The gods of weather must have heard my name and decided that I wanted lots of water - in the form of rain.
We didn't get anything but had several sightings.
On sunday and monday we had bright sunny weather and 70 degree temperatures but it wasn't ideal for calling moose. We saw some tracks made at night, but nothing was answering.
It rained very hard from monday night 'till thursday afternoon. Everything turned to mud and water. The tents leaked, and thursday morning we took a 30 mile run into Kapuskasing to dry our sleeping bags. During this time we took a couple of runs out to our primary hunting area, and late in the week we heard the voices of some hunters moving in across the lake for the next week's gun hunt.
A couple of guys were "scouting" in their truck when they saw a good bull moose in another area, but couldn't get a shot and were unable to call it out again.
The rain eased up thursday afternoon so we went out to call, and heard one answer, but that was it. Overnight friday the temperature dropped to below freezing and we had some snowfall that held 'till noon the next day.
We went out to our watches, and we heard the guys from across the lake talking again. We were pretty discouraged because they were messing up our hunt. Paul gave a cow call and it was answered from their direction by another cow call. We gathered up again and decided to go to another spot we'd set up the night before as well.
When we got back to the vehicle Paul gave another call and was answered by another cow call and then a bull call. We figured the other guys were playing, so Paul kept it up. then the calls changed to mainly a series of bull grunts that were moving in our general direction very quickly.
We realized we had a bull coming, and spread out to hopefully intercept it. I was the only guy out of position to see the action, but a cow, then another cow, then a calf, and finally a very large bull (apparently twice the size of the larger cow) came out and crossed the logging road. The moose had caught wind of us and were moving very quickly at about 70 yards from the nearest guy, so a shot wasn't possible. Everyones hearts were pumping after that.
I'm leaving on saturday the 15th for a calf moose hunt in Parry Sound, so I still have some hope of being able to recount a success story.
