Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Let's talk Moose Hunting!!

Shag;
I hope that this finds you and yours doing well this Boxing Day morning sir and that you all had a good Christmas.

Seeing as nobody is showing signs of wanting to do much besides veg at our house today I thought I'd cobble together the story of my sole Okanagan bull thus far.

As I've mentioned in a few previous posts I grew up eating Saskatchewan moose and although I'd hunted for them once there had not been successful in killing one.

After both of our families had moved west here to BC, between my late father and me while we hunted Okanagan moose for a few years we never connected with a bull.

I'll add here that in the years when we began chasing moose here there was no season to the east of us and of course that's where we saw more moose than on the west side where the season was. Then they gave us a LEH season on the east side, but it was and remains a highly sought after and small number of tags, so neither Dad or I was ever drawn for a mature moose tag there.

My father's health eventually deteriorated to the point where he couldn't even ride along and finally he passed on about a decade ago - about the time they gave us an immature bull season on the east side. An immature bull here is defined as no more than 2 points on one side.

Anyway I'd found this spot that was dubbed "Missed Moose Meadow" after I grazed the back hair from a little spike bull there in 2002 I think it was. It's one of the travel corridor spots I like to look for where one can run into whitetail, moose, elk, mulies or black bears on any given day.

On that September morning in 2004 I'd had a particularly poor sleep - I've struggled on and off with insomnia for much of my adult life - and was feeling flatter than a snake through a ringer when I left the truck at full dark to begin my 45 minute trek to the spot I like to be at first light. To say I felt simply wretched would be putting it right and I repeatedly asked myself just why I was out hunting....

Like the pull migratory birds must feel though, every fall the mountains call to me and I just have to answer, so there I was trudging up the hill in the dark.

At first light I glassed a cow and then a small bull in the willows, immediately beginning to close the distance between us and trying to figure out if the right antler fork had 3 tines which would disqualify the bull.

This process must have taken at least 10 minutes and even though I was stalking a bull moose I still wasn't feeling tops. In fact when I bumped into a whitetail butt sticking out of some brush, I silently prayed that if the Good Lord allowed it to be even a spiker I'd be happy with that.

The whitetail however was a doe, a very well mannered one as it turned out, who ghosted away after spotting me rather than waking up the neighborhood with snorting like they are wont to do.

Anyway in the fullness of time I closed on one of the moose and as I figured out that I was looking at the cow, in my peripheral vision I spotted another moose beginning to leave.

I glassed him as he swung his head and about 100yds or a bit more I ascertained it was a legal spike by two. He was breaking into a trot when I hit him with a 220gr Hornady RN out of my "lucky gun" a Ruger 77 Liberty that I'd had rebarreled to .308 Norma.

While the hit rocked the bull, he simply found another gear and from somewhere down deep inside I did as well, as I was sprinting after him looking for another opening for a shot. There was a break in the timber he'd have to run through, so I utilized that advantage and hit him a second time, this time rocking the bull even more visibly, but he remained on his feet and running.

I resumed the chase and was running on what remaining adrenaline was left in me when I heard a crash ahead of me.

The bull was down, but not quite expired, so I replaced the next in line 220gr with a 173gr cast bullet loaded to about 1000fps and put him down for good with that.

How do I articulate the emotions that went through me then? I slumped down in the bush beside the bull, took off my pack and laid my rifle and hat on him as I'd worked up a fair lather in the process. I prayed a quick prayer of thanks to God for allowing my shots to count and then I recall looking up and saying, "Hey Dad, I finally killed a bull!"

I took a quick couple of photos from a cheap hunting camera I carried then and with apologies for the scan, here's what he looked like.


Since I've recounted before the wee rodeo that ensued packing him out I'll cut that short in saying only that it was 4 heavily loaded trips on the Dead Sled to get him to an old skidder trail that I was eventually able to run the truck up to, but was still not really that close to the bull's carcass.

For the those of us who are inclined towards what Dober calls "ballistic gack" I'll offer the following bits.

The first bullet creased the right scapula, broke a rib, traversed the lower lungs, broke another rib and cracked the offside scapula where it was found. It weighed 110gr.

The second bullet broke 2nd last rib, then ripped a hole in the liver, then the lower left lung lobe ( I think) and then broke another rib where it was lodged. It weighed 126gr.

I'd have to look at my hunting log to see if I've got which bullet was which entirely correct, but they're pretty close either way.

Here they are shown with one of the unused box mates for comparison.


Anyway Shag, with apologies to you and all out there who took the time to read this, that's the story of my Okanagan bull.

All the best to you and yours in 2013 Shag and good luck on your upcoming hunts, especially your moose hunts.

Regards,
Dwayne