Hello Kevin,
This is Steve Croft, I live in Alaska and I am an avid big game hunter. I’ve got 2 remote cabins and I hunt bull moose at both. One of my son in laws and my grand son Timmy (he is 13) and myself, came to hunt moose on about the 8th of September in 2007.
It takes us about 4 to 6 hours to get to our cabin and the terrain is sometimes (extremely) rotten. A lot of swamp and muck holes. Well on the way in to the cabin, my son in law stopped me (I was on my 6 wheeler) and said, my wheel bearings were gone and my back wheels and axel were wobbling down the trail. dang, dang, dang and darn!!! What a time for this to happen. I turned around and headed back home, it took me 3 hours to (very slowly) go 4 miles.
Well, Chad and Timmy, went on to the cabin, no sense in wrecking their moose hunt! It took me 3 days to get my 6 wheeler fixed and Chad and Tim were hunting all this time. Well on the third morning after my machine fell apart, I was at home loading up my stuff to go catch up with my family.
It was about 7:30 in the morning, and the phone rang. It was Chad and he was excited to say the least, he said, hurry up and get out here because we had some work to do.
He said he got a big bull(A really big bull).
Well, I hurried and gulped my coffee, kissed my beautiful wife, pet the dogs, and jumped in the old beater and headed for camp. when I got there, he was all smiles. As it turned out, Tim was tired from playing football for his school, so he stayed in bed that morning. Chad got up early and went out to the closest Treestand. (mine) and climbed up into it which is only 350 yards from the cabin.
Now Chad is an exceptionally good moose caller. He started calling, and after about 10 min. he thought he heard something, way far off, but was not sure. About 15 minutes later, he called again and this time he heard brush cracking and really strong gluk gluk gluk from a little closer but still maybe one quarter of a mile away. The sound was real faint but un-mistakable. this was a bull and he was working his way towards the stand. Chad waited and waited , then he turned his head away from the direction of the sounds and grunted a few lighter and quieter grunts, to make the bull think he was further away then he really was. This time the bull was a lot closer, but still out about 300 yards. He crashed through the local tag alders and trees like he was on the war path.
Now Chad knew for sure, he had his interest. That bull thought he had himself the prettiest cow just toying with him and she was all for him. Well he came in the last 100 yards , real slow and hardly made a sound. At first Chad could not see him but finally after about 10 to 15 min, he could see brown in the thick brush. Instead of following the clearing we made a few years earlier, he came in and parallel to the opening and was literally going to come out only 40 ft. from my tree stand. Chad turned his head the opposite direction from the moose and made a soft grunt and the bull took a couple of steps and Chad could see it was a big one, we have to make sure the bulls we shoot are 50 in. wide or have 3 brow tines on one side or the other. Chad did not wanting to spook the bull, but had to know how big it was and count the tines. Chad grunted real soft and the bull turned his head and this bull was a beauty, and things happened really fast after that. He popped the safety to the fire position, and brought the gun up and settled the crosshairs behind the front shoulder and fired. The bull lunged forward and ran straight ahead for about three good jumps and stopped. Chad thought it might decide to take off so he gave him another round in the same spot. The bull stood stiff legged and slowly tipped over, Chad’s bull was on the ground. When Chad walked up to the bull, he could hardly believe what he saw, the bull was a really big trophy for our moose hunting area. Most of the bulls in our area are around 50 to 55 inches or spike/ fork young bulls. This bull is truly an Alaskan trophy, 61 inches wide and 13 points on each side. We harvested 650 lbs. of boned out meat off this bull and this bull was not yet rutting so the meat is exceptional. We both have many pounds of meat, with some made into sausage and teriyaki sticks. em , em , em , good !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well that is our story, and I cannot wait until next year because Tyler(Tim’s brother) is going to go on his first moose hunt and he will be grandpa’s little helper in camp. I might have to take him out to get some young Spruce Hens this fall. I love taking out young hunters because they are so full of curiousity and really fun to train.
Good luck this fall to all of your hunters at HuntingLife.com, Happy Hunting!
Grandpa Steve Croft
