Last week I went on a guided moose hunt in Northern Manitoba. This hunt has been a few years in the making. One Saturday morning in January/February I was watching some bow hunting on TV and watched a hunter kill a huge Yukon bull. My wife happened to be in the room and told me "you know, you should really go on a hunt like that someday." There you go, end of conversation 
. I locked that thought into my brain and went on with life. Probably a year later I killed a bear with Adrenaline Outfitters in Manitoba. Great guys and they are bow hunters. I enjoyed the hunt so much I booked one for the follow year as soon as I got home. 6-7 months later I got an email from Russ Mehling with Adrenaline stating they were expanding their hunting operations to include moose and caribou. I contacted Russ right away to get some info and basically booked a moose hunt for 2014. (This was about 18 months ago.) Russ has a lot of moose experience (he used to guide in the Yukon) and he spoke very highly of the area. So that was good enough for me.
I was hunting Small Lake north of Thompson Manitoba. For the first 2.5 days I didn't have much luck. I never saw a moose actually. But moose hunting is either hot or cold, and I knew that going in. I did see plenty of sign, so I knew there were moose around. Two of the other guys in camp actually got their bulls on those first 3 days. On day 4 the weather turned more favorable for moose hunting. It started raining and got colder. That morning we spotted what was a definite shooter, probably a 50" wide bull. We tried to make a move in on him but he just disappeared. While it would have been awesome to get on this bull, it definitely lifted my spirits just seeing a huge moose.
On day 5 we spent the morning working an area near where we had seen the big bull. We hiked in with the wind in our favor and my guide Tyler did a bunch of cow calls and bull grunts. Alas, not one response! Finally after several hours we called it quits to get some lunch. After lunch we headed back out with a plan to hunt a different area. As we were cruising along in the boat, Tyler spotted a bull up on top of the hill where we had been hunting all morning. We knew it was a different bull, but he looked to be a shooter. We eased the boat into a place on shore to get the wind in our favor. Since we didn't get any responses to our calls in the morning, we decided to go in quiet and make a stalk. We walked right next to each other, so we would sound like one animal (hopefully a moose). Once we got within 80-100 yards of the bull we could hear him grunting and raking trees. There was not a lot of time to set up. Tyler moved to a position 15-20 yards behind me. He never called once, he just did some raking with his moose scapula. The bull was very agitated with this! He was swaying back and forth and came in on a zig zag pattern. Stopping every 10-15 yards to rake the trees and was grunting the whole way in, swaying back and forth with drool running out of his mouth. He got to about 10-15 yards and I was trying to figure out how to get a shot off. Tyler is telling me to draw my bow, but he cannot see I have no shooting lane from where I am standing. I tried to move a step forward for a clearer shot, but this seemed to alert the bull. Finally he then turned the other direction. He walked perfectly broadside and this time I drew my bow back. Once he stopped at 12 yards I put my pin right behind the shoulder and let the arrow fly. I cannot say for sure if my arrow was deflected or not, but it would be hard to get a clean shot through these branches. The shot was not great, I ended up being about 3" too far forward (and a little high). My arrow caught the back of the shoulder blade, so I only got one lung and did not get a pass through. The shot was taken at 4:15PM. At around 6:00PM we were able to locate him still alive. He was laying down but still moving his head around and coughing. I was standing at 30 yards from him when he stood up and I was able to get off another shot, but that completely missed due to all the branches in the way. Luckily he fell back down so I could get closer. At 10 yards away and he stood again. This time I put my arrow through both lungs. Blood was pouring out of him and he was not a happy camper. He looked like he was going to charge us, but luckily he just started walking sideways and keeled over dead!
Needless to say my guide did an awesome job. He actually got 3 moose killed in 4 days. (He guided the other two guys in camp first and then took over with me when they tagged out.)
From start to finish it took us about 6 hours to get the bull out of the bush. We were about 250 yards from shoreline and we used a chainsaw to cut a trail in. This made it much easier to pack him out. The moose was caped and deboned in the field.
All in all it was an awesome hunt! By far the most exciting hunt I have ever experienced. It felt surreal, because it was everything I could have hoped for. He was not a huge bull, actually I think he was the smallest killed this year by this outfitter. But he was the only one killed with a bow. My bull was 39" wide. The other bulls taken ranged from 40" to 57", all rifle kills. To be honest the quality was much higher than I expected. Every other hunter there this year killed, except one other guy who bow hunted the week before me. I guess now I have a reason to try to go back for a bigger one someday
.
I think I am going to be on cloud 9 for a while after this. It definitely makes me want to get out there and kill another moose, Elk, Caribou, or any big game anima reallyl. The type of hunt where you go after the animal is so awesome!
. I locked that thought into my brain and went on with life. Probably a year later I killed a bear with Adrenaline Outfitters in Manitoba. Great guys and they are bow hunters. I enjoyed the hunt so much I booked one for the follow year as soon as I got home. 6-7 months later I got an email from Russ Mehling with Adrenaline stating they were expanding their hunting operations to include moose and caribou. I contacted Russ right away to get some info and basically booked a moose hunt for 2014. (This was about 18 months ago.) Russ has a lot of moose experience (he used to guide in the Yukon) and he spoke very highly of the area. So that was good enough for me.I was hunting Small Lake north of Thompson Manitoba. For the first 2.5 days I didn't have much luck. I never saw a moose actually. But moose hunting is either hot or cold, and I knew that going in. I did see plenty of sign, so I knew there were moose around. Two of the other guys in camp actually got their bulls on those first 3 days. On day 4 the weather turned more favorable for moose hunting. It started raining and got colder. That morning we spotted what was a definite shooter, probably a 50" wide bull. We tried to make a move in on him but he just disappeared. While it would have been awesome to get on this bull, it definitely lifted my spirits just seeing a huge moose.
On day 5 we spent the morning working an area near where we had seen the big bull. We hiked in with the wind in our favor and my guide Tyler did a bunch of cow calls and bull grunts. Alas, not one response! Finally after several hours we called it quits to get some lunch. After lunch we headed back out with a plan to hunt a different area. As we were cruising along in the boat, Tyler spotted a bull up on top of the hill where we had been hunting all morning. We knew it was a different bull, but he looked to be a shooter. We eased the boat into a place on shore to get the wind in our favor. Since we didn't get any responses to our calls in the morning, we decided to go in quiet and make a stalk. We walked right next to each other, so we would sound like one animal (hopefully a moose). Once we got within 80-100 yards of the bull we could hear him grunting and raking trees. There was not a lot of time to set up. Tyler moved to a position 15-20 yards behind me. He never called once, he just did some raking with his moose scapula. The bull was very agitated with this! He was swaying back and forth and came in on a zig zag pattern. Stopping every 10-15 yards to rake the trees and was grunting the whole way in, swaying back and forth with drool running out of his mouth. He got to about 10-15 yards and I was trying to figure out how to get a shot off. Tyler is telling me to draw my bow, but he cannot see I have no shooting lane from where I am standing. I tried to move a step forward for a clearer shot, but this seemed to alert the bull. Finally he then turned the other direction. He walked perfectly broadside and this time I drew my bow back. Once he stopped at 12 yards I put my pin right behind the shoulder and let the arrow fly. I cannot say for sure if my arrow was deflected or not, but it would be hard to get a clean shot through these branches. The shot was not great, I ended up being about 3" too far forward (and a little high). My arrow caught the back of the shoulder blade, so I only got one lung and did not get a pass through. The shot was taken at 4:15PM. At around 6:00PM we were able to locate him still alive. He was laying down but still moving his head around and coughing. I was standing at 30 yards from him when he stood up and I was able to get off another shot, but that completely missed due to all the branches in the way. Luckily he fell back down so I could get closer. At 10 yards away and he stood again. This time I put my arrow through both lungs. Blood was pouring out of him and he was not a happy camper. He looked like he was going to charge us, but luckily he just started walking sideways and keeled over dead!
Needless to say my guide did an awesome job. He actually got 3 moose killed in 4 days. (He guided the other two guys in camp first and then took over with me when they tagged out.)
From start to finish it took us about 6 hours to get the bull out of the bush. We were about 250 yards from shoreline and we used a chainsaw to cut a trail in. This made it much easier to pack him out. The moose was caped and deboned in the field.
All in all it was an awesome hunt! By far the most exciting hunt I have ever experienced. It felt surreal, because it was everything I could have hoped for. He was not a huge bull, actually I think he was the smallest killed this year by this outfitter. But he was the only one killed with a bow. My bull was 39" wide. The other bulls taken ranged from 40" to 57", all rifle kills. To be honest the quality was much higher than I expected. Every other hunter there this year killed, except one other guy who bow hunted the week before me. I guess now I have a reason to try to go back for a bigger one someday
.I think I am going to be on cloud 9 for a while after this. It definitely makes me want to get out there and kill another moose, Elk, Caribou, or any big game anima reallyl. The type of hunt where you go after the animal is so awesome!
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