Moose Hunting

[TheSpecialist]

I am going to MAine for a week with a friend who won an out of state permit. I am going to help him get a moose and then I am getting a bear tag for myself..

[striperman36]

saw both this past week. Moose population is on the rebound, they had a bad couple of years. Saw multiple cows and yearlings everyday. Had a yearling jog by the cabin Saturday about 645 am.

[Night Shift]

Northern Maine is CRAWLING with moose. The areas I hunt have more moose per square mile than deer. I'm a deer hunter but I see about 2 or 3 moose (sometimes more) a day while deer hunting. However, I see very few moose from the road anymore. They are there, but they are now "road shy" and your best chance at a large bull will not be (IMHO) from the truck. In the early season, target swamps and bogs with a cow call, especially if it's warm. Later, hardwood ridges and cuts 2+ years old will hold post rut bulls. Red maple "whips" are there favorite browse and any cutting with a good supply of them will surely hold a few swamp donkies.

Good luck and have a blast.



Here is a bedded cow at ten yards that popped her head up as I tracked a monster deer (a common occurrence). The buck walked ten feet from her. The picture of the bed and tracks were made by the deer. Much further up the mountain.

[Jenn]

Cool! Good luck, have fun and be careful. I can vouch for the fact that they can be very ornery beasts that dont back down!

[JohnnyD]

I was in Northport Maine last week and watched a bull walk past my cabin at about 5:30am. I had to leave to drive to work but was having no part of going outside until he got a ways off.

Good luck on the hunt! Definitely take pictures if you guys get one.

[TheSpecialist]

I will definitely take pics, hopefully some video too. The friend I am going with is from the area of Maine we are going, just about into Canada. The camp is 1/2 an hour ride off of the main road. They have been successful every year, I can't wait.

Nice pictures night shift. Loving the Omega.

[Jenn]

Speaking of moose....here is pic i took today to get you in the mood!

[Sundowner]

I'll never forget when I was in NH maybe 10 yrs ago, the ground started vibrating, snow was falling off of the little pines, and a big ass moose cow came barreling by 10' away with a monster black bear on her tail.

I got emailed a few beautiful pictures of I think just one, maybe more albinos last year

[TheSpecialist]

We got back at around 130 am from Maine. We hunted zone 5, basically about 80 miles east of Ashland. My friend (Mark) had the non resident permit, and a local friend of his (Norman) who is a fairly experienced Moose hunter was the sub permittee. We also had my friends brother inlaw (Roger) who work in the forestry field, and knew the area like the back of his hand. Roger has access to some pretty sophisticated mapping software and government and forestry stuff that we do not, and his photo maps proved invaluable, as well as his knowledge of when areas were cut. We arrived at camp on Saturday early afternoon and after setting up the camp, we headed off to scout. We put on about 150 miles in the truck scouting on saturday, and who knows how many on foot. On sunday it was more of the same, and we identified a couple of areas we though we should focus on. We saw numerous moose in the 6 days we were up there, final count was around 22. We also kept track of critters when we got camp till the time we left, and we saw tons of partridge and various other things. On monday morning we hit the area we rated as number one, and after sitting and calling for a couple of hours we move to location 1b. It was at 1b that we called in our first bull within 15 minutes of setting up. We were at a clear cut with a road running parallel to it, and the one running at 90 degrees to it. I glassed the long 90 degree road, while Roger and Norman (the moose expert) focused on the parallel road. About 15 minutes into calling I see a nice bull walk out of a clear-cut about 1000 yards down the road, and he came within 200 yards of us straight up that road like he was on a slot-track . Only problem was that where he stopped was on a plateau before a rise in the road, and we could only see the top of his chest up. After what seemed like minutes he turned into the woods to our right (we had the wind and he knew it) to circle around us and get some scent. He made it through the woods, and crossed the main road too quick for Mark or Norman to get a shot, and he never showed again. There were quite a few cows in this particular area, but there was no evidence that they were breeding yet. Over the next couple of days he made one appearance early in the am, pre shooting time and was gone again. Finally on thursday morning the cows were "blatting" and it was on. About 8am it quieted down a little and Norman hit the call few times. Again the bull came up the road, but this time he had a cow in hot pursuit of him. Also this time Norman and Mark had set up in the first clear-cut on the road closest to where the cows had been hanging around. This time the bull stopped on the road facing them, and when he didn't smell or see the cow he started to walk up the embankment into the clear-cut so they decided to take him. He dressed out at 804lbs, has 16 points and a 47 inch spread. This was Marks first big game animal so we had to coach him on field dressing, but he did a fantastic job, also note the rain gear for that part of the job. We used a rope and the truck to pull the moose onto an old pickup truck liner, then we used that to pull him 800 yards up to the trailer. We then used the truck to pull him onto the trailer. Biggest moose on the board at the check station was 1050 dressed, and average was 500 -800 lbs, they had checked in approximately 60 moose by 3pm thursday.

[Night Shift]

Congrats and great team picture. Moose hunting truely is a team effort.I can't believe you guys took him out whole, the 5 piece method is bad enough.


The rain gear makes me laugh. That's a new one.

[Pete F.]

He had to wear rain gear, he's gutting it from underneath!

[Rockport24]

That's awesome, what an animal! congrats to all you guys

[TheSpecialist]

Thanks, I took the team picture with my DSLR and self timer, we man handled the moose around to get the background and set the camera on top of a stump.