In January 2018, my hunting partner, Alec Coultas, and I planned our big game application strategies for the year and the waiting began. After Washington’s drawing date, I got a screenshot from Alec that said, “Congratulations! You were successful in drawing an any antlered moose tag.” I called him right away to see if he was messing with me. Sure enough, we were going moose hunting!
At the end of September, we were finally heading out on Alec’s moose hunt. He had seen a few moose, including one nice bull, in his pre-season scouting, so anticipation was high. He knew where he wanted to start opening day, passed a gated road he had found while scouting. We found a logging operation stacking logs just short of the gate. After finding our way in around them, we covered quite a bit of ground on the closed roads and ended up on a ridge with a good vantage point. We decided to glass a while, and it wasn’t long before someone spotted the first moose. There were actually two, a bull and a cow, a mile away down the mountain. We decided we needed a closer look. Alec, Steve Grey, and I headed down the ridge towards the moose. Brian Russell and his dad, Bob, were going to keep watching the moose from up on the ridge.
As we got up the other side of the canyon, we located the moose just rising out of their beds. We got a good look at the bull. He was nice but not an opening day shooter. He had nice split brow tines, but his paddles were narrow. Watching the bull for a bit longer, Alec chose to hunt for a larger one. Everyone was excited about finding moose, especially a decent bull on opening day.
The next morning had us walking out another gated road. We found an open log landing at the end of the road and thought it might be a good spot to set up and call for the first time. However, we didn’t call in any moose on that first attempt.
We spent some time that afternoon driving around, trying to locate moose and glassing every open hillside we found. We saw a couple of moose from the road that Alec confirmed were cows. With no other sightings, it was a consensus to go back to the ridge where we’d seen the bull opening day. Where there’s a moose, there’s bound to be more.
With a dusting of fresh snow, we were fired up and on the mountain early glassing on day three. Alec and I got up to the top of the ridge a little ahead of the others and started glassing through the alders. We were above where the bull and cow had been the day before. Soon Alec asked me to cow call. After a couple of sick calls, Alec heard something over the ridge and said it sounded like a bull grunt. We continued listening and glassing, moving slowly down the road. The other guys caught up to us, and Brian motioned that he had heard something as well. As I approached him, moving slowly and trying to listen, the bull grunted again. It was a bull moose, and he was getting close. I waved Alec back up to our position. Brian, Bob, and Steve backed down off the road and found a good spot to sit and watch things unfold.
Alec, who was carrying his bow, got in front of me, nocked an arrow, and told me to call. I let off with a cow call, and the bull grunted in response. We could hear him crashing through the brush. Adrenaline was flowing! We were expecting to see the bull appear on the road within archery range at any moment. All of a sudden, the bull must have caught our scent because he tore off sidehilling beneath us. We only got a glimpse, and then he was gone.
We had called in our first bull, so we were all fired up and ready to go. We continued on. A short time later, we spotted another young 3-point bull that we got to watch feeding for a while. After the second bull sighting, Brian and Bob had to head back to camp and start the long drive home.
The next morning, Alec was getting a little anxious that we hadn’t seen a shooter bull yet and we had a Utah mule deer hunt opening soon. This was another hunt that we had been looking forward to that Garth Jenson with Huntin’ Fool had advised us on. I assured Alec that we could get drawn for the deer tag again. We were moose hunting until he filled that once-in-a-lifetime tag.
We were on our way up the mountain past a remote construction site that had the road effectively blocked. We got out of the truck and hiked in, and we found a good place to set up. We sat down on a bank, and I started to call. A minute later, Alec picked up a broken tip of a moose antler from between his feet. Looking at the antler tip, we couldn’t help but think it would be nice to find that bull.
After a short while, Alec was getting twitchy, so off we went. A couple hundred yards up the road, we saw the signs of the battle that had occurred there the night before between two bulls. The entire road was torn up with moose tracks all over. There had definitely been moose in the area for a while. We decided to make our way up to another clearing Alec knew about and call again.
Around the next bend, there was a bull standing broadside at 140 yards. I swung Alec his rifle. He put down his bow, grabbed the rifle, and dropped prone into a shooting position where he could see under the tree branches in front of us. He let the first round go. That first shot was well placed in the vitals of the bull’s left side. I called Alec’s second shot after it hit right next to the first. The bull spun around, and Alec’s third shot found the animal’s vitals from the opposite side. It was soon obvious that the bull was dead on his feet, and he fell right there. Steve was quick enough to film the last couple of shots, the excitement to follow, and the look on Alec’s face after the bull was on the ground, which said it all! We were all wishing that Brian and Bob had still been with us to be a part of this culmination of the hunt.
There was excited shouting, high fives, and bear hugs all around. We gathered up spent brass, our gear, and ourselves after we’d calmed down a bit and started walking towards the bull. Lying there on the ground, the bull just got bigger as we approached. We stood there admiring what an awesome animal he was, this being the first time we’d seen a moose up close and personal. Looking at his antlers, I asked Alec, “You have that antler tip in your pocket?” We all looked in disbelief at the missing tip on the bull’s left antler. Sure enough, Alec had got his bull, the one that just 45 minutes earlier we had all been dreaming would be nice to find. This was an awesome hunt with good friends to remember for a lifetime.
Washington Moose Hunting
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