Note to Reader(s?): I will be dropping this story in installments.
I gave the kids one last hug and kiss on the forehead before hopping into the car for the 8.5 hour journey north to meet up with Oliver. Although we could never re-create the last time we hunted this stretch of river for moose, hopefully we would come out with some meat and new stories to tell. We were missing a key member of our team, but we remained determined and optimistic.
After listening to a variety of podcasts and re-visiting the music of my youth, I met up with a familiar, if not slightly more bearded version, of my good friend and guide for this hunt. We made our warm embraces and then almost immediately began the lengthy shuttle of vehicles.
Oliver was able to spend a good chunk of the day scouting a new take out, which would shorten the slow float down the mainstem by ~30 km. The advantage of which meant that Oliver got first crack at some spruce grouse; a good omen to start to the trip. However, this also meant driving down a tight ~9 km stretch of road where alder branches scraped the sides of our vehicles like too many fingernails down chalkboards (more on that later).
I quickly hopped into Oliver’s (Oliver’s friend’s) truck and we began the return journey to the put in before setting up our camp in twilight and eating our pre-trip dinner of roasted chicken, potato salad and slaw; a sort of pre-trip meal tradition for Oliver and I.
There were a couple of jet boaters that were set up for fly fishing for bull trout along the same stretch of river that we were to hunt. They informed us that they originally came at it from the mainstem, but that there was a big log that stretched the entire width of the river near its mouth. We got a rough location and tucked this information away for later. We were confident that, since we were in a raft, this would not prove to be much of an obstacle later in the trip.
The next morning, we finished putting the raft together and loading it with the gear we would need for the next 5 or 6 days. In all honesty, packing for this trip was fairly straight forward. First, Oliver has hunted this stretch of river 8 or 9 times. Secondly, although not fully seasoned, we both have accrued all of the necessary gear (more Oliver than me, but still) to make a trip like this happen, even on fairly short notice.
We consulted the map on Oliver’s phone and made a plan on where to set up for the night’s calling session with a few pit stops along the way to check for sign with the odd chance of bumping into something. The first spot was an old oxbow where we found lots of sign and tracks of moose and some wolf. They were reasonably fresh, so we tried a few cow calls. This was more to warm up the old vocal chords. Oliver was recovering from a bit of cold, so I was going to have to pull more of my weight on this front.
We sat and called at a second spot which had a great vantage point of the river and a meadow. However, we were both eager to set up camp and the main event of the day, which was only a few more turns downstream.
There was a couple of hours of downtime before we would head into our hunt spot for the evening call. We ate a decent lunch and I tossed a few flies at some rising grayling, but we mainly tried to rest. The hunting spot was a much larger oxbow complex/meadow than we had visited earlier in the day with lots of great moose habitat, but also a tall bank that served as the riverbank long ago. The plan was to call in the middle of this complex in the evening with the hopes of drawing in bulls that are in the vicinity. We would then stealthily head back to camp before last light and the next morning we would set ourselves up on that old riverbank that had a great vantage point of the oxbow. This was a strategy that has worked for Oliver in the past and we were confident that it would play out again on this trip. Besides, in Oliver’s words, “shooting a moose in the evening is horseshit”.
As we prepped our gear for the evening sit, there were some ominous rumbles of thunder as the dark clouds began rolling in from the west. At first, I thought it was the rumble of the highway, but sure enough, as we began our trek to the meadow, large drops of rain began to fall. We set up our small camp chairs and donned our raingear as well steeled ourselves for a couple of wet hours of calling and sitting silently. It was quiet. There was a moment where we both thought we heard some movement in the timber, but, in the end, paid it little attention.
We packed up our gear and began the walk back to camp. About 100 yards from where we were sitting, we found what could only be fresh moose tracks in the sand given how much rain we just endured. The tracks were on the smaller side, but definitely looked like bull tracks This lifted our spirits and it gave us confidence going into the next morning. We cooked a hot meal and hit the pillows early that night.
We got up early, ate a quick breakfast with coffee and headed to the riverbank full of quiet anticipation. Oliver had lost a bit of his voice from the calling from the previous night, so I took up the call for the morning sit. There was still a bit of a drizzle and after a couple of hours of calling and listening, I stood up to empty my bladder. Oliver encouraged me to do a call from this new vantage point. A few moments later, we both gave each other a look. Was that something moving down there? The mind can play tricks on you when you are willing something to appear, so I chocked it up to my active mind and sat back down again. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I was still doing the usual scan of the “window” in front of me, including the poke around the tree that was 10 feet in front of me. And suddenly, like some sort of magic trick, there was a moose standing out in the meadow. Where the fuck did that come from? It had literally made no noise and I didn’t see it wander in. It had its head up and was sniffing the air. It looked a bit nervous or agitated.
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| Morning sit. Photo courtesy of OEB |
I had put my binoculars down somewhere when I went pee and, in the excitement, I couldn’t remember where I put them, so I turned around to talk to Oliver. I think I must have woken him, because he hadn’t seen the moose either. “Cow?” I mouthed quietly given that there were no visible antlers with the naked eye. He bolted into action and put his binoculars up, “no, small bull”.
I was in a bit of a daze or shock. Oliver whispered that he would get into position to back me up on the shot and started moving into a better shooting position. I knew from range finding some landmarks in the meadow that the young bull was about 160 yards out. I started moving into position myself, but as I got my scope up, I could see that he was already on the move. 180, 190, 200 yards. At this point he was quartering away and moving out of my range. There were branches in the way and I just didn’t feel comfortable taking the shot. I tried to get him to stop with a weak bull grunt, but he had already made the decision to get out of there in a hurry. He was gone. We blew it.
We kind of looked at each other in a bit of shock. What just happened!?! How did neither of us hear or see that moose come in? I am still convinced that he had superpowers to teleport or used a secret underground tunnel network to get himself into that spot.
I was kicking myself for moving too slowly. Oliver was kicking himself for moving too quickly. However, I think both of us just accepted it for what it was. We had just successfully called in two moose (granted, likely the same one) on our first two calling sessions. We also had 4 or 5 days of hunting to go. Deep down we both knew we would get another opportunity in what I can only describe as quiet confidence.
Ok. Maybe an iota of me thought we may have blown our only opportunity.
