After a long career of being a Professional Bonus Point Collector, 2019 brought a very nice change of pace as I drew both a mountain goat tag and a Shiras moose tag in my home state of Montana!
I spent a total of seven days hunting moose, and each day was an adventure. One of those adventures included a heart-testing sprint in an attempt to shoot a wolf. After the 500-yard uphill run, I was breathing like a fat kid chasing a cookie. It was a clean miss, but talk about exciting!
I had a few nights reserved at a USFS rental cabin for a portion of the hunt. As with all USFS cabins, there were mice. Everywhere. They were defecating in my sleeping bag, eating my Twinkies, and fornicating recklessly. I went to war. It was an intense battle, but I eventually declared victory and fell asleep on the battlefield. There were many casualties, including 10 mice and about half a bottle of whiskey.
The next morning, I gathered myself and mentally changed my battle tactics from mice to moose. It was a glorious 10 degrees outside with a beautiful three-inch layer of new snow on the ground. I made it just a couple miles in the truck before running across a big set of moose tracks in the road. Game on! I put on my pack and grabbed the rifle.
Four miles into the hike and I was starting to realize this bull was a machine. He had bedded four times! After each nap, he would follow it up by dropping a deuce. I would grab a handful of each pile and marvel at the fact that it was frozen together and didn’t have even a hint of freshness. How could this moose move this far through the woods in day-old snow, take four naps, and still seem like he was 20 miles ahead of me? I was frustrated, so I took a break. At least I’d sip some much-needed water. Nope! It turns out that water converts to an undrinkable solid substance after hiking around in the 10-degree heat. My water bottles would have been better used to bash mouse skulls rather than save me from dehydration. I gave up and headed back towards the truck.
While wandering towards the general direction of the truck, I suddenly noticed a moose standing in front of me. Bull! I froze, almost literally. When the bull gave me an opportunity, I sent the .300 Win Mag. bullet into his lungs. Seconds later, I heard him hit the ground. He was down! I marched over to where he was originally standing and quickly realized I got incredibly lucky. The bull fell just 20 yards from the main road.
Despite the long list of buddies who volunteered for the Gut & Drag team, I just couldn’t find it in me to call anybody that close to the road. I would handle this myself, after I drank a couple gallons of water, of course.
Butchering a moose kind of sucks when you’re by yourself. At the three-hour mark, I thought, I should have called some buddies. At the five-hour mark, I was pretty much done, especially mentally. I still had to lift the quarters, head, hide, and a few bags of meat into the back of the truck. I would prepare myself for each back-breaking lift, You can do it! It’s just a little hind quarter. Don’t be a sissy! I would then grunt, lift, and then loudly say the F-word before mentally preparing for the next. It was well past dark before I had the moose loaded and was back at my luxurious cabin.
The next morning, I awoke to soreness. Although I smiled all the way home, I had this nagging worry in the back of my mind, I need to get back to goat country before I get snowed out of the mountains.
Two days later, I got a call from Billy. Though I don’t recall how I met Billy, he said he had an excellent plan. “Meet me at 10,000 feet tomorrow,” he said. I told him I would be there. I made the five-hour drive to my goat unit with the four-wheeler in tow. It was the middle of the week, and none of my hunting buddies could go because they had to work or some stupid excuse like that.
I slept in the truck that night and then made my way to the high country via the four-wheeler. I had to get to 10,000 feet, the predetermined meeting place with Billy. The long, horrible ride was long...and horrible. This 15-mile stretch of road wasn’t good during a July scouting trip with my wife, but it was manageable. The main difference now was that it was mid-October and the weather was a little different. I finally reached the end of the muddy road. I was happy to finally get off the ATV and go find Billy. But where was he? To my left was the easy 10,000-foot mountain. To my right was the terrible 10,000-foot mountain, which included a longer hike to goat country, a lot of thick grizzly habitat, and absolutely no reason for any sane person to go there. I chose this option.
A few hours later, I crested a small ridge and found Billy! He was grazing the hillside at 10,000 feet, precisely where he said he’d be.
“Yo, Billy!” I bellowed across the mountain, twice.
Billy trotted 350 yards down to me. “Hey, Tanner, want to have a head-butting contest?” he asked.
“Well of course!” We butted heads twice or maybe it was 50 times, I don’t recall. In fact, I don’t remember many things that happened that day for some reason, except of course for the true facts that I currently write.
Billy and I had a great afternoon together and had many laughs. We joked about how inexperienced hunters would sometimes “scope” themselves when shooting at extreme uphill angles. Ha, stupid rookies!
At one point, Billy told me he was cold. This sudden comment awoke me from a nap that I don’t remember trying to take. I rubbed my eyes and said, “no kidding, you live at 10,000 feet, dude.” He proceeded to tell me a sad story about how he had always longed for a warmer climate. A single tear rolled down his face and froze instantly. He hated the frigid winters and wanted to relocate from the high country ever since the day he was born, way back two and a half years ago. I began to feel bad for him as the sun disappeared, and frostbite started to set into my fingers. I picked a bloody, frozen scab from my forehead and then had an idea.
“Hey, Billy!” I said, “I will take you to a warmer climate.” There was a twinkle in his eye. “Billy, I will take you to a place that I call My Freezer. It is kept at a constant -10 degrees, much warmer than this oxygen-deprived hell-hole you call home.” Billy was so excited that he dropped his guts and jumped into my backpack with nothing but his smiling face sticking out.
We began our descent in total darkness. “Billy!” I said, “watch for grizzlies,” as I fumbled for the headlamp button with numb fingers. The batteries were running low, and the light was illuminating only five feet in front of me. Of course, this is plenty of visibility to handle a
charging 800 lb. grizzly, but I wanted to give Billy something to do to keep his mind occupied during the long trip down the mountain. Kind of like how you give your iPhone to your rotten kids on a long road trip to keep them from whining. Billy spotted hundreds of grizzlies on the hike out, but he was able to keep them at bay by singing Elton John songs, which all grizzly bears despise.
Luckily, the slight concussion and extreme lack of oxygen had no noticeable effect on me, probably because I’m so tough. We waded through the Purple Rattlesnake River and through the Dancing Frog Jungle with ease. The pirates never knew we were there. By the time we made it to the five-wheeler I had grown tired of Billy’s laziness and snide remarks about how I was taking the long route and how my labored breathing was disrupting his nap. I bungeed his fluffy white arse to the back of the wheeler and we headed towards the truck.
The bumpy trip back was a blur due to all the flying red walruses obstructing my vision. I awoke the next morning in the passenger seat of the truck, naked and curled up in a ball. I was sucking my thumb and humming songs from Mary Poppins. After a hearty breakfast of Pepsi, jerky, and Fritos, we drove home, refusing to talk to each other. Upon arrival, I placed Billy in his precious warmer climate and haven’t talked to him since.
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