It’s always funny what events have to happen, in what order, for a hunt to come together successfully. A good plan can help tip the odds in your favour, but so much is just about putting in the time and effort to give yourself the opportunity to catch a break.
The place I had sorted out a few years ago - I wanted a bull moose hunt during the rut where rifle season was open, and a hunt by canoe. One place stuck out for opportunity and proximity - Lakeland Provincial Recreation Area. Several big lakes to choose from, reasonable moose numbers, and a low number of tags - only 5 for the early season during the rut. Low competition, good habitat, easy to explore by boat - all working in my favour. It took 7 years of priority but this year I drew the tag and started to plan the trip. I asked around the office and a few of the lakes all sounded promising, but one had a campsite on a peninsula right in the middle of the lake, which would be a handy staging point, and some good intel that a willow patch near the outlet at the south end of the lake was excellent moose habitat. My friend Marcus came up from Edmonton for the last week of September, and it was on. Food dehydrated, dry bags filled, canoe loaded. We pulled into the staging area/campground/boat launch and there were more vehicles than expected. Several quads, a few motor boats. Hmm. Hopefully no direct competition. I chose this lake partly because of the poor quad access - only a couple of spots with designated trails meant that only watercraft would be going to the areas I was looking at.
We pulled into the campsite mid afternoon on a beautiful sunny day. It had a surprisingly nice beach for a northern Alberta lake. Perfect spot for a beer in the sun… but not ideal weather for hunting.
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| Camp |
As we were getting set up to head out that first evening, a worrying sign - a motorboat zooming down the lake toward the area we had planned to hunt the following morning. They didn’t come back until well after dark. Shit. They’re probably not going all that way to fish burbot. The next morning as we loaded up to head south, there it was again, zipping down the lake. With them in a motor boat and us in a canoe, I didn’t like our chances of beating them down there. Not to mention the sound of the motor putting every moose around on high alert. We’d have to look elsewhere for the time being.
We spent the next couple days exploring about half the lake with no luck, and not a lot of moose sign.
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| Watching and waiting |
Hopes were raised Monday morning when we didn't hear the other hunters' boat. Maybe they had to work for the week? We headed to the spot that afternoon, found lots of fresh moose tracks along the beach, and made a plan for the following day.
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| Good spot for a thirsty moose |
The willow patch is a 7km paddle from camp. With shooting light just before 7am that meant a 430am wake up call to have coffee and paddle down the lake. (In the PRA you’re only allowed to camp at designated sites. Frustrating, but the bear proof food lockers were a nice plus.)
Tuesday morning, we get up and start the long paddle in the dark. No sign of the motor boat. We pull into the willow patch before dawn to start calling.
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| Early starts have their upsides. Photos by Marcus |
An hour or so passes when we hear it - a loud grunt just inside the trees beyond the lakeside willow patch. Then another. My excitement gets the best of me and I respond in kind, thinking my grunts would get him charging in for a fight. But instead, silence. I blew it. Panic, sleep deprivation, whatever it was, it was the wrong decision and that was that.
The rest of that day was spent second guessing myself and wallowing in the missed opportunity. Was that the only chance we’d get? Did I scare him off for good?
Every hunt has a low point and I was pretty sure this was mine. However, if anything, our spirits dropped further with the lack of activity the next 2 days. Canoeing is certainly physically less demanding than backpack hunting, but the early starts and late evenings were still draining, especially when the mooseless days made it feel like we were pushing ourselves for no reason.
Wednesday morning we set our alarms and made it back to the willow patch on a very incredible foggy morning. Felt very moosey. The moose however begged to differ.
I did hear a few branches breaking in the trees ahead of me, but my cow calls were not enticing the bull to come out, and I wasn’t going to start grunting after the previous day’s failure. Of course, I had no way to know if those branches were even a moose. But on a day with no wind, it had to be the bull…. Right?
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| Shots from the bow on a perfectly calm day. Photos by Marcus |
We spent early afternoons having siestas on the beach - given the early wake ups and late arrivals back at camp after paddling back in the dark, it felt like the right decision to maximize our energy for peak dawn and dusk hours. And on days this warm, early afternoon was the wrong time to be hunting hard anyway. Late afternoon and evenings we explored new areas but did not see anything to suggest there was any better bet than the willow patch we’d been working.
In between calling sessions that yielded no responses, we had the lake entirely to ourselves. There were grouse up every trail (should’ve brought a shotgun), pelicans on the lake, two curious river otters poking their heads out of the water to check us out, a barred owl hooting as we paddled away one evening. On this particular afternoon, we stopped halfway back to glass the lake’s perimeter, and spotted two white-tailed does at the water’s edge…. Playing? They ran back and forth through the water chasing each other for 10 or 15 minutes. Through the binos we could see them panting like they were a couple of dogs out for a run on the beach. They weren’t bothered by the canoe and we drifted to within 150 yards of them. Even if no moose make an appearance, it will still be an incredible week on the lake.
Thursday morning we make for the willow patch again, and if anything it’s even quieter. We blew it. The spot was dead. Between the boat hunters and us, and especially my grunting, we pressured it too much. Debating what to do next, we decided to walk a trail that loops around the south end of the lake, just across the corner of the lake from the willow patch. We hadn’t gone down it yet and maybe it would reveal something new. A few hundred metres from where we landed the boat I noticed a well-used game trail crossing the hiking trail, and further inspection revealed a moose-shaped hole in the surrounding vegetation. Not quite as distinct as the hole Wile E. Coyote leaves in those fake highway paintings the Roadrunner puts across the road. But close enough. We keep going down the trail where it opens to a wide valley, spooking two bald eagles off the ground in the process. There are the odd set of not-very-fresh moose tracks in the valley. But it’s mostly deer.
Ok, I think THIS is my lowest point. We’ve explored every trail, every stream that enters the lake, we haven’t even glimpsed any moose, even a cow, and we’re running out of time. The boat hunters will surely be back tomorrow afternoon - Friday - for a weekend hunt, so at best we have 1 more morning to make it happen. Tired, hungry after a meagre breakfast of granola bars, I stomp off up the trail ahead of Marcus, kicking a few branches on the way for good measure. As I turn the last corner off the trail and pop back into the lake shore, I look back across the water at the willow patch, and there he is.
I do this every time. I spend an entire hunt staring through binos at every dark object thinking maybe, just maybe, it’s a moose/deer/elk. Then when it’s actually the animal, there is never any doubt, even without the binos.
“Marcus!!!! Hurry up!!!! Bull moose!!!” I peek around the bushes and range him at 350 yards. Too far. I said at the start of the trip that 250 was my max, and I’m sticking to it. But he is crossing the outlet at the corner of the lake, getting closer as he quarters towards us through the water. A moment later he is at 300. This is it. I crawl out of the bushes onto the shore, and prop my bag on a large driftwood log and get ready for a prone shot, handing the rangefinder to Marcus so he can tell me when the bull comes into my range. As I look up after settling into a shooting position…. he’s gone. Disappeared. How can an animal this big vanish into thin air? Where did he go? Then I remember the Wile E. Coyote hole - it was in the exact direction he was travelling. That’s his route. That’s his pattern.
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| Invisible moose, centre of frame. Willow patch to the right. |
It’s 1130am. It’s the exact place we had planned to hunt, but we’d only ever stayed until 10am or so with the warm weather and lack of activity. Did we just miss him every other day? Unbelievable. What rotten luck. On the other hand, if I hadn’t been in such a foul mood stomping off down the trail that quickly, then I’d have been 2 minutes later and not seen him at all. Right place, right time.
But anyway, there it is. There’s a bull in the area, and he didn’t get scared off by us earlier in the week. Ok, what’s the plan. Wait until nightfall and catch him coming back across the water? We’d gotten to the willow patch pretty early one evening, and glassed the lake perimeter on several others, and hadn’t seen him before. Maybe he’s a late riser. Stalk after him? The wind is favourable but how likely is that to succeed in thick brush? We decide to have a late second breakfast of oatmeal while he settles into his bed, and discuss our options - no rash decisions this time. Marcus suggests we try calling him back out with cow calls. The bull clearly wasn’t bothered by our cow calls before, even if he didn’t find me attractive enough to pursue. Low risk, and high potential for reward. It’s worth a try. We paddle back across the lake to the willow patch and creep to the edge of the lake where he has just crossed from. I get my pack set up as a rest, give a couple cow calls, and wait.
I don’t have to wait long. I’m looking down for a minute, adjusting my position and getting comfortable, and when I look up, he’s right where he is supposed to be. Broadside, drinking from the lake. (Meanwhile, Marcus was a few metres away from me and saw the bull amble out of the bushes, and he is waving frantically trying to get my attention. Hah.).
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| Moose across the water. Photo by Marcus |
I line up the shot and miss completely. Nerves. He looks up for a moment, but quickly resumes drinking. I calm myself, and the second shot doesn’t miss. He stumbles forward a few steps, and I hit him again, and down he goes, in the shallows of the muddiest part of the lake. The Northrup hydro-cooling technique, an SS&S classic that I had not yet tried out for myself.
We have our moose, just past 1pm. It took us most of the week, but we finally got the timing right. No siestas for us today.
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| First moose |
We pull him up onto shore as far as we can, helped by a rope-puller/come-along contraption a colleague lent me. Definitely getting one of those for future boat hunts. Quartering was difficult in the mud, with us sinking to our shins constantly, but we had him in game bags reasonably quickly and loaded into the boat for a leisurely early evening paddle back to camp.
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| Pit stop. Photo by Marcus |
About halfway back, we hear the tell-tale roar of an approaching motorboat. It’s our competition from the previous weekend. As it turns out, we wouldn’t have had another morning to hunt the willow patch with them beating us to it. We got back to camp for dinner, and as we were busy unloading our canoe, the boat zipped by again coming back from the end of the lake. I guess they saw our handiwork and decided to try another spot. Sorry guys. You had the right place though.
After getting the meat set up on a driftwood rack to cool and dry, we relax with a well-earned beer and get some much-needed dinner going. Marcus heads to bed a few hours later, I stay up for a bit just thinking through the events of the day. Thoughts of Oliver’s Yukon hunts and needing to stay up all night to ward off wolves drift through my mind, and I’m not sure I want to chance sleeping, despite seeing no sign of any carnivore all week. Midnight hits, and right on cue, the wolves start howling. Sounds like they are on the same not-very-large peninsula as our campsite. Marcus bolts awake, unconscious but apparently still on high alert (good trait for a hunter), and suggests we load up and head for the truck. It’s about a 5km paddle, the lake is perfectly calm, and our trip back to camp with the moose was slow but perfectly balanced so we didn’t think there was much risk of tipping, even in the dark. We weighed the risks on either side, and decided to make a break for it.
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| Fight or flight response to an imminent threat of moose thievery |
A slow but thankfully quiet couple of hours on the water later and we’re back at the truck to load up and drive home. By the time we get back to my house it’s 530am. An eventful 25-hour day, to say the least. It may have been on an Alberta lake, but between a dead moose in the water and a midnight wolf serenade, I think we’ve earned our honourary SS&S Yukon river hunt merit badges today.
