The cost of bringing moose home to the lower 48 is not substantial in comparison to the cost of the hunt itself, if you live in the northwestern US and have friends/partners who can drive long distances.
It's 42-44 hours of driving time from Bellingham WA to Anchorage. Gotta be real similar, if a little bit more, if going north thru Alberta from MT. If you take three weekends and the two intervening weeks, there's no reason why you can't go on a super-productive 10-day moose hunt, and bring it all back. Cost? $485 ea for license/tag, $1200 shared for diesel to/from in your crewcab pickup (assume ~15mpg), plus cost of bush access. My 2009 fly in - float - fly out hunt cost $1600 each for four guys from airstrip to airstrip, but we didn't have to rent boats.
I have lived in the West my entire life, but have never drawn a moose or mountain goat tag in over 30 years of applying. Have drawn one bighorn tag, for a ewe. I also never went on a guided hunt until I was 35--when I went on an elk hunt on a ranch in central Montana, my home state. After the first morning the outfitter let me hunt on my own, because I knew more about elk than he did, and I killed a bull that evening--whereupon he asked me to guide for him.
That's the short background. The long background is that after two decades I finally got pissed off about not drawing a Montana moose tag and went to Alaska. Since then it has become almost impossible to bring moose meat back from Alaska at a reasonable price, so when I have gotten pissed off again I've hunted them in British Columbia and Alberta, where I can drive to the hunt and bring the meat back. Ego is not involved, just a love of adventure and moose meat.
In the same period of time (30+ years) my wife has drawn TWO moose tags in Montana. I got to be chief packer on both hunts, one a mile from where we now live. Even so, I will probably get pissed off again about not drawing a personal moose tag pretty soon and pay a few thousand bucks to go hunt another moose in Canada.
I have always wanted a wild ram, but have the same sort of luck in sheep drawings as with moose. And each time I start to think I could afford a sheep hunt, the price has taken another big jump, and I can't. If I could afford it, I'd book a hunt right now, but I can't.
But there is no reason for a guided sheep hunt to cost more than a moose hunt. The only reason for the high price of sheep is ego, the Grand Slam syndrome. So I both agree and disagree with saddlesore. Guided hunts are NOT all about ego--my bull moose have steadily gotten smaller the longer I hunt them. And I know sheep hunters who simply love it, and can afford it. But some guided hunting is about ego, which often drives up the price.
