Having not gotten a moose on our float trip, I carved out a couple of days to go out to Standard Creek, where I’d last gotten one several years ago. I hadn’t had any luck crossing paths with a bull during the season out there since, but the biggest part of moose hunting is just putting time in where they are likely to be. I hunted two evenings and mornings in my usual area, but judging by sign the densities were the lowest I’ve seen in many years of hunting there. The visit was great, especially because I’d avoided the weekend by working then and taking a couple days mid-week, which really reduces the hunter activity. Coyotes were howling at dawn on the second day, and the weather was excellent, but I left feeling strongly that it was not worth returning. Moose densities have been too high across this entire hunting zone, apparently, and they’ve been issuing a lot of cow tags to push those densities down. I guessed that a lot of those tags have probably been being filled out here.

But a week later I had nowhere to be on Tuesday and no time to find a completely new hunting area, so I decided to go back out there and poke along farther down the 30-some mile logging road. I like to hunt in places where the four-wheelers don’t go, which takes a bit of walking and prospecting. It was a great day for it, and I also reasoned that I could scout for blown-down spruce for firewood, too. I decided to begin where I’d seen some females several years before, but after an hour determining that densities were low here, too, I continued poking along. From there I tried several other areas—again, looking for places four-wheelers didn’t go. At around 4:00 p.m. I found such a place with some decent moose sign. It also looked like a great spot for a bull, with plenty of good browse (and some of it had been browsed) and yet open areas where growing antlers wouldn’t get thwacked and ripped up by thick vegetation. I walked a lot of it very carefully, looking for how to best to hunt it in the evening and morning, then returned to the truck for a tasty dinner before heading out to my chosen stump at 7:00 p.m.

Autumn aspen backlit at sunset

On the way I took some pictures of fall, a lot of the colors still highlighted in the evening sunlight. I’d forgotten to bring my camera earlier in the day. On my stump I sat reading pleasantly for about an hour before distinctly hearing the scrape of an antler on vegetation. I put the book back in my backpack, popped the scope covers off, and stood and put on the pack. I needed to move to see over there better. For much of the past hour “Dick Four-Wheeler” had been road hunting this area of the valley, and the constant sound of the prowling engine was seriously annoying. Now he decided to motor down the little stub road I’d parked the truck on, putting him in the range of this bull moose. The moose had been quiet for awhile, probably also hearing the four-wheeler approach. “Dick” cruised down the stub road until by the sound of it he came around a corner and saw my truck. Then he paused for awhile, wondering, I suppose, whether to continue on past it to get every last yard of road hunting possible in or to let me hunt a place I was in before him. He decided to continue elsewhere. I heard him back up, shift gears, and slowly motor off. So did the moose. Before “Dick” had gone 200 yards, this bull was thrashing the daylights out of small trees with his antlers. And I wasn’t sure whether the four-wheeler affected this or not, but he was coming toward me along a mostly parallel track to the little trail I was on.

I could see a small tree shake, and then I briefly saw a decent-looking bull. I gauged his direction and speed and focused on the next open spot he’d hit. And when he did, I was ready on him with a perfect shot in the crosshairs—and then I thought, dang, the safety. I quickly looked, and it was off, but he’d moved on. Damn! After all these years, I should not second-guess honed reflexes! Given the distance and the cover, I may have blown my only chance. Somewhere in there I’d taken off the safety and it had not consciously registered. When I’d first heard the antler scrape on a small tree, my adrenaline and heart rate had gone through the roof. The “Dick” irritation factor had helped them go down, and my missing this perfect opportunity caused them to go down even further. It either was or was not going to happen, and all I could do was calmly work toward the former now that I’d increased the probability of the latter. The bull had walked into a dense stand of trees, and he proceeded to thrash the heck out of one. He also gave a couple of “gluck” vocalizations. Poor “Dick.” He’d have heard it instantly if he’d shut off his four-wheeler to actually hunt.

Hoping the bull would continue on his course, I picked my way silently down the trail a bit farther to see the next open spot he was likely to cross. And sure enough, he did! But he was in a bit of a hollow, so all I saw were his antlers and a few inches of his back walk across the view from my scope.

“Yes, I surely screwed this up,” I thought as I carefully and silently picked my way farther down my trail. And to taunt me, he vigorously shook yet another tree and gave a nice “gluck.” If I knew how to call moose and had been prepared, I might have taken advantage of the fact that he was going into rut. But that was homework and equipment I wasn’t up on (the season here usually ends too soon), so I just kept on trying to be silent on my little trail, which he seemed to still be mostly paralleling.

And then I saw the likely opening about 150 yards from me, and, sure enough, he walked on through it. The opening was brief, but it was enough. I shot, and he dropped instantly out of sight. I looked at my watch to begin the standard half-hour wait: it was 8:30 p.m., about five minutes after sunset. Hunter lore has it that you wait half an hour after shooting a big game animal to track it. If they don’t feel like they are being pursued, this lore suggests, they will lie down and die peacefully. That half-hour wait can be a long, long time, especially when it’s getting dark. You stand there carefully listening for movement during a lot of slowly ticking minutes while mentally re-running (and re-re-running, and re-re-re-running) the fine details of those critical seconds surrounding the shot. Skipping right to the conclusion, it was after 9:00 p.m. and getting dark, and I had a very large moose on the ground.

Night moose

I reached into my pocket for one of my heavy knives (a good lockblade), and it wasn’t there. Shoot. I usually carry two of these when moose hunting, though (and a boning knife, with these other two in my pack), so the situation wasn’t desperate, but the knife had been there this morning. Thinking that it must have fallen out back at the stump I’d been sitting on, I went back there and searched for it. Nothing. Then I though maybe I’d blaze a trail straight to the nearest road to have the shortest carry possible, but after a few minutes of that I realized that it was too dark now and that it would be safer to haul out the way I’d come in, even if it wasn’t a perfectly straight line.

So, at 9:30 p.m., I began my first night butchering. I dumped out my pack, put the headlamp on, and sorted gear. Knives, knife sharpener, tarp, rope, bone saw, large and small game bags, garbage bags for the meat we’d process at home, gloves, water bottle, and camera. First, I took a few quick pictures. Then a length of rope, some elbow grease, and a handy log had the moose on its back in a steady position, and the work began. A nearly full moon was rising and the sky was clear. I didn’t keep close track of time, but it flew. When I had half of the moose skinned and the two left quarters lying out on a tarp to cool, I decided to take a trip back to the truck to move it as close as possible and to get my frame pack to help pack the moose out. To my surprise, the front quarter alone was just too heavy to comfortably sling over my shoulder and hump out on the first trip back. But it wasn’t a problem. I needed to dump other things back there, too, like my rifle. So I did that, and, unencumbered, the walk back to the moose took just seven minutes. I think it was about 11:30 p.m. when I returned to the truck with the first quarter in the pack. Encumbered with this good, solid load, the walk back was 659 steps. As the night went one, I know that the speed went down and the number of steps increased. Those hindquarters were especially heavy, and they didn’t fit properly on the pack, making for awkward loads (this was lazy operator error). They were hard to load up on my back, too. I had to sit down and get the shoulder straps on (while keeping the pack upright), then tip and grunt myself onto my knees before fastening the hip belt and heaving us all into an upright position.

Every load was exhausting, especially because the last third of the journey was uphill. But I could rest walking back to the shrinking moose, and I had a fruit bar and a little Coke periodically to keep up my strength. The steady work had me sweating, even though it was a cool evening. Some great norther lights appeared around 2:00 a.m., and before they ended shortly after 3:00 a.m. they covered a huge portion of the sky. At 3:00 a.m. I stopped for a real break—I made a sandwich and sat down to eat it. At 3:30 a.m. there were coyotes howling not too far off, which urged me on to get the job done before unwanted guests had the chance to dine on some choice moose meat. But my energy was definitely diminishing, and at 4:30 a.m. I was in a place to stop and knew I probably should. So I hauled out my fifth load of meat, which included the backstrap and tenderloin, and left the remainder for a few hours of rest. As I staggered out under this wonderfully heavy load, I noticed that a frost had occurred—dragging my hands through the grass and leaves along the trail to clean them up a little was positively cold.

So at 5:00 a.m. I lay down for a few hours of surprisingly fitful dozing and was up again at 8:00 a.m. to wind it up. I fileted out a nice load for burger, cut off the head, took the heart and tongue to add to the load, and took out the sixth and final load of meat. It felt great carrying this back, not the least because in the whole job I hadn’t put a hole in the stomach or gut, and no urine had leaked either, so everything was clean (though some was bloody). I hadn’t cut myself, either. The antlers were big enough that I wanted the head, so I hauled it out on the seventh and last load. There was no place inside the truck or camper where it would fit, so I had to hump it up to the top of the camper and lash it down. I left it in the pack so it didn’t look quite so gory, but I did feel a little guilty of committing the classic, ostentatious, hunter-success-bragging that driving such display vehicles through town entails. But it just didn’t fit anywhere else, and I did drive straight home, not some circuitous route as some do to show off.

I was a happy, if tired, hunter. On the way out I saw a nice little spike bull on the road in front of me. He just stood there watching. I wondered where his smaller, tenderer butt was last night when I’d met his older cousin, but now that the latter was coming home with me it didn’t really matter. The one in back looked plenty tender, and it certainly had more meat. Arriving back home at about noon, I called Rose to let her know I’d made it home safely with a large companion, and then I began the cleanup. After lunch and a shower, I slept for an hour and a half, then I put the bags of meat we would process (tenderloin, backstrap, heart, and tongue) in the fridge and took the rest (quite a load) in to Interior Fish Processors for cutting and packing. Upon weighing everything, it turns out that I carried out 565 pounds of moose in those seven loads. The antlers were bigger than I’d guessed, with a 45.5 inch spread, but I could have just cut off the skull plate with the antlers on out there and saved myself about 50 pounds of hauling. But we did get some good stew from some of the head meat as long as I’d hauled it home.

That night we had a panful of delicious tenderloin, just cooked through in a little olive oil with salt and pepper. It is a very tasty bull! A couple of nights later we had friends over for a moose feast, featuring smoke-grilled heart, beer-boiled tongue, moose-cheek stew, and backstrap steaks. It is great to be eating moose again!

Moose-cheek stew
4-5 lbs. of moose meat (it doesn’t have to be cheek)
~5 washed potatoes (a volume just under that of the meat)
1 large onion
2 Cups baby or chopped carrots
2.5 Cups sliced mushrooms
1-1.5 Cups red wine
3-4 Tbsp chopped garlic
salt and pepper to taste

This is a classic stew that is delicious and easy to make. It is also fun to juggle flavors and ingredient ratios among batches. Cut up the meat into bite-sized pieces, dredge in flour, and brown in a skillet with a little olive oil. Take it out and put it into a stew pot or crock pot. De-glaze the pan with some red wine to get out all the tasty cooked-on goodies, and pour this into the pot. Add water to almost cover the meat, add some salt and pepper, and simmer on low for about 2-3 hours. Chop the potatoes into bite-sized pieces and the onion into small pieces and add these and the carrots and garlic about 1-1.5 hr before you want the stew to be done. Add the rest of the wine and enough water to just near the top of the added pile. Add more salt and pepper. Half an hour before serving, add the mushrooms and balance the salt and pepper flavor and let a little of the moisture cook off if you had too much. Total time is ~3.5-4.5 hours. Serve hot in bowls. Refrigerates and freezes well if there is any left over.

Smoke-grilled moose heart
1/2 moose heart
1 Cup of an olive oil/garlic/oregano mop
2/3 Cups shallots or scallions
1 jalapeño
3 fresh basil leaves

This is the most delicious heart we’ve ever made. I do half a heart at a time because a whole one is huge and this way you get really good penetration of the smoke flavor. We do it in a water smoker on medium-high heat with wet wood chips. Lay the heart on the grill (above the water bowl with plenty of water in it) with the inside up for the first 2 hours (it splays open), then flip it and cook for another hour, mopping and adding wood chips at the beginning and then on every hour. When it is done or almost done (done is at 170 degrees F; use a meat thermometer), you are going to wrap the whole thing with the rest of the ingredients in aluminum foil to stew for awhile. Make an aluminum boat on a shallow dish, pour the rest of the mop in, add the shallots, chopped jalapeño, basil leaves, and the heart, close the package up, and put it back into the smoker, now turned down a bit just to keep it hot. No need to add wood chips at this point. After 1-1.5 hours more (total 4-4.5 hours of cooking) bring it inside and open it up in front of everyone (to best catch the extraordinary smell). Cut thin slices; serve and eat immediately. It is juicy and amazingly flavorful and tender (for heart) while it is still hot. And the leftovers make delicious sandwiches.

Beer-boiled moose tongue
1 moose tongue
two bottles of beer
pumpernickel bread
capers
horseradish

Clean the tongue with a scrub brush and boil it for two hours in the beer. Add water if needed. Boiling beer smells a little sour, so you may want to use an exhaust fan. Take the tongue out, let it rest for awhile, then put it in the fridge until time to serve. It is served chilled. Cut in thin slices and either peel or cut away the skin. Put a slice of tongue on a thin slice of pumpernickel bread of about the same size (it can be toasted if you like), then add a little horseradish and a few capers. Delicious!