27 minute read
THE MIGHTY MOOSE
Compass Mountain Outfitters owner and guide Cassidy Caron poses with a bull taken in her British Columbia hunting concession in late fall 2021.
There's nothing quite like calling for Canada's big wilderness bulls, a hunting tactic that one outfitter says will 'test your every skill' and 'pull you to the brink mentally and physically' – and just maybe yield an adventure 'that makes the best campfire tales for the years to come.'
STORY AND PHOTOS BY CASSIDY CARON
The cloud of steam from my breath drifted into the chilly air and merged with the morning mist as I let out another bellowing cow call. It echoed off the towering cliffs of the mountains above.
The wind rustled the dying leaves, sending some of them floating to the forest floor. The creek bubbled below, a cheerful sound soon to be silenced by the ice of another Canadian winter. Only the sound of branches in the wind came from the stand of trees I had hoped to draw the bull moose from. This isn’t working, I thought dejectedly.
I glanced away, at the first rays of sun reaching over the jagged terrain, before turning back to the forest. And suddenly, there he was. It was stunning how such a massive beast could have emerged just 50 meters away without making a sound. His eyes rolled, showing their whites, and his huge nostrils flared, shooting clouds of steam into the air around him. Giant antlers stretched from his head, their thick boney points jutting into the trees around him.
My heart raced as I tried to control the adrenaline that struck me. This was the first bull moose I had ever called in.
Since that day, over the past 10 years, I have had the opportunity to guide moose across Western Canada: in the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Alberta. I now guide in my own hunting territory, Compass Mountain Outfitters, in northeastern British Columbia. I have gained a respect for the moose as a premier big game animal and have come to recognize what an awesome hunt the pursuit of trophy bull moose really is.
Many years and many bulls later, the rush of calling one in is no less.
This bull was called in to 7 yards during the heat of the rut, that time in fall the author describes as the “Achilles heel” of male moose. They are susceptible to different types of calling, from scraping nearby bushes to imitate a fellow bull, to seducing them with a cow call.
Sometimes it takes five minutes and sometimes it takes five days to call in that bull. Even though your gut tells you it will happen, you are almost always still surprised by the appearance of such a large, impressive creature.
There is a lot of exciting hunting to do on this planet but getting close to a rutting bull moose should certainly be near the top of any serious wilderness hunter’s list.
AT FIRST, MOOSE hunting did not come naturally to me. My passion was for hard mountain hunting, chasing mountain sheep and goats. On the mountain, problems can usually be solved by working harder or hiking farther, until you find what you are looking for. Moose, on the other hand, can be incredibly frustrating. They are animals that have their own impossible schedule and, despite their size, they can be incredibly hard to see. They show up when they please and disappear in places where you think you should be able to see them for miles. They have secretive lives, spending most of their time hidden away in dense brush or woods, their huge ears and long noses making it impossible to sneak close to them.
The bull moose’s Achilles heel is the rutting season. Moose rut with an aggressive and determined passion that makes them lose most of their sense of caution. With their big ears and ability to use their antlers to amplify sound, a bull can hear a call from several kilometers away.
Success for a hunter calling a moose can vary. Sometimes just scraping bushes with an old bone shoulder blade or plastic bottle taped to a stick to mimic antlers on vegetation will bring a bull in, wild and ready to fight. In the heat of the rut, a cow call is very effective. It can sometimes draw several bulls at a time from far distances all around you. Sometimes you make one mediocre call and you’ve got a moose coming as if you were pulling him in on a string. Yet, at other times, you can call until you almost lose your voice and turn up nothing. Sometimes they come in aggressively, breaking trees, grunting, almost stepping on you, and acting as if they want to kill you. And at other times they can be elusive, circling into the wind, never showing themselves, silent.
Moose do not have good vision. I have found that wearing a black jacket and standing in the open as a bull is approaching is very effective. I have been spotted by a bull while wearing black and had him immediately start to run in my direction. I also often set up a cow moose decoy, affectionately named “Loosey Moosey.” Loosey is most definitely a bad girl. Her irresistible looks have caused the death of many mighty bulls over the years.
THERE ARE MANY ways success is found on a moose hunt. Early to mid-September is the prerut stage and the bulls are often traveling alone looking for cows. It’s as if a light switch is flipped. You go from seeing zero moose all summer long to the valley crawling with them overnight. How these huge animals can hide so well in the hot months is mind-blowing.
During the prerut, “spot and stalk” works very well. I recall one hunt when I was guiding an Austrian hunter, Gregor, in the Northwest Territories. It was an amazing early September day, and we were about 2,200 meters (roughly 7,200
feet) high in the very rugged peaks of the Ragged Range. We were hunting mountain goats. We had just shot a very nice billy and were navigating down an extremely steep boulder field to avoid cliffs. Our packs were heavy, weighed down with the goat meat and hide. We stopped for a rest and I looked across the high alpine valley and was shocked to see a huge bull moose appear! He was at almost the same elevation at which we had just shot the goat.
I got the spotting scope on him and could see he was absolutely enormous.
“Cass, you are a crazy girl, but yes, let’s do it!” he responded.
At our tent camp, we hastily pulled the goat meat out of our packs. I put it in the shade and piled rocks on top of it, hoping that a grizzly bear wouldn’t steal it while we were gone. With no rest at the tent, we set off again straight down the mountain.
The valley was a lot deeper than it looked. We ended up losing about 700 meters in elevation and had to fight our way up the other side through terrible thick brush. It took much longer than anticipated. Finally, we reached the elevation we had spotted the moose at. I checked the wind and decided we needed to climb higher and get above the bull in case the wind changed.
We climbed upward until we were in the exact same cliffy terrain that we had killed the goat in on the opposite side of the valley that morning. I looked into the small clump of trees where I had seen the moose, but he wasn’t visible.
I tried a cow call to lure him out. Nothing.
We watched the bush for some time and the moose did not appear. We worked our way down to the clump of trees, able to see both sides if the moose spooked and ran out. Still nothing. I was beginning to think the bull had left while we were fighting our way up the mountain and we had missed him.
We got within 30 meters of the bush. It seemed impossible that a 1,000-kilogram animal with 2-meterwide horns could be in there. As an afterthought, I smashed at a willow with one of my hiking poles to mimic another bull raking his horns.
“Auuuuffff!” the bull grunted instantly in response and exploded out of the tiny bushes right in front of us. He was so tall and so close that he towered above us. His eyes rolled wildly as he looked around for the other bull moose who dared rake his antlers in his territory.
Gregor wasted no time in getting the shot off. The mighty bull fell and we claimed our second hard-earned trophy of the day. We were already pretty spent and dealing with this huge animal on the steep side of a mountain was particularly difficult. By the time we had butchered it, we were both exhausted. We laid the meat on the rocks to cool overnight.
Once again, we had to descend 700 meters and then climb the other side to our tents. We reached them at 1 a.m. Having gotten up at 4 a.m. to go after the goat, it was a big day that will never be forgotten.
WHEN THE RUT starts, bulls become easier to call. On certain days of the prime rut, the action can be unbelievable. I once had a client who snored very loudly. After one night of listening to him, I had had enough and discreetly moved my tent farther away from his and closer to the river to drown him out.
In the middle of the night, I heard splashing in the river very close to me. I carefully unzipped my tent and peered out just in time to see massive black legs going past my tent only a meter away.
“Ooof, ooof.” It was a mediumsized bull attracted by the snoring guy.
I carefully crawled out and watched tensely as the moose strutted up to the client’s tent. This could be bad, I thought, but I didn’t want to spook the bull at this point because I was worried he might trample the tent. That might
have been a better alternative than him trying to mate with it! I watched in disbelief as the bull straddled the tent, two feet on one side, two feet on the other. He was not at all put off by the foreign object or human scent.
“Oooof, oooof,” he grunted softly.
“Huh?” a muffled cry came from inside the tent. With a crash, the startled moose jumped away and ran off into the night.
WHEN THE CALLING is hot, moose
hunting is very fun. But when it cools down, it takes incredible patience and willpower to get through the slow times because they can be so boring.
I once got dropped into a location known as “Hellhole” with a German hunter named Heiko. Hellhole is a moose paradise in the Northwest Territories. If the name doesn’t give it away, it is not a people paradise. It is an old forest fire overgrown with brush and choked with windfallen logs. The ground is thick moss that you sink to your knees in, like walking on a giant sponge. I have hiked many massive mountains and I can tell you, it is impossible to hike anywhere in Hellhole. Moving even a few hundred meters is slow; you can’t see a thing with brush way over your head. It is also too noisy, and the moose will hear you fumbling around for many kilometers. The only way to hunt it is to find a piece of high ground, sit there, and call moose. They must come to you.
On the first day of our Hellhole vacation, I called in the biggest moose I have ever seen in my life. We could see him coming from several kilometers away and he toyed with us for hours, teasing and yet never quite coming close enough for a shot.
The next morning, I spotted the same giant bull a long way off. He had found a hot cow during the night and there was no way I could call him away from her. Despite my better judgment, I decided that the moose was so huge we should try to hike to him.
We crawled for hours on our hands and knees through the thick twisted brush and energy-draining moss. We couldn’t see more than a couple meters ahead, the brush was so high and thick. It was like pushing through a chicken wire fence. Finally, with our arms and hands scratched bloody, we emerged on a little knoll, only to see that the bull had moved even farther away. The hunt was over.
We started back for camp but it was very late in the day and it quickly got dark. I knew I had pushed us too far in my lust for that amazing moose. It was a tough mental test, crawling blindly in the dark through grizzly bear country. The headlamps made it worse because the brush was so close to our faces, we were forced to turn them off and crawl onward in the pitch black.
The branches tugged and caught on everything. They constantly pulled at clothes, packs and the rifle, making the trek even more exhausting as we constantly fought the brush. Our faces were beaten from being constantly poked and whipped.
I was blindly trusting the GPS to find camp. Had the batteries or navigation failed, I believe our skeletons would still be hidden beneath the bushes of Hellhole.
We did finally reach the tents and after an unceremonious meal of freeze-dried Mountain House, we flopped into our beds.
It snowed 40 centimeters (about 15 inches) that night. In the morning, everything was blanketed in white. All the bushes were pushed down to the ground and loaded with snow; it was completely miserable. We couldn’t move anywhere outside of the campsite without becoming instantly soaked. There was no firewood, nothing to burn at all. Finding a place to use the toilet – without getting snow in places you didn’t want it – was a miserable crisis. To make things even worse, it got windy
and therefore very hard to moose call.
We sat in our campsite on our little knoll for the next five days. It was awful. The wind persisted, and snow stayed, making moving anywhere further than a couple meters from camp impossible. I called until my throat was hoarse and we didn’t see any moose. I was losing my voice.
It was getting close to the end of the hunt and the temperature was the coolest it had been yet. I had been calling all day and we dejectedly went back to the tents to make coffee and try to warm up. It was hard to be motivated to go back and call some more, but I decided we needed to try again.
I was in the lead, going back to the little clearing about 100 meters away from our campsite where we had a little bit of a shooting lane and had done most of the calling.
I looked up and my heart almost stopped. A very nice bull moose was standing in the exact spot I had been calling from for the last five days with no results!
“Heiko! Heiko!” I whispered frantically. I glanced behind me and he was nowhere to be seen. I could not believe the bad luck. I had to slowly back up and turn. I saw Heiko, 50 meters up the trail, staring at the ground. I was desperately trying to get his attention without spooking the moose.
Finally, he saw me. I was trying not to move very much, but still show him the urgency of the situation. It didn’t work; he came down to me really slowly. I was so worked up, I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him toward the meadow.
“What? What?” he hissed at me.
“Moose,” I whispered, pointing at the huge black object occupying our usually empty meadow.
“Oh, ahhhhhh.” Heiko got so excited that he somehow forgot how to take off his mittens. He began flailing his hands around with the gloves half off. The gloves were whirling and flopping wildly. The image of the “windmill mittens” is forever burned in my memory. It would have been comical, if the moose hadn’t noticed and was now staring at us.
I seized a flapping arm and pulled the glove off for him. Thankfully, Heiko snapped out of it and was able to get his gun ready just as the moose was starting to walk away.
Boom! It was a good shot to end a very challenging hunt. We had endured everything Hellhole had to throw at us and Heiko truly earned a beautiful old bull.
MOOSE HUNTING IN Canada is an
adventure that will bring you into the depth of the wilderness and test your every skill. It can pull you to the brink mentally and physically. It can make you question your sanity. But it is the type of experience that is unforgettable and rewarding, the kind of hunt where dreams can come true, the kind that makes the best campfire tales for the years to come. Editor’s note: Cassidy Caron is the owner of Compass Mountain Outfitters. For more information, visit compassmountainoutfitters.com.
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A happy hunter hoists the target species at the annual Squirrel Master Classic, held outside Montgomery, Alabama, this past February.
THE SQUIRREL MASTER IS A CLASSIC
Outdoor personalities, 4-H shooters, dog handlers and others team up in Alabama for an air-rifle-powered good ol' time.
STORY BY LARRY CASE • PHOTOS BY BRIAN JAWORSKI
It was pure pandemonium. The squirrel dogs were barking their heads off. Everyone was shouting at the same time about which way the squirrel was going in the treetops. The squirrel was doing an amazing high-wire act, leaping from tree to tree, and you could hear the Gamo air rifles being fired on all sides. Part of our crew of hunters were running on the ground with the squirrel dogs, trying to keep the little gray tree rat in sight. Several trees away, the squirrel made it to a den tree with a hole in it.
There was a collective pause, and some members of the group bemoaned the quarry’s escape. I took a breath, looked around and laughed out loud! This was a lot of fun, and that exactly describes the Squirrel Master Classic.
EPIPHANY IN THE BACKWOODS Every February, a group of hunters, writers, editors, personalities from the outdoor industry, squirrel dog handlers, 4-H shooters, and people who just plain love pursuing small game gather at the Southern Sportsman Hunting Lodge near Hayneville, Alabama, for the Squirrel Master Classic. The Southern Sportsman Hunting Lodge (southernhunting.com) itself is worthy of a visit, as it is a shrine to hunting, located in the storied Black Belt region of Alabama. The log construction makes for a classic lodge, along with lots of buck and turkey mounts on the walls, and rows of pictures of sports, country music, NASCAR and other celebrities who have hunted there over the years.
The Squirrel Master Classic is the brainchild of Jackie Bushman, founder of Buckmasters, one of the first deer-related magazines and outdoor TV programs. The story goes that eight years ago, while having lunch at the Southern Sportsman Hunting Lodge, Bushman was looking for a way to attract hunters back to their roots – small game hunting – where a lot of us began our journey as hunters. Bushman’s idea was to have a squirrel hunt in a fun competitive atmosphere. The event was designed for team competition, where each team is made up of outdoor television personalities, outdoor writers and editors, a dog handler with a squirrel dog to find the squirrels for you, and most importantly, a
young person who is a 4-H shooter.
Bushman was joined on the venture by Michael Waddell (of Bone Collector TV series fame), then Gamo air rifles joined as the sponsor, and the Squirrel Master Classic was born.
So here is how it all happens. Each team is comprised of an outdoor TV personality, like Waddell, Travis “Tbone” Turner and Nick Mundt (all of Bone Collector fame), or Tyler Jordan and David Blanton with Realtree Camo, or “America’s Favorite Hunting Couple” Ralph and Vicki Cianciarulo, or even Bushman himself. Add an outdoor writer (like yours truly), a squirrel dog handler, and a 4-H Shooting Sports young person to complete the team. Also present this year were teams from Buck Commander, Air Gun Web and Raised Hunting.
Squirrels taken on two half-day hunts are counted up and the highest number wins. The competition is fierce!
We hunted this year with a Gamo Swarm Magnum Gen2 in the form of a .22-caliber air rifle and we found the air gun had plenty of power for squirrels and any other small game you would want to hunt.
4-H SHOOTERS STEAL THE SHOW The celebrity team leaders add a lot to the event, but equally important are the young shooters from the 4-H shooting program. Every year I marvel at these young people who come to the Squirrel Master Classic. Without exception, they are eager to learn, polite and a joy to be around. They are also good shooters! Could these attributes be learned in the shooting program? I think so.
This year I had the pleasure of meeting twin brothers from Opelika, Alabama, Jagger and Jedd Scott, who attended the Squirrel Master with their mother, Chastity Scott. Both brothers told me how much they enjoyed the event, coming to the Southern Sportsman Hunting Lodge, following the squirrel dogs through the Alabama woods, and all of the camaraderie that comes with a group of dedicated hunters. They loved it, and I think Mom did too!
A great highlight was when Edwin “Pop Paw” Waddell, Michael Waddell’s father, pulled out his stash of Little Debbie cakes for the team!
Among the many budding sharpshooters Case met was Jedd Scott, who was there with his twin brother Jagger and their mom. Author Larry Case shares a moment with a group of 4-H shooters at the range. He writes that the classic helps “bring young people to the light of small game hunting and our wonderful hunting culture.”
GAMO GETS THE JOB DONE Gamo air rifles fit like a glove for this event, as the Gamo Swarm Magnum Gen2 .22 pellet rifle is made for this type of hunting. The Swarm Magnum is the world’s only 10-shot breakbarrel air rifle. The 10X Quick Shot magazine allows the shooter to load 10 pellets in the magazine, insert it into the rifle, and fire 10 quick shots before you have to reload.
Believe me, we needed those quick second and third shots on this hunt, as these squirrels had their running shoes on. Once they started running in the treetops, sometimes with spectacular leaps from tree to tree, you had to be quick, or you came up empty-handed.
By means of a detachable rotary magazine, the shooter loads up to 10 pellets and snaps the magazine onto the top of the barrel. The Swarm Magnum requires that you cock the rifle with a break-action system each time, but the magazine automatically loads the pellet. For hunting purposes, this is huge. The magazine lies
The classic is a great showcase for sponsor Gamo’s air guns, including the Swarm Magnum Gen2 .22 pellet rifle, a 10-shot break-barrel with “plenty of power for squirrels and any other small game you would want to hunt,” states the author.
Dog handler Shane Mason and his dog Traveler and a young hunter (below) show off two of the 220 squirrels taken during the event.
horizontally to the barrel and is lowprofile, and this allows for the use of open sights, which on this rifle is a fully adjustable rear sight, and both front and rear sights are fiber optic.
The rifle also ships with a Gamo 3-9x40 scope, and has a two-stage adjustable trigger, adjustable from 3.2 to 2.6 pounds of pressure, pretty heady stuff for a pellet rifle that has an MSRP of $288.90. Find out more at gamousa.com.
RAISED HUNTING TEAM WINS As it always happens, wonderful hunting trips are over too soon. At the closing ceremonies, all of the squirrels from each team were added up. To be honest, I was on the Bone Collector
team, and we were feeling pretty confident with a record 33 squirrels taken the first day. Well, when the final totals were made on day two, we came up one squirrel short! The hardcharging team from Raised Hunting brought in a whopping 60 squirrels to become the 2022 Squirrel Master Classic champs.
There were lots of back slaps and high fives, and then goodbyes, as everyone scattered to catch planes and rides back to the real world. I always take a quick stroll back through the lodge to scan the mounts on the walls and all of the historic pictures, and to say goodbye to the wonderful ladies who cook here for us.
Hopefully the Southern Sportsman Hunting Lodge will remain the scene for the Squirrel Master Classic for years to come, to bring young people to the light of small game hunting and our wonderful hunting culture.
Members of the Raised Hunting team celebrate as 2022 Squirrel Master Classic champions. Their haul of 60 beat out team Bone Collector by one. Two young hunters check out the scoreboard after day one.
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