Steve and I had an almost repeat of the weekend before last year’s moose hunt in the North Maine Woods. Governor Mills signed the Cast and Blast weekend into law last May. It allows hunters and anglers to bird hunt (except woodcock) and fly fish in the same weekend. Fly fishing in most waters ended the day bird hunting opened. A LOT of people took advantage of this great weekend. The area around Baxter State Park and in the North Maine Woods was packed with people. I was ready to get off the Telos Road and onto side roads with little and no traffic to do some bird hunting. At the end of the day we made an extra side trip to look for one more ruffed grouse so I could fill my daily limit (didn’t happen), and we found this young bull moose trotting down the side of the road.
He made a sharp right down an old trail. Steve stopped so I could try to get one picture of the young bull running into the woods. Steve made one cow call and stopped this youngster in his tracks. He’s great at calling anything and everything. A second call turned him around. We watched his ears twitch. He sniffed the air. He could hear the girl but not catch her scent. His ears moved independently, one to the side, the other toward us. Steve called again and the bull took a few steps toward us.
“Here he comes.” He took a few more steps. “Hey buddy. You stay there and I’ll stay here and we’ll be just fine.” Steve continued to call on and off for a few minutes. The bull lost interest, turned back and trotted down the trail. He was fortunate he didn’t meet up with someone who had an unfilled bull permit at 5 pm on the last day of their moose hunt.
Young Bull Moose
Maggie Boineau
Super cool!!!! Great calling and loved your interpretation of the photos!
Lady Locust
Oh what fun. Isn’t it cool how calling can stop them in their tracks? Hubby likes doing that with elk. We only seldom see a stray moose in the area.
Pat Mirza
Enjoyed this so much!
Bonnie
Great shots. I would be so excited to see a moose that close. Did you just open comments? I’ve tried to comment in the past, but couldn’t find the comments box.
Robin
I did, Bonnie. I sometimes forget to click on “allow comments.” He was fun to watch. Their ears and eyes move independently so watching his ears fascinates me.
Dennis
Robin, sorry I haven’t written in a while – I, young lady, am a SCATTERBRAIN. Seriously, there are over 6,000 emails in the box, I tried to train GMAIL to different letterboxes and I broke the INBOX.
Nuff. I look at the photo of the young bull ‘I’m still curious!’ & I’m curious – do you think that was an artifact of the light & camera (the eyes) or that the elk may have a retinal layering similar to a cat where they ‘glow in the dark’ – reflect much of the backlight or lightsource back to the viewer?
Must find out.
Also, just heard you on radio with ‘Gundy’ & have bookmarked your ‘Tressa & Trudy Bakery’ & had to look at the product – oh, my!
Robin
Hi Dennis, good to hear from you! My email is a bit broken at the moment. The internet provider needs to fix something so that I can send email. One of these days I’ll give them a call.
It was later in the day when we drove up on the moose. The light was okay in the woods but as the last few minutes passed it was too low, and I turned on the flash. The flash reflected in his eyes. Did you know that a lot of people think moose eyes don’t reflect eyes, and that it’s why so many are hit in the road? They’re dark so on a dark night if you don’t see reflection in their eyes it’s often too late and then there’s a disaster. In reality, their eyes do reflect but moose are so tall that their eyes are higher than a headlight reaches. Living in moose country, this is one of the reasons we drive trucks. I hit one moose and a moose hit me once when I drove a Jeep. We’re all in trucks now.
I’ll be adding whole wheat crackers to the Snack page this week!