My 2011 AK Moose Hunt - DIY (Success!!)

[engelwood]

Well, where do I even start?!?! This hunt essentially began on the last week of February, when my hunting partner and I found out that we drew a couple of Moose tags for Northwestern Alaska. We were instantly jacked up about the trip. We knew a guy at our work that had done this hunt back in 98, 99, 00 and 01, when it was still an over the counter tag. We had plenty of pictures and words of wisdom from this guy from the beginning. We pretty much instantly booked our bush pilot (float plane an absolute must) as well as our tickets to and from AK. Since then we concentrated on building our camp, cutting weight (practically every place possible, including 55 lbs by my buddy and over 40 lbs by me) as well as tent, stove, food, and every other place possible. We had a 15 day round trip, with 12 days in the field. 9 of that 12 would be open season hunting for our moose, with a couple travel days on each end.
 
Our trip started pretty eventful as the airlines lost our gun case as well as one bag that we checked. I fly ALOT and have NEVER lost a bag, and just when it matters most, POOF, my bags go missing.... go figure! After 6 hours of wondering and waiting they appeared on the next flight into town, thank god. The next day we got to the hanger, unpacked our gear box, loaded the truck and headed to the pond where we would fly out. Having never flown in a small plane, let alone a float plane, my buddy and I were both a little worried about the flight out to the bush. Our pilot was awesome and after a few short moments, we were off the water and heading out to our camp. After getting to camp and unloading our gear we instantly spotted a nice black bear feeding on the hillside approximately 900-1000 yards away, awesome...first animal of the trip! A short 7 hours later we had our tent up, cots and stove erected, and our bear fence surrounding our camp and fully functional.

We began our hunt the following day (as required by AK game laws) and hunted hard, calling and glassing for the entire day, without seeing a single animal (except for a couple more black bears on the same hillside as the one the prior evening). Night fell and we awoke the next morning to a cold and drizzly sunrise. After about a 3/4 mile hike to a glassing location we began cow calling to try to locate a bull or get one up on his feet and interested in our sexy calling! After the second calling sequence my hunting partner heard a bull call back from across the lake about 800-900 yards away (I still can't believe he heard him from that far). We were instantly on the move in his direction. After closing about 500 yards of the distance between us and the bull we spotted him as he bedded down. We closed another 300 yards on him and as we were trying to get to a better vantage point, he knew something wasn't quite right and got up and started to move, quartering away from us. I quickly got my gun on my tripod and steadied for the shot. One more step to clear a lone alder tree and BANG, I squeezed off a shot. WHOP, I could hear it connect and it felt like a great shot. He was still on his feet as I reloaded, BANG, another shot rang out and he collapsed to the ground. Knowing he was down we moved over to him and I was instantly overwhelmed with excitement. Here is what I saw....
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I shot the bull on Tuesday Morning and finally had it all back to camp on Thursday night. I was able to pack the quarters whole which was no small chore.  Here is a packing pic.
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We ended up hunting another 5 days until we finally found another moose for my hunting partner. He got his the day before the end of the season on a 420 yard shot (out of my gun, hehehe). My bull ended up coming in at 65.5" wide and my buddy's bull was 60.5" wide. My bull actually has a 7" drop tine off the back of each paddle, matching double drop tines for a first moose... I was lucky to say the least. Here is a pic of both our bulls.
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We flew out on Sept. 10th and returned Saturday night, the 24th. On our trip we had 10+ encounters with black bears, 1 close encounter with a Grizzly bear, saw a few caribou that we couldn't really get on, and only 2 moose, which we shot both of. An awesome trip all and all and I will end it here as I'm sure most have stopped listening at this point. Thanks for reading!

[h20hunter]

Found luggage, good weather, two shooters (both down), can it get better on a DIY hunt? Thanks for sharing.

[CedarPants]

Way to go!!! 

[coop2424]

Those are some awesome bulls and DIY at that!  Congrats!

[vaz,,66]

Congrats and thanks for the story

[YellowDog]

Wow.  What an awesome experience.  That first picture of your moose is nice but when I saw the picture of both of you holding your moose with the wide open backdrop I  went  in an instant. 

It looks like both bulls have some very similar charactaristics.  Same angle of tripple brow tines on the left side, very similar brows on the right side except for the one with the long point behind.  They look to me to be very similar.  Again, very awesome job congrats to both of you.

[FSTaxidermy]

Awesome bull!  Congrats

[jackelope]

A 65" bull with double droppers for a 1st moose...gee whizzz...that's awesome.
Great story and pics,  thanks for sharing! and Congrats.

[engelwood]

Thanks for the kind words fellas. As a reference, I'm 6'0" and 215 lbs. I'll try to get some better pics of the double drop tines today. I am getting my rack within the next hour 

Just flew in from Alaska Air Cargo!!!!

[GoldTip]

Very, very cool!  Congrats on a great hunt!

[PacificNWhunter]

Awesome!!

[JBR]

Great job on an awesome hunt!

[norsepeak]

Great hunt, and great pics.  Good job.

[quadrafire]

congrats on the great animals. Thanks for the story. Awsome experience. Were the bugs bad?

[engelwood]

The bugs weren't too terrible the first few days, about the 3rd or 4th night it froze hard and it seems like it killed a bunch of them. Those little "white sox" bugs are terrible, didn't enjoy them at all... It literally rained every day during our 12 days out. Not always a lot, and mostly at night, but it rained every day. Not what we expected for the area we were in and what we knew about it.