Another cool thing that happened I want to tell you about was when I finally got up to the same spot where I killed my bull last year. Brian was out hunting on his own, so I was alone when squatted down and imaged the arrows release. I followed the path the moose took after taking the arrow, and stepped over the fallen tree the moose ran over. I found the dwarf birch bush that the broken arrow shaft fell into. I ran my hands through its branches before continuing on the bull’s flight path. Eventually I got to the exact spot where the bull fell and died. The place was still flat and void of fresh vegetative re-growth. Pieces of rib bone and the skull portion I left behind were clearly evident. I can’t describe how I lived in the moment from a year’s past memories of hunching over the massive bull while cutting meat from bone and placing in game bags.
I was excited to find both jaws in the brush outside the perimeter of the site. I am pretty good at aging deer using comparative wear of teeth since I have collected many dozens of jaw pieces over the years. Moose however, are different since I have not seen that many and moose live much longer than deer, maybe out to 15 to 20 years. I am also not sure the age of maturity and fully mature moose. But I can tell that the moose I killed in 2017 was very much older than the one I killed in 2014. The dentin was much more exposed relative to enamel in the 2017 bull.
2017 bull teeth
2014 bull teeth
Topic: Alaska Moose Bowhunt 2018 (Read 8931 times)
