Last Thursday (Aug 10th) was the start of the 2017 archery moose season. I had to work, but I'm on a reduced schedule of 6 hrs, so I had plenty of time in the evening get my hunting fix.
For opening day, I chose to hunt about 2-miles from home where I had seen a fork horn during a scouting trip. It was fairly warm at the start of the hunt, so I hadn't gone far when I took a break to cool down, and sit for about an hour in a likely trail along an alder patch.
First break:
You'll notice that I'm hanging onto my Misty Dawn for this canned photo. I've learned to keep my bow handy at all times after missing out on a shot when I left it behind to do some glassing. It happened on my first scouting trip up the mountain on Prince of Wales Island where I took the buck in my profile photo. I was most of the way up the ridge to the lowest peak. I decided to take a break, so I dropped my pack and set the bow on it while I went about 10 yards slightly downhill where I could glass a valley and a semi-open area on the next ridge over. When I turned around, there was a nice buck standing broadside to me and almost standing on my bow!
About the time I ended the break, clouds had moved in and a light, cooling breeze came up. I still hunted and did some short posts for the next two hours until I came up to slough. Right away, I picked out bull feeding in some timber across the slough. Could this be the bull I saw on my scouting trip? After a glassing him for a few minutes, I determined that it was a different bull with slightly palmated antlers...not legal. Still, that made my day.
Friday, I decided to hunt the same spot, but didn't see any moose.
I hunted one of my favorite areas on Saturday. There was off and on drizzles all day. I covered a lot of ground, and spent quite a bit of time on my Torges Seat, but didn't see any animals, which was strange considering how many I saw last year.
My last post was on the edge of a nice muskeg area. I cut out a blind in the spruces bordering the muskeg last year. There is a nice trail between the two.
The final post:
Notice the moose droppings at the bottom of the photo. I guess they didn't like my work! Also notice that I didn't have my bow in hand...OOPS!
The muskeg from the stand:
Flash back to 2013 at this muskeg: The first time I came to this muskeg was in September 2013. I wanted to get a better look around the muskeg, so I jumped up on one of the hummocks where a small spruce was growing. I no sooner got on it than the ground started wildly shaking. Earthquake! I grabbed the spruce to keep from being thrown off into the muskeg. I watched the tall birch trees across the muskeg violently whipping back and forth. Why they didn't snap off I'll never know! I'm sure there was a rain of dead branches coming off those trees. I was sure glad that I was in the muskeg surrounded by the small spruces and not in the birch timber!
Today (Sunday), started off fairly windy and rainy, so I didn't get into the woods until after noon. I decided to hunt in the muskeg post area again as I saw some pretty good sign yesterday. To get there, I need to cross a small drainage, where my son and I built a simple log bridge.
This leads to a nice strip of open birch and spruce where we have taken a couple of bulls. I had just gotten into the timber when I spotted a moose. Turned out to be a cow with a calf. Always fun to see a nervous cow with her calf.
The wind wasn't favorable to post here, so I made a wide circuit around some good moose cover and came into the muskeg, this time setting up in a clump of small spruce opposite yesterday's stand to take better advantage of the wind. It started off good, but the wind start making wild swings, so I called it a day fairly early. It was still a great time in the woods.
I hope I didn't bore you too much with my ramblings. I'm still hoping to get my first moose with a bow. Four more days to go. Wish me luck!
Topic: 2017 Archery Moose Season after 4-days-updated w-day 6, new pics (Read 1700 times)
