Maine has always allowed packing them out. But is is far easier to bring 12 of your closest friends with you.
JDK;
Thanks for the smile this morning and for the wonderful moose photos as well. Congratulations on those very nice bulls.
Moose is a subject near and dear to my heart as I grew up eating Saskatchewan moose meat taken by my late father and uncle on their annual trip a few hours north of our farm near Yorkton, SK.
Before going on I'll note that my brother remains on the family farm and reports that in the last few years moose have been moving southward onto his farm land and are a common sight nowadays.
Anyway as a Canuck and in particular a Canuck whose family has always hunted, moose are a very common subject of discussion at any family get together.
One of my personal favorites to tell goes like this:
At one time in the distant past, one of the owners of the cabinet shop where I've worked for more than 2 decades had formerly owned a guiding business in northern Alberta.
At an SCI meeting or something similar he'd traded either a black bear hunt or a whitetail hunt with an outfitter from Alaska for a moose hunt.
The rack of the moose he took in Alaska is pretty fair sized, certainly it would dwarf any Okanagan bull I've ever seen, but truly the rack looks comparatively small as the melon on his bull is just huge!
I recall measuring the distance between the nostrils and then from the top of the nostril to the tear duct and just shaking my head in wonder. Draft horse doesn't begin to describe it and he confirmed that the taxidermist had a problem finding a form big enough for the cape.
So of course then it follows that the body matched the head and again of course as moose hunts tend to go, this bull received no less than 3 bullets from a .375 Weatherby before it decided that was enough of that and laid down.
I likely don't need to add that it did not lay down anywhere close to the boat......
My boss described the agony they had reducing the bull into transportable protein packages to me, shaking his head and wincing as he did so even though it was years later.
I was still in awe of the huge size of the bull's head and when he was done with his hunting tale I asked, "What was the first thing that went through your head when you walked up to this giant?"
My boss looked me in the eye and in typical straight talking Alberta fashion replied, "I knew how far away the boat was and I thought - I shoulda been hunting f....ing sheep!"
Anyway, I hope you or someone else enjoyed a moose story on me. Good luck to you and the rest of the moose hunters here on your upcoming forays for our biggest deer.
Merry Christmas to you and all the best in 2013 too.
Regards,
Dwayne
