Calling in a big bull

I was reading the article in Ontario out of doors magazine WHO YOU GONNA CALL on page 40 and it gets you thinking . I am sure a lot of hunters have a pretty exciting story of calling in a big bull. Last year I made it to the end of an arrow lake at daylight and started to call every 20 minutes or so. The morning was quiet as quiet could be. You could hear everything .It was also a little foggy. At about 9 AM I heard some loud banging down the lake. It got my heart pumping big time. Five or 10 minutes later at about 300 yards I could see a moose coming down the side of the lake in about 3 feet of water or so with its head in the water thrashing, shaking its head. I could not tell if it was a bull or a cow. It finally stopped and lifted its head after about 50 yards or so. It was a big bull. I got three shots off and being so excited I pump two shells out without shooting. He never did make it out of the water. I have never been so excited. I am sure there is a lot of pretty good stories out there from other hunters.

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Originally Posted by Ralphy

I was reading the article in Ontario out of doors magazine WHO YOU GONNA CALL on page 40 and it gets you thinking . I am sure a lot of hunters have a pretty exciting story of calling in a big bull. Last year I made it to the end of an arrow lake at daylight and started to call every 20 minutes or so. The morning was quiet as quiet could be. You could hear everything .It was also a little foggy. At about 9 AM I heard some loud banging down the lake. It got my heart pumping big time. Five or 10 minutes later at about 300 yards I could see a moose coming down the side of the lake in about 3 feet of water or so with its head in the water thrashing, shaking its head. I could not tell if it was a bull or a cow. It finally stopped and lifted its head after about 50 yards or so. It was a big bull. I got three shots off and being so excited I pump two shells out without shooting. He never did make it out of the water. I have never been so excited. I am sure there is a lot of pretty good stories out there from other hunters.

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Did you get it?

Here’s a long story:
I’ve been hunting moose for over 40 years and I’ve only called out one big bull… that I could see. Back in 1984, I was 23 years old and a novice moose hunter and some friends from work and I were camped along a logging road about 20 kms SW of Ignace. The night before opening day, we were sitting in camp socializing, and whenever someone went out to water the blueberries, they would call. We never thought anything about it as our knowledge of moose wasn’t too sophisticated in those days and probably believed that the bulls were off the clock at night. Anyway, on opening morning, I walked into the middle of a cutover behind the camp and commenced to call. Almost immediately, I heard some crashing in the woods about 300 yards away. (Tip: although I had a good view of the entire cut, I was too far from the bush edges in all directions to get off a reasonable shot). It was just after the start of legal hunting hours, and visibility wasn’t too great… everything was grey. In the dim light, I could make out a moose moving around in the slash along the edge of the cut but couldn’t tell if it was a bull or not. (As the crow flies, it would have only been no more than 200 yards behind the camp.) Since I didn’t have a set of binoculars, I tried to see the moose through my 4X rifle scope. At first glance, I thought that I was looking at up-turned root mass of a tree. It soon dawned on me that I was looking at a forward-facing bull with its head down. If the adrenaline hadn’t been flowing up to the at point, it sure started to flow unabated by then! I quickly realized that the bull was far too off for a good shot and that I had to get closer so I tried to sneak up. Well, it was a quiet morning and the sounds of me trying to walk up the gravel skidder trail were amplified. I was also wearing a blaze orange coat out in the open so the bull could see/hear me coming. I could only get about 20 yards closer before encountering a large/deep puddle with slash on both sides. I couldn’t get any closer without making a lot of noise. I looked at the bull through my scope again and noticed that it was walking back to the bush and I started to panic. I shouldered my .300 Win Mag and tried to hold the scope on the bull and jerked the trigger. I might have taken another shot, or two, and I lost sight of the bull. Eventually, I made it up to where the bull had been and didn’t find any sign of a hit. As I was looking around for sign, I could hear some road hunters coming up the road and driving by the camp. About a minute later, I heard the vehicle stop then about 4 rife shots followed by “whomps”. At that point, I knew that my bull had walked out to the road and met its fate at the hands of road hunters. I felt so hurt and disgusted! Then, strangely, after a few minutes, the vehicle continued on its way. Not long afterwards, I would learn from one of my friends that the road hunters had seen the bull just off the road at about 50 yards standing behind some brush. What they didn’t see was that the bull had been standing behind a pile of soil… and that is what the road hunters hit and accounted for the “whomps” that I heard. After unloading their guns at the huge bull, the road hunters stared in disbelief as it calmly crossed the road in front of them! Now that is bad luck right there!

As luck would have it, we weren’t done with this big fellow quite yet. Across and not far down the road from the camp was a small lake. The next day, one of my friends and I took a square-stern aluminum canoe and a 2 hp motor down the lake to check it out. As luck would have it, we spied a bull, cow, and calf feeding in a small brushy cutover along the shore. The moose walked into the bush right away and my buddy guided the canoe to shore. Of course it’s hard to be stealthy in an aluminum canoe when you’re trying to land onto a rocky/brushy shoreline so I was quite confident that the moose were on their way to Alaska at that point. We had aerial photos of the area and knew that the bush where the moose went into was about 20 acres and was flanked by the lake on one side and a logging trail on the other so we quickly devised a plan where I would wait 20 minutes then attempt to push the moose out. In the mean time, my buddy would zip back to camp and get the guys to cover off the bush from various points along the logging trail. Twenty minutes later, I walked into the bush and heard the moose right away. I could hear the moose making low vocalizations… it sounded like mumbling and for a second I thought that it might of been a couple of guys talking quietly. I even called out “Is anyone there?”. Of course it wasn’t people and I soon heard the moose moving off in the bush. I followed behind them but never heard or saw them again. I continued to walk through the woods parallel to the shore. Eventually, I came to a point where I could see a break through the trees ahead and knew that there was a cutover there. I had been walking for 15-20 mins and hadn’t heard any shooting and was getting discouraged because I didn’t have much further to go and I assumed that the moose had escaped somewhere along the way. I soon came to a spring coming out of the ground and boy was I thirsty! Just as I bent down and touched the water with my lips, rifle shots rang out just where I had planned to come out about 100 yards away. I forgo the water break and raced out the woods and found one of my friends standing over a huge bull that was in the midst of its death throes. Apparently, all 3 moose popped out right in front of him at 30 yards and came to a screeching halt which enabled an easy shot. As party hunting wasn’t allowed in those days, he could only shoot the bull while letting the cow & calf run off.

The bull had a 59” rack and we are certain that it was the same moose that I, and the road hunters, missed the day before. As Paul Harvey (syndicated radio personality) would say “And now you know the rest of the story!”. Incidentally, the day before, one of the guys had shot a cow that was bigger than the bull. Hauling out the quarters was no fun… Lord they were heavy.

What a GREAT story Sam! :o
Thanks for taking the time to share that adventure. Funny how we remember the hunts from forty years ago in such vivid detail, but might have forgotten what we had for breakfast today!
I hope you create a new happy memory this year.

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Originally Posted by Ralphy

I was reading the article in Ontario out of doors magazine WHO YOU GONNA CALL on page 40 and it gets you thinking . I am sure a lot of hunters have a pretty exciting story of calling in a big bull. Last year I made it to the end of an arrow lake at daylight and started to call every 20 minutes or so. The morning was quiet as quiet could be. You could hear everything .It was also a little foggy. At about 9 AM I heard some loud banging down the lake. It got my heart pumping big time. Five or 10 minutes later at about 300 yards I could see a moose coming down the side of the lake in about 3 feet of water or so with its head in the water thrashing, shaking its head. I could not tell if it was a bull or a cow. It finally stopped and lifted its head after about 50 yards or so. It was a big bull. I got three shots off and being so excited I pump two shells out without shooting. He never did make it out of the water. I have never been so excited. I am sure there is a lot of pretty good stories out there from other hunters.

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I have called in a couple of bulls to me in the past and of course I had no bull tags and just playing around. I have seen a few cows and bulls basically on the lawn of my cabin so I don't get so excited now.


But when I first started hunting Moose I went with a bunch of guys up to White River area near the Shekak River area and into a spot where it was only accessible by foot as the roads up there were off limits
for the first few weeks of the regular Moose hunt, but you could use traditional means to get in without breaking the law.

This made me kind of nervous right off the bat because we would either have to walk our Moose out by foot in quarters to be legal or sneak it out by ATV take a short cut and be illegal LOL.

Anyway being a rookie one of the old timers took me under his wing, this guy was a old farmer from down south who was also a trapper and knew his way around the bush.

So we cross into the allowed walk in zone and walk maybe half a mile up a esker and cut a few set of tracks in the sand. So this is getting on late evening and the old timer lets out a moose call a few times and he tells me to walk back into that area EXACTLY where he called from the next day and wait.

So I do that and basically wait the whole of the next day on that spot which was overlooking a wooded hillside and a swale where I am on one side of. So about 15 minutes left in legal shooting time I decide in
desperation to give out my own version of a moose call.

Heck now even twenty seconds goes by and I hear something coming down this wooded hillside on the other side of the swale, so I wait a few minutes and peep over into the swale and I see right in the middle a black back of some type of animal, but my mind thinks its probably black bear and I withdraw back because I am not to sure what to do.

After composing myself and waiting for another minute or so that seems to be an eternity I pop my head back into the swale and now the light is basically going and I see a bull Moose off to my left walking down to the south end of the swale. Its probably about 70 yards I would guess, up I put the rifle (no scope on it) and what do I see (not much) but I take a shot and then another and nothing.

I had heard him walking through the fallen branches in this swale and he is basically walking right headlong towards another hunter who is on that side of the swale, so I leave things alone as the most I can
now see is the white tips of the antlers and nothing else.

So after about 10 minutes its already dark and I am joined by buddy from the far end of the swale. So he says to me "what are you shooting at" I say the Moose he was coming towards you did you not see him, nope.

So while we are whispering about this moose in this swale we can both hear him still walking in the undergrowth but its to dark to see anything now.

Long story short nobody at camp real happy I missed such a close animal, the next morning the old timer takes me back and we look for blood trail and nothing.

So looking back I had probably no business hunting up there with no scope on a rifle but its all part of the rookie learning experience.

So two lessons learned, listen to the old timers when they tell you something about where a Moose will appear after calling, which I had done, but more important have the right equipment for a hunt

In October 1978 about an hour before dusk,I'm sitting on the dock of a lodge we're staying at across the river from Marten River Provincial Park.
An older fella from another cottage is sitting with us fishing for Walleye (they were hitting everything we threw at 'em) when he pulls out a real deal birch bark horn and says "Here,try this". My buddy,being young and stupid, looked at him like he was nuts. I said "How do you use this thing" and he commenced to show me how to hold it and plug your nose and in short bursts give short grunts and bawls. He said "Practice makes perfect. Keep at 'er". So I messed around with it until after dusk figuring that it was a waste of time,picked up the empties and was ready to head back to the cottage when buddy stops dead in his tracks and says "Holy s**t, what was that"? We could hear big splashing across the river and that familiar GA-WUMP. That big bull walked right through the PP,right down to the water and waded out into river coming to that call. The wind was at our backs,so,it must have caught our scent and didn't come all the way across. It was likely the best lesson I ever learned to this day,I still use it.