Well we weren't on a moose hunt, but we did have a close encounter with a bull last saturday. For the past four weekends my hunting partner and I have been out during our early black bear season in Eastern Washington.
The bears aren't as active this early as in the fall when they are trying to fatten up for the winter hibernation, so these hunts involve covering a lot of ground, scouting out areas for bear activity as well as early scouting for deer and elk hunting later on. We had been finding a lot of deer and elk sign without much bear sign during our morning hunt. Hounds and baiting are banned here the bear hunting involves finding recent sign and hoping to catch the bear when he returns to the area.
So we decided to return to an area we had scouted a couple weeks ago and set up on a hillside overlooking a trail and berry patch that evening. On the way up the trail we spotted a big mule deer doe on the hillside. We could see that there had been a lot of ATV activity on the trail that day Kids tearing up the trail not hunters. We weren't expecting to find much in light of all the ATV activity, were we ever in for a surprise.
We continued up the trail and we were about three and a half miles up the trail when we heard movement ahead of us up around a bend in the trail. Right now black bear and mountain lion are the only open seasons we figured that the movement was deer or maybe an elk we still wanted to check it out so we proceeded slowly toward the bend. My partner is about six feet to my left and slightly ahead of me on the trail, I'm moving up the edge of the trail to the right ahead of us there is a patch of elderberry bush blocking our view around the bend.
We reach the patch of elderberry and suddenly my partner stops in his tracks pointing to something around the bend. I ease up and take a peek around the bushes and right on the trails edge about twenty feet from us is a bull moose. I'm guesstimating his weight at around 1200 lbs and he had a rack that spread about 5 and a half feet across. Fortunately for us he was facing away from us otherwise I'm sure he would have charged us.
I'm quickly unslinging my rifle and making it ready, my impulse is to pull my partner off the trail While at the same time I blurted out "Its A Freakin Moose!!!". He's a seasoned hunter from the coast and unfamiliar with moose country. I don't think he quite realized the danger we were in. All of this takes place in a span of about three seconds!
The moose bolts down the near vertical bank of the canyon and we see him emerge from the opposite side of the canyon about 700 yards away climbing the steep bank effortlessly. Talk about an adrenalin rush!!!
I've seen moose in that area before but never at that high elevation, he certainly wasn't what I expected to find on the trail that day. That was quite an ending for our day of hunting.
