Pumpkin's Moose Hunt(IT WAS A OIL HUNT!!!!)

[X-Force]

   Good luck. loving the story

[Hunting Cowboy]

What if we say............purdy please? post the pics~!!!!!:chuckle:?

[finnman]

Oct. 2nd 3:30am- I sit on the edge of my cot for a few minutes and contemplate the day to come, Paula is already up and fixing coffee and sandwiches, my brother slept in his clothes next to the stove and said he was hot all night long Him and James both were in such a hurry to get over here they forgot to grab bed rolls or pads! Sleeping on the ground started to not be fun!
We catch up with DJ and take a new route into the HOLE, we arrive at daylight to find a red F-150 parked at the overlook its RUFOUS, somehow he found his way in here and heard about the bulls in this area, we drive past and start glassing like the day before, it is a little cloudy out and a bit cooler, we spot 2 small bulls and decide to go down to the side canyon with all the sign, we hike up the canyon and call, nothing. We rake, nothing, we back out and go back to the top and make a new game plan. Rufous is still at the lookout glassing, later on we would find out from DJ's buddy Gary(his high school principal) that Rufous was putting the move on a big bull in the head of the drainage. I guess they went in and spooked the bull and cow and were right around them several times, within 100 yards, but never took the shot! So close but so far away! While this was happening we drove to the other side of the canyon to look for the bull we named DAGGER, this is why, just as we turn off the main line onto the ridge road DJ and his buddy in front of us slam on the brakes! We stop, and pile out, "HURRY" he says, we look to the right and there 50 yards from the road is DAGGER, staring us down, I quickly get the Swarovskis focused on him, he is playing peekaboo behind a jack pine and I can't a clear look at his left side but his right looks great, double brow, 14 inches long, 6-7 points on his paddle, right then he turns into a cluster of pines and disappears, we move over there and can't seem to find where he went, we go back to the trucks and drive around the corner to look in an open saddle on the ridge, "THERE HE IS!" climbing up the opposite side of the saddle on an open skid trail, we pile out and set up the shooting sticks, Paula is ready but real excited , I continue to glass as he walks straight away from us, I never got to see his brows on the left but I think it to was a double and real long, he got his name from the first point after his browtines both of them were HUGE! 16-18 inches sticking out like a bull elk eye guard, very impressive but again he had weak paddles only 8 inches wide, all his points were long as was his beard, reaching, this is no joke, 3 feet long, it was incredible, his rack was real wide to, probably 45-47 inches, this bull we let walk!!!! Only because in the back of my mind I still had that bull from the other day in my brain, and we were only 1/4 mile from where we saw him on Tues. See ya DAGGER, thanks for the thrill! We regroup and continue driving, calling and glassing, we later catch up with Rufous and talk a little, he has not been to impressed with the size of the bulls in this area so he says they are going to hunt up on Hunters pass tomorrow, I am thinking to my self "THANK YOU!" because we know that there are 2 big shooters in this canyon! The BROWTINE BULL and DAGGER!
The rest of the morning is uneventful, we head down to DJ's and nap for couple hours and take his son Lauren with us and drive up Rosehill road to check out a couple spots he likes, we split up and 20 minutes later I get a call from my brother on the cell, they have a bull going nuts in the thick stuff! We head back down and we spot a dink hanging around and we call and rake, but this bull will not come out of the thick for a view, it gets dark and we have to leave without knowing how big he is.
We drive back to camp, where the talk is WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING!!!! Both my brother and James feel that I am being to picky! I know that they really jusy want to see a bull go down, and I start to realize that maybe I have set a standard that can't be met But that big browtine bull keeos haunting me, talking to me, I talk with wife and she says we can come back over around Thanksgiving, but she really wants to shoot one this week, while they are rutting, so I acquiese and agree that if we see any of the bulls we have passed on tomorrow, she will take it.
I sleep with visions of that big bull on the bank above the truck................AWESOME!

[finnman]

Sorry about the delay for all you impatient people! If there were ever a hunt worth telling this was it, and I think most of you want the extended version not just the kill pic titled '08 bull!
Friday Oct. 3rd, 3:30am, it rained off and on all night, PERFECT! This is the morning, I told everyone I had the FEELING! But Paula had been sick all week and today felt like throwing up, she did not eat breakfast or drink any coffee, but she was determined!
We meet up with DJ and he climbs in my brothers dodge and we head up the the SPOT. We go through the gates the loggers left open and we get 1 mile in, its still dark, my brother stops in the road and turns his lights off, we stop and get out thinking must have seen a bull in the lights, I ask what going on and James says nothing the truck just died!
OH %#$&^*(!!!! This was what I was thinking, and that feeling is starting to go bye bye! We look at the truck and see somehow he got a pin sized hole in his diesel fuel filter cannister under the bed of his truck, he digs through his tool box and grabs a screw and some teflon tape, he screws it in and pops the the air from the lines and cracks it over, IT STARTS!!!!!!!!! YES, WERE ON!!!!!..................for 10 seconds! It sucked more air in the fuel line and died!
We decide to continue with the hunt and just push his truck to the edge of the road, they all climb in the bed and sit on the ATV, my brother did not have any more clothes to put on, he is back there with a tee shirt on because he got diesel all over his hunting shirt, but he is just happy his truck did not cost us the hunt! So we continue on and go another mile when all of a sudden FOG, thick fog, that feeling is now being trampled by that big browtine bull!!!!
I am totolly disappointed, but I don't let it show! We continue on another 4 miles to the overlook and low and behold, NO FOG!!! The fog and clouds were staged about 500 feet above the main line, AWESOME! We climb out of the truck and 1 minute later my brother says "GOT ONE" we glass across the basin and see a little bull on a skid road sniffing around, 5 minutes later he says "I GOT ANOTHER ONE!" Dang another small bull maybe 300 yards from the other bull, we continue glassing and calling into the drainage, nothing else so we all climb in the truck and drive to the next drainage over to look for a bull the logger said he saw yesterday, nothing there, we go back to the main line and park the truck at the skid road we saw the 2 small bulls on, we walk a 1/4 mile down and DJ grunts a few times, we get a response! We move over and its the first little bull just across a gully 200 yards away, Dj, Paula, James and my brother all walk down a small finger about a hundred yards below the skid road, I stay back on the road, to steep for my knee, which has done real well, but by now is real fatigued, DJ rakes a tree and lets out a small OOWWWWWAAH,
we all hear it at the same time, RAKING to the left, then one small grunt, I see them all down in the reprod, then all of a sudden all hell brakes lose!!! It was like putting a match to an ant pile!!! I hear DJ say "its the BIG ONE" I then hear my brother tell Paula "DON"T LOOK AT THE RACK JUST SHOOT HIM, HE IS A MONSTER!" Paula fires back "I CAN't GET STEADY!" By this time I have crapped my self!!! I can't see them, I can't see the bull, I am dancing around like some freaking witch doctor with a video camera in one hand and my binos in the other!!!! All of a sudden they are all running back up the hill like they are storming the castle, James steps in a hole going up the hill and does a complete face plant right in the dirt and grass spraining his ankle, all he does is lift his head out of the dirt and yells at Paula "KEEP GOING!" It was hilarious, except for the ankle! We all start running, them anyways, I don't know what you would call the type of movement I used to get up that skid road so fast! We get to a curve in the road and look up on the hill above the main line, BULL! CRAP its a different small bull, number 4 in this small basin!!! We keep glassing and looking when DJ looks down to the right on a small finger in the reprod, he turns to us and hisses out BULL, BIG BULL! I looked at DJ and I swear I have never seen such a ghostly pale paniced face in my life!!! I new he was serious, all four of us step over to the edge of the skid road and there he is bigger than life, 150 yards down the hill in the only opening available for a shot! Everyone is freaking out, my brother is telling her to shoot, DJ is saying take him, the only shot she has is free hand, she can't squat, kneel, or sit, the only shot is from a standing position. She is adrenalized, shaking from excitement and the run up the road, I stand behind her with the video camera running, I look at the screen and find the bull facing up at us quartering the his left, IT IS THE FREAKING BROWTINE BULL!!!!! I instantly start calming her down and telling her take some deep breaths and that I have full confidence that she can make the shot, James offers to let her shoot off his shoulder, she says okay, he steps in front and she lays the .338 Win  Mag. on his right shoulder, they are both shaking, so Paula tells James to on 3 take a deep breath and hold it, they both do it, I am looking at the camera screen and find the bull he is still there just staring us down, BOOM! I lose sight of the moose in the camera from the shock, I quickly look down at the bull and see he is staggered and he disappears to his right! Everyone is just dancing around like a tribe of successful warriors! Their all hugging Paula and high fiving her, DJ keeps saying he can't believe it! My brother and James keep saying he is enormous! We all get quiet and listen, we hear 2 coughs and some brush breaking! I did not hear the bullet impact, so I say lets not get to excited till we see him on the ground! By this time DJ is on the cell calling people telling them we just got a GIANT BULL! For him to say that meant something, we all head down the finger and fan out, we left a blaze orange vest on a pine tree for a reference, we get down there and I look back and see the vest, I take a step the the left and look down, FROTHY LUNG BLOOD!!!! I tell Paula to get over here and shoulder her rifle and take the safety off and point her rifle at the ground out in front of her, we walk 15 feet to an opening in the brush and she yells, "I SEE HIS LEGS, I THINK HE'S DEAD!" we all pile in there and there he is, the monarch of the canyon, he made it 15 yards from the point of impact! The shot was 150 yard(checked with rangefinder) she hit him mid body right tight behind the shoulder blade, the trophy bonded bearclaw bullet was later found while skinning the bull out, it was just below the tenderloins and above the hip just under the skin, perfect mushroom! We conratulated Paula for the shot and her trophy, I videoed most all of the find and celebration, DJ said he wanted to see a women take a bull moose and he did, he was impressed as was James and my brother, I had full confidence that Paula was able to make the shot, as I was videoing I must admit I had a few tears of Joy, Relief, and PRIDE for my wife and her ability to stay calm and listen, she is AMAZING!!!
She took the bull at 8:30am, we got him out in half, and loaded in the truck 3 hours later, and took it to DJ's to skin and quarter, at about 2:30pm we told James and my brother they better get his truck fixed so they went to Chewelah and found the part and went back to put in on, went through the whole process of clearing the lines and she fired right up! AWESOME!, they got back to DJ's at 6:00pm. we finished deboning the carcass at 5:30pm so it was good timimg. DJ had to leave at 4:00pm for his sons football game in Selkirk, I offered him some meat and he said no, they had some fresh beef they had just butchered, I offered to pay him for his gas money and scouting time and he refused, he said "he told me he just wanted to be a part of the hunt after all I may never get to kill my own" we thanked him profusely, he said if we wanted to clean up and shower they would leave the front door unlocked and to just lock it when we leave. We went in a washed our hands and left a note on the floor, we left them a chunk of Backstrap in the fridge and some gas money for his efforts, I can only say there needs to be more people in this world like DJ and his wife Laura!
We got back to camp at 7:45pm and tarped the meat from the rain and celebrated our persistence, good fortune, good people and the moose that Paula harvested, we finished off the night with home made moose chili from a Canadian bull a friend took last year, cornbread baked in a dutch oven and FINE scotch!
The bull had 12 points on the right and 10 on the left, quadruple browtines on both sides and 45 inch spread!!!!!
We took the meat in to the butcher and the combined total of the four quarters, backstrap, tenderloins, and all boned out meat was over 475 pounds!
Let the feast commence!!!!!!!

[robodad]

Excellent !!!

Great story and awesome bull !!!

Congratulations !!

[boneaddict]

WELL WORTH THE WAIT.  I can't imagine a bigger bull being taken this year.  WELL DONE PAULA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  If I get a bigger one on film this fall I will be surprised.   OUTSTANDING!

[Ridgerunner]

The Bar has been set high, I agree with boneaddict I don't see a bigger bull taken this year.  WOW!

[Rufous]

I am tremendously happy for you guys. That is an amazing bull. I am glad someone was able to get it. Brian.

[bucklucky]

Holy cow! The bar is set way high now!! Nice Bull!

[X-Force]

I was laughing my whole way through the story. Congrats to you and your wife. Awesome Bull.

[Ray]

Very nice moose. Really good sized and being patient holding out until you got the right moose surely paid off for the once in a lifetime hunt. Well done!

[ButcherBoy]

SWEET!!!!! Good job on the shot placement!!! CONGATS

[280ackley]

Awesome bull!!!  Great shot Pumpkin.

[Intruder]

Great Bull.... 

[HuntingFanatic]

WOOT! WAY TO GO!