was pouring rain when we hunted and it poured rain right until dark. My Filson Wool Coat weighed about 80 pounds soaking wet. And it was soaking wet. It took two days to dry it and my wool pants.
Wednesday, we went out and hunted some more but didn’t have any action except for Henry almost getting run over by a bear. Nobody had bothered to purchase a bear license in camp and I had already filled mine so the bear was allowed to continue his search for moose calves to devour. On late Wednesday afternoon, we heard the report of a high-powered rifle and were informed over the radio that Keijo, our senior member of 70 years had downed a cow and twin calves with his BAR .300 Win Mag. Three head shots between they eyes claimed three moose. I just could not believe it. After the moose were hung, the remainder of the evening was spent hearing phrases like, “The old man still has what it takes”. We all marveled at Keijo’s marksmanship. He was so calm, cool and collected about the whole ordeal. I was totally impressed.
The next morning, I was just going to take my dog for a walk and kind of half hunt for a bull. There was no real pressure to fill the bull tag since we had plenty of meat for our seven members. After we had finished our breakfast and burned our dishes. We sat around and drank a couple of cups of coffee and discussed the day’s plans. Henry wanted to go for a drive and that kind of sounded like fun so I said, “Sure. Let’s take my truck.” We decided to go check out “Hamburger Hill” a landmark named after the amount of moose that had been clamed near it in past hunts. Henry and I enjoy the same music so we played various CDs in the stereo and skipped through to the better songs while we drove. We stopped once so Henry could try his skills at harvesting a partridge but unfortunately the partridge won.
We drove on a bit further and had to stop because I had to go talk to a tree for a few minutes. When I came back Henry was glassing over some open country with his new binoculars. We hopped in the truck and continued up the road toward the top of Hamburger Hill. Henry said, “Stop here for a second. I just want to have a look with my binoculars.” I looked around toward the top of the hill for deer or moose when Henry suddenly said, “Hey, Earle! There’s a moose down there!”
I threw the truck in park and slid over a bit to see out Henry’s window. Sure enough, there was a moose way down at the bottom of the valley. I grabbed my laser rangefinder and jumped out of the truck. I put the crosshairs on the moose and pushed the button. It was 650 yards away. “How should we do this, Henry?” I asked. We looked at the geography of the land and which way the wind was blowing. “We could continue on in line with this road until we get the hill between us and the moose and then we can begin our approach” he answered. So that’s what we did. We flipped a coin to see who was going to get the first shot. Henry won the coin toss.
I was walking with my rifle slung over my shoulder and noticed that the vest that I was wearing had those plastic quick-release clips on the front of it that were clacking together. I quick slip of the knife silenced that. We continued on our stalk for about 20 more minutes and were sneaking through a patch of red pines when I spotted one of the tops of the trees that were near the moose. We carefully peaked out of the trees and spotted the moose in front of us. I put the rangefinder on him and pushed the button—158 yards. I found a spot for us to kneel. I told Henry, “You shoot first and I’ll keep my crosshairs on him until he’s down.” We both looked and the moose was gone! “Where the hell did he go?” Henry whispered. “He must have bedded down”, I replied. We watched for a few minutes and nothing happened.
“I’ll try a call and when he stands up you take him” I said. I called several times and nothing happened. “All right,” I said. “You watch that spot with your scope and I’ll sneak around down wind of him. When he sees me and gets up, you take him,” I said to Henry. “But if I have a clear shot and you don’t, I’m going to shoot, okay?” I asked. “Okay”, Henry replied.
I began sneaking around down wind of the moose when I spotted him standing frozen still and watching me from 160 yards away. I looked at him through my scope but he was standing underneath a small Red Pine and I couldn’t see any horns. I looked through my scope several times for a couple of minutes, but still couldn’t confirm that it was a bull. I thought that maybe it might have been a cow that was traveling with the bull. I took about four steps to my left and looked through my scope again. This time I could see a horn on one side of his head.
I got down on one knee and rested my elbow on my one knee and sat on my other foot. I placed the crosshairs of my Leupold VX-II 1 x 4 rifle scope just under the moose’s chin. I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled while tightening up on the trigger. The Remington Model 700 .35 Whelen recoiled and the moose reared back on his hind legs and jumped to his left and took off running across the open. I went to rack another shell into the chamber and the rifle jammed. I lowered the gun and took the clip out and two of the shells fell out on the ground. I through clip back in with only two shells in it and I heard Henry shoot. I looked at the moose that was running as I heard Henry cycle the bolt of his Model 700 30-06 and heard him fire again. This time, the moose cart wheeled in midair and piled up on the ground kicking slowly as he died. “Keep your crosshairs on him!” Henry yelled to me. I watched him for a couple of minutes as we timed from the kill shot before firing our signal shots.
We approached the downed moose and inspected him. “I can’t believe I missed”, I said to Henry. I looked at the moose and saw that he had a broken front leg at the kneecap. I noticed that he had a hole in the centre of his chest. “I guess I didn’t miss him after all!” I said to Henry. I had hit him perfect and he was running dead on his feet when Henry took the legs out from under him and put him down for good.
After I had field dressed the moose I searched through the gut pile for my bullet. I had to cut open the rumen and sift through all it’s contents for about 10 minutes before I finally found it. The 225 Grain Barnes X Triple Shock bullet had mushroomed perfectly and my initials, which I always engrave on the back, were still legible.
We high-fived and laughed ourselves silly. “Man that was exciting!” I said. We both agreed that it was like something that we would have seen on television. We got the moose back to camp and hung up and enjoyed the rest of our week before packing up and coming home on Saturday.
It was one of the most amazing moose hunts I’d ever been on.
Slooshark1
October 2006
Well this year’s moose hunt was an adventure right from the word “go”. I had scheduled sales calls in New Liskeard so that I would have a shorter distance to travel at the completion of my day. I had planned on driving through the Field cut-off road and stopping in Warren to have the clip for my .35 Whelen modified slightly so that it would feed more reliably.
When I arrived close to Temagami, the traffic was stopped in a blinding snow storm and I sat in my truck for 45 minutes waiting to see if the line would stop moving. I turned around and began driving back to New Liskeard. I had only been about 7 kilometres from Temagami but the roads were closed. My plan was to return to New Liskeard and take Highway 65 through Elk Lake and come out at the Watershed and then meet up with the rest of the gang who were traveling from Sudbury.
On my way, I saw a bull with three cows. It was pretty exciting to see that many moose standing all together. I arrived at the Watershed Restaurant around 6:00PM and had to wait until 7:30PM for the rest of the crew to show up. I had planned on dropping my dog “Wilson” off at my Dad’s place in Sudbury for the week but that all changed and now “Wilson” was going to be coming up to Nipigon with us. We drove all night through blinding snow storms and slippery roads and arrived at the Husky in Nipigon and gassed up and ate breakfast. From there we began our trip into our secret hunting spot.
Once we arrived we began setting up camp and getting all our chores out of the way. We had to assemble the camp and the sleeping quarters and put the sauna together. This year the group had chipped in and bought a couple of Porta-garages which we modified to have an end wall that we could put the chimney of our wood stove through. It was real cozy all week. Keven and Wayne went and got some firewood while some of us finished off some of the finer details like building the outhouse and selecting the right stones for the sauna stove (Finnlander’s are real particular).
That afternoon everyone headed out to our usual hunting area and found a place to watch until nightfall. I was itching to get out and do some walking and try out my new GPS which was a Garmin Etrek. I was moving along real slow and spotted some old moose tracks in the snow which were really not that old since it had just finished snowing that morning. I followed them slowly while searching ahead with my eyes but realized that I had been made when the tracks became quite fresh and started circling around me. I walked out to the road and caught a ride back to camp with Henry.
Sunday morning, I got up and had a great breakfast of sausages and eggs and toast washed down with several cups of coffee. We headed back to our spot and I headed off close to the area where I had been the day before. I was sneaking along through a bunch of blow-downs when all of a sudden I heard a whole bunch of branches snapping about 90 yards in front of me. Unfortunately, it was just out of sight. I began approaching where I had heard the noise and discovered that I had just jumped four adult moose from their beds. I began tracking them knowing that someone would certainly be watching the trail up ahead. But, as so often it happens, they gracefully crossed the trail and nobody saw them at all.
Monday morning, I went on the other side of Moose Road and began still hunting in an area that showed lots of promise from fresh tracks and browsed gads. I had developed a bad cough and was trying to subdue the coughing with Buckley’s mixture. It tasted awful but I still kept coughing. I put up a cow and calf and heard them taking off but they didn’t go in the direction of any one of our guys. No luck again.
Tuesday, poured rain. It was pouring rain when we woke up. It was pouring rain when we hunted and it poured rain right until dark. My Filson Wool Coat weighed about 80 pounds soaking wet. And it was soaking wet. It took two days to dry it and my wool pants.
Wednesday, we went out and hunted some more but didn’t have any action except for Henry almost getting run over by a bear. Nobody had bothered to purchase a bear license in camp and I had already filled mine so the bear was allowed to continue his search for moose calves to devour. On late Wednesday afternoon, we heard the report of a high-powered rifle and were informed over the radio that Keijo, our senior member of 70 years had downed a cow and twin calves with his BAR .300 Win Mag. Three head shots between they eyes claimed three moose. I just could not believe it. After the moose were hung, the remainder of the evening was spent hearing phrases like, “The old man still has what it takes”. We all marveled at Keijo’s marksmanship. He was so calm, cool and collected about the whole ordeal. I was totally impressed.
The next morning, I was just going to take my dog for a walk and kind of half hunt for a bull. There was no real pressure to fill the bull tag since we had plenty of meat for our seven members. After we had finished our breakfast and burned our dishes. We sat around and drank a couple of cups of coffee and discussed the day’s plans. Henry wanted to go for a drive and that kind of sounded like fun so I said, “Sure. Let’s take my truck.” We decided to go check out “Hamburger Hill” a landmark named after the amount of moose that had been clamed near it in past hunts. Henry and I enjoy the same music so we played various CDs in the stereo and skipped through to the better songs while we drove. We stopped once so Henry could try his skills at harvesting a partridge but unfortunately the partridge won.
We drove on a bit further and had to stop because I had to go talk to a tree for a few minutes. When I came back Henry was glassing over some open country with his new binoculars. We hopped in the truck and continued up the road toward the top of Hamburger Hill. Henry said, “Stop here for a second. I just want to have a look with my binoculars.” I looked around toward the top of the hill for deer or moose when Henry suddenly said, “Hey, Earle! There’s a moose down there!”
I threw the truck in park and slid over a bit to see out Henry’s window. Sure enough, there was a moose way down at the bottom of the valley. I grabbed my laser rangefinder and jumped out of the truck. I put the crosshairs on the moose and pushed the button. It was 650 yards away. “How should we do this, Henry?” I asked. We looked at the geography of the land and which way the wind was blowing. “We could continue on in line with this road until we get the hill between us and the moose and then we can begin our approach” he answered. So that’s what we did. We flipped a coin to see who was going to get the first shot. Henry won the coin toss.
I was walking with my rifle slung over my shoulder and noticed that the vest that I was wearing had those plastic quick-release clips on the front of it that were clacking together. I quick slip of the knife silenced that. We continued on our stalk for about 20 more minutes and were sneaking through a patch of red pines when I spotted one of the tops of the trees that were near the moose. We carefully peaked out of the trees and spotted the moose in front of us. I put the rangefinder on him and pushed the button—158 yards. I found a spot for us to kneel. I told Henry, “You shoot first and I’ll keep my crosshairs on him until he’s down.” We both looked and the moose was gone! “Where the hell did he go?” Henry whispered. “He must have bedded down”, I replied. We watched for a few minutes and nothing happened.
“I’ll try a call and when he stands up you take him” I said. I called several times and nothing happened. “All right,” I said. “You watch that spot with your scope and I’ll sneak around down wind of him. When he sees me and gets up, you take him,” I said to Henry. “But if I have a clear shot and you don’t, I’m going to shoot, okay?” I asked. “Okay”, Henry replied.
I began sneaking around down wind of the moose when I spotted him standing frozen still and watching me from 160 yards away. I looked at him through my scope but he was standing underneath a small Red Pine and I couldn’t see any horns. I looked through my scope several times for a couple of minutes, but still couldn’t confirm that it was a bull. I thought that maybe it might have been a cow that was traveling with the bull. I took about four steps to my left and looked through my scope again. This time I could see a horn on one side of his head.
I got down on one knee and rested my elbow on my one knee and sat on my other foot. I placed the crosshairs of my Leupold VX-II 1 x 4 rifle scope just under the moose’s chin. I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled while tightening up on the trigger. The Remington Model 700 .35 Whelen recoiled and the moose reared back on his hind legs and jumped to his left and took off running across the open. I went to rack another shell into the chamber and the rifle jammed. I lowered the gun and took the clip out and two of the shells fell out on the ground. I through clip back in with only two shells in it and I heard Henry shoot. I looked at the moose that was running as I heard Henry cycle the bolt of his Model 700 30-06 and heard him fire again. This time, the moose cart wheeled in midair and piled up on the ground kicking slowly as he died. “Keep your crosshairs on him!” Henry yelled to me. I watched him for a couple of minutes as we timed from the kill shot before firing our signal shots.
We approached the downed moose and inspected him. “I can’t believe I missed”, I said to Henry. I looked at the moose and saw that he had a broken front leg at the kneecap. I noticed that he had a hole in the centre of his chest. “I guess I didn’t miss him after all!” I said to Henry. I had hit him perfect and he was running dead on his feet when Henry took the legs out from under him and put him down for good.
After I had field dressed the moose I searched through the gut pile for my bullet. I had to cut open the rumen and sift through all it’s contents for about 10 minutes before I finally found it. The 225 Grain Barnes X Triple Shock bullet had mushroomed perfectly and my initials, which I always engrave on the back, were still legible.
We high-fived and laughed ourselves silly. “Man that was exciting!” I said. We both agreed that it was like something that we would have seen on television. We got the moose back to camp and hung up and enjoyed the rest of our week before packing up and coming home on Saturday.
It was one of the most amazing moose hunts I’d ever been on.
Slooshark1
October 2006
