Early Huckleberry Bull Moose tag drawn!

[hunter399]

Awesome! We are headed over today to get camp set up and have a few days to hopefully find Mr. big before opening day

You see any cows ,really be looking into the nearest cover.
Mr.big probably not to far away.

[HillHound]

Well months of anticipation, planning, buying/prepping gear, and scouting is all in the rear view mirror.
We made half a dozen trips over scouting from August 3rd-September 23rd. Picked out our number 1,2, and 3 camping spots in case someone beat us to them we had a backup.  I had 8 trail cams out from one end of the unit to the other. We networked as much as we could with fellow hunters on here as well as my wife and brother reaching out on Facebook and other hunting forums.
Our last scouting trip over found our #1 spot still vacant. We were seeing moose on every trip over and had seen a few bulls but nothing but last trip shooters. We had some intel of where a couple good bulls had been but had yet to lay eyes on them while scouting the areas they were in.

[HntnFsh]

CNELKs brother could probably finish this story for you if you dont have time!

[HillHound]

Yep, here’s a small bull we had on camera

[HillHound]

Another

[HillHound]

One more. Can’t get multiple to post as once for some reason

[HillHound]

My wife and I got to camp the Friday before season opened with the motorhome, truck, and four wheeler. To get everything over, we had stored our camp trailer and trailer with the side-by-side, freezer, etc. At a friend of a friends place in the unit, who I would now call a friend of my own. It’s still crazy how much friendlier people are in small towns and how willing they are to go out of their way to help complete strangers. The #1 spot we hoped to camp was open and we made one trip up to grab the side-by-side Friday night and went back to grab the camp trailer Saturday morning. We were just in time as there was a group of trailers that pulled in and turned around just a couple hours after we got there and set up.
Once camp was set up, I headed out to scout and Check/pull the last of the cameras I had out. There was nothing big on any of them, but I decided to try calling up the Valley from one that we had regular pictures of lots of cows on. I almost immediately got a response. There was a bull, grunting and raking down the draw from me. As he worked his way up towards me, a cow came down the hill behind me into the draw he was headed up. I got glimpses of the bull through the thick brush and could tell he wasn’t huge and didn’t have much for paddles, but he eventually got down wind of the cow and headed towards her. While this was happening I could hear another bull further down the valley grunting. I moved down towards him and did some more calling. This is when I saw a much larger bull up on the ridge with a bedded cow. He was walking circles around her poking her in the butt each time he came around trying to get her up. I stopped calling, the other two bulls continued, and the big one wanted nothing to do with it. He eventually got his cow up and worked up and over the hill out of the valley. I messaged my son, who was stuck at work still and let him know the rut was on and a possible first day shooter was spotted. He could not wait to get into camp

[vandeman17]

tagging

[HikerHunter]

Tagging along as well!

[HillHound]

The next couple days was spent going other areas and calling/glassing trying to turn up more bulls. We saw cows and calves everywhere we went but no more bulls were spotted. My brother, son, and his girlfriend all got to camp on Tuesday. We got them situated in camp and headed out to try to find the one I saw A few days earlier. We spotted a cow in the same draw as all the action was happening but no bull around. We tried calling and after an hour and we were losing light we got a response. We never did see what it was before it got dark. Opening morning found us in the same spot. I immediately spotted the cow we saw the night before as the sun came up, then another an hour later both by themselves. We called off and on and eventually we heard a bull coming. We picked him out about 1000 yards away coming down the hill through the timber from behind us. My son got behind the gun and started trying to figure out where he was going to come out at. He popped out at 300 yards but was not what he was looking for on day 1. He stood there and drooled for 45 minutes staring at us before he decided to leave. We Stuck around for a while, then moved up hill to a different vantage point and didn’t see anything else

[HillHound]

We Headed back to camp and ate some lunch. We decided my brother would go a different direction that afternoon to see if he could turn up anything different for the morning. Me, My wife and son decided to go back up in the direction the bull I had seen days before had gone. I had cut bull tracks on Monday and from the direction they were coming from looked like they could’ve been from the one I saw Saturday, but it was headed down into a very thick and steep ravine that looked to be unhuntable. The plan was to try to get at the top end of one of the three very thick draws that had no roads into them and try to see if we could get something to come in or at least stand up while we called. We were about a half mile from where we planned on parking and my wife mentioned that we should stop and look down where the three thick draws come together. I had mentioned I had spent probably five hours over the last four days looking down into that area and hadn’t seen anything, and as I got that sentence out of my mouth, I finished it with except for that big bull moose and cow right there on that middle ridge!! And as moose hunting always seems to go in my experience it went from 0-100 in a second. I was out getting the spotting scope set up, trying to verify size. Although looking at it with a naked eye I  could see it was a shooter. my son got set up behind the gun and had brush in the way. I broke off the sticks that were in his way and got my pack underneath the backend of his gun. He was on the bipod and had a very solid rest. We ranged it and it was 608 yards. From my experience Saturday, I knew we couldn’t call this bull away from the cow and the ridge being mostly covered in thick 10 foot tall willows except for the small area the moose were standing, There was no getting closer.  I knew that the browning 300 win mag topped with my Burris scope pushing  200 Grain ELDX bullets would do the job at that distance if my son could. After a second of having to look away to recompose himself, he got behind the gun again and said he was good. His first shot just missed the front shoulder and destroyed the off side one. As the bull spun to go downhill, I saw his offside hoof come up above his head in the spotting scope. I knew the first shot was a solid hit. As he stumbled downhill, he took another shot, and I believe he missed, he took another one and the bull went down. Upon inspection, this round entered right behind the shoulder and ended up against the hide on the other side. After the two solid hits that took him down, he got up again this time facing us straight on. Before I could tell my son to wait to see if he fell or would turn he let another one fly and hit him directly in the chest, dropping him for a third and final time. I had him stay on it with the gun for another 30 seconds as we watched him roll his head around and finally stop moving. A wave of emotion took over me much stronger than I felt in a long time. Probably even more than when me and my brother got our moose in Alaska last year. a lot of time effort and planning had all come together. We stayed where we were parked in the middle of the road for probably 30 minutes hugging and high-fiving and reliving it. We got a hold of my brother and he headed back to camp to grab my son‘s girlfriend, pack boards, knives, etc.

[HillHound]

We got up to the top of the ridge he died on and started picking our way down what looked like an easy 6-700 yard walk. It was much thicker than it looked with willows that were 10 feet tall and dog hair thick along with burn blowdowns mixed in. We made it down and had the first round of pictures done by the time my brother and son’s girlfriend got to us. After more pictures and retelling the story That’s when it set in we had a couple hours till dark. The girls headed off to see if there was any way around to a far off skid road we could see, and there was not. My brother headed up with the first time quarter we got off and it started to rain. He was gone for quite a while because he was cutting a trail on the way up and the way down and it just rained harder and harder. We were soaked because we had left our rain gear at the top, since it was not supposed to rain and we knew we would be hot coming out with heavy packs. We made the call to get the last of it cleaned up and tarp over with our sweaty clothes and hopes the animals would leave it alone for the night. we made it back to camp and got the meat we had hung up and maybe slept for four hours and then we were back out there as day broke. Luckily nothing had touched it and the tarp kept it all dry. we got the last three packs loaded up and up the hill as the girls got there to the truck with hot coffee

[HillHound]

He was a 40 inch wide 8x7. No world record but exactly what he was looking for and a bull that most guys twice his age wouldn’t have passed.

[92xj]

Freaking stud, congrats!

[Pathfinder101]

Great bull!  Congrats