Now that we have a freeze full of moose thanks to my son getting his first this past Tuesday, I'm back to hunting with my bow!
I started the morning off by going to the stand my son Jake was at when he got his moose. I wanted to check out the remains of the moose and look for a pair of Jersey gloves I lost, so I dropped my pack and carefully still hunted the 200 yds. or so to the site.
I got close enough to check things over with my binos. It looked the head and some of the ribs had been chewed on , and the gut pile was gone, so I back out. I'm sure the ravens worked on the guts, but something bigger did everything else! I decided that a $1 pair gloves weren't worth a possible encounter with a bear!
When Jake got his bull, I was about a 1/4" mile away scaping a moose scapula in an effort to arouse the curiosity of other bulls and draw them into the patch of birch timber I was in. I had left the scapula there when I went to help Jake with his bull. Since it was such a nice, quiet morning, I decided to still hunt over to the scapula and bring it back so I could try it again.
Once back to Jake's stand, I readied my bow, took a few photos and pulled out an apple to snack on while waiting for a bull.
View from Jake's stand:
I like to have my compass on my bow arm; scapula ready for action:
Once I was set, I scaped the scapula against a small spruce tree for about 30 secs., then sat down to munch on my apple. A few minutes later, I spotted the legs of a moose off to the right....now that is some quick action!
Turns out it was a cow and a calf (the calf is hidden behind a clump of birches):
I got to watch them for a few minutes before the moved down wind of me and spooked. The were about 100 yds. away when the cow made a "honk" kind of sound, so I figured the gig was up.
After sitting for another 15 mins., I moved to an other location where I was backed up into some spruce and was watching a well used trail that followed the edge of a semi-open marshy area:
I did my scraping, but nothing showed. Oh, well, it was a nice day in the woods. I would just mosey along and see what I could see. Maybe a moose, maybe a rabbit or grouse.
I followed a trail I had clipped out to an overgrown road. When I got there, I noticed some disturbed ground, and some small windfalls with the bark scaped off. I followed the road some more, and saw some more of the same signs. Weird?
I should have looked closer, but I wasn't expecting what I eventually found when I hit a sandy portion of the road: a tracked vehicle of some sorts had penetrated into an area where I had thought was immune from such abominations!
I hunted this area because of the lack of human activity. There is an atv trail that I have to cross to get into this area, but I thought the marshy area with a stream on three sides, and large muskegs on the other would keep the atv's out of the area. I never thought about tracked vehicles which could float over the muskeg, climb over windfalls and flatten small trees:
It felt like I'd been hit in the stomach. I had intended to spend most of the day wandering around the area, but my hunt ended right there. The one place I hunted that wasn't crisscrossed with atv trails had been invaded. What a sad day!
I followed the track to see where they had come in from, and then walked out.
I'll continue to hunt the area, avoiding the "contaminated" section. I'm hoping that this was just a probing of the area, and they found it somewhat inhospitable to their kind of moose killing venture. You see, around here, there are a lot of moose killers on atv's, but very few actual hunters.
I'll continue to post updates. With the rut coming up, I hope I can report some good hunting action.
Topic: Moose moment II (Read 276 times)
