Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Hunting for Cow moose??

I am about to do a fly-in in northern Ontario for Moose. We have both bull and cow tag. We have both hunted moose before mostly by calling for bulls and thats our plan. but if we fill that bull tag, how to hunt for the cow?

Will a cow come to a call? I haven't had one come in on a previous hunt. Is it all spot and stalk?


Suggestions?

I've never had a cow respond to a call. Usually, cows are much more numerous than bulls; therefore not too hard to find in good moose country.

A few cow tags are issued here with the proviso that it be a cow not accompanied by a calf.

I've never had a Cow respond to a call although I have killed one. A nice 3 1/2 year old that dressed out at 554 lbs.

Cow Moose do not respond to a call. If you shoot a Bull, why kill a cow?
That Bull will feed a lot of people!

Dirty Harry

i must be doing it wrong. Far more cows come to my calls than bulls ime - often subtly they will coome check things out--just not like bulls mostly

if by calls you include breaking branches, setting up camp, cutting branches off a spruce to position a tree stand , etc as well as the raking etc of " bull calls", and the various sounds and calls the cows make,

they are both curios and social, tho not touchy-feely herd animals except when mobbed up in rut

i do a lot of sitting on the ground calling and I know much more about cow moose bellies inside 30 feet than i reallly need to. My record is 5' offf my boot tips, measured. 17 feet for a sublegal bull

pardon the in car phone post but im not driving

Moose tags in Idaho are very hard to draw in most units. We're limited to 1 bull and 1 cow in a lifetime. Because of the popularity, you can wait many years to draw a tag although cows are much easier to draw.
There's a unit just south of me that offers 3 bull tags and 3 cow tags. It's probably the hardest in the state to draw. This year there were 300 applicants for those 3 bull tags and 40 applicants for the 3 cow tags. Don't be depending on your moose meat for your winter groceries.

Now that I'm on the computer I will add to previous post., and make a small correction. As said- cows are easier to find than bulls - if legal, I would not hesitate to take one.

Twice I have had cow moose come in to my raking, at a run, bawling and moaning. That 17' from boot tips bull? He got closer the next year, as a 3 year old, when he followed one of those bawling/moaning cows in to my raking. She stood there about 30 feet away looking for the bull she thought I was for a couple minutes, making various sounds, then an antler tap farther back lured her off. Oscar- as I named him the year before - laid down in front of me and stayed there for the next 4 hours, 12 feet away. I had hopes, but dashed, dammit! I didn't move more than to blink and carefully shift my aching butt.... but that experience was pretty nifty!

The previous year, he was in with a half-dozen or more cows, which filtered in from somewhere, all around me, to investigate the new guy on the block - and there was also then a larger bull that never showed himself, nearby. Maybe the same one. Shy he was.

Several of the sub-legal, immature bulls that have come in to my calling have actually been trailing cows apparently looking for a bigger bull - and/or maybe they are the cow's offspring. Bulls don't care if they are would-be mudderfookers.

I will end this up by saying we filled the bull tag quite easily, in fact we called in several more bulls just for fun after we filled the bull tag.

We did try calling the cow with calf calls, without luck. We also spend quite a bit of time glassing shorelines etc without luck on the cow tag. The area in Ontario where we were had very little openings except for water. I would say typically we could see perhaps 10-30 yds in most places except shorelines which made spot and stalk pretty much impossible. While it would have been nice to fill the second tag, we had a great time. we will probably pass on the cow tag next time.

I was in Northern Ontario hunting Bull Moose a couple of years ago. We spotted a few cows but saw no bulls. It seemed to us that the bulls were being nocturnal.

One cow walked up to sling shot range to us. Wish we had a cow tag.

I paid $4K for a tag in the VT Moose auction one year and burned it on a Cow on day 3 of the hunt which was only a 6 day hunt. I just wasn't finding any Moose and nothing was responding to my calls. Walking out of the woods at dusk I bumped into a Cow with a Calf and I got trigger happy. As soon as I pulled the trigger a Bull started grunting from a distance and he came in on a line. He was very close while I was filling out my tag but he never came out where I could see him. The next day a friend took a kid to the same spot and called that Bull in. He was about a 40" bull and the kid shot him in the shoulder with a 308 which dropped him but he regained his feet and took off. Eventually they lost blood

Cow moose are curious animals, they absolutely will come in to a call. Wind direction and being quiet getting into your area is important. They do not come rushing in like a rattled up WT buck, they come in slow and quiet mostly out of curiosity and hormones during the rut. A few lo key bull grunts and a lot of patience, definitely want fresh sign or a sighting so your not wasting your time.