March 2026
A Quest in the Crazies | Montana Moose Hunting
I assumed that 2025 would be just like every other year. I’ve been applying for the big three in Montana—Shiras moose, bighorn sheep, and mountain goat—since 1989, and this year was the same. All in all, that’s thirty-six years of applications.
This April however, I was astounded to see that I’d been successful in drawing a bull moose permit for district 303. This district encompasses an island mountain range called the Crazy Mountains. This is a huge district, made up of 1,728 square miles, and 79% of it is private land.
While incredibly excited about drawing this once-in-a-lifetime tag, I was also somewhat intimidated. With a hip replacement scheduled for after the hunting season, I wasn’t in as good of physical shape as I had been ten years earlier. The thing I had going for me, however, was that I had retired in January, so I had essentially unlimited time to devote to the hunt.
I would not call myself an accomplished hunter. I’ve hunted my entire life. I grew up in the Midwest where hunting meant taking your shotgun for a walk and coming home with whatever nature presented to you, be that rabbit, squirrel, pheasant, or quail. I started bowhunting when I was in high school and was self-taught. While I did harvest two whitetail deer, hunting took a back seat to my education, and I hunted very little the next twelve years. I spent some time in college working just outside Yellowstone Park and jumped at the chance to move to Montana in 1988, where I took a job. It was then that I started hunting big game again. In all the years since, I’ve never really taken anything that would be considered a “trophy”. All animals are trophies, but I really wanted to harvest an animal I would be proud to hang on my wall. With this bull moose tag, I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to fulfill that quest.
I really felt unprepared for a moose hunt. I watched as many YouTube videos as I could on locating and calling moose. I watched more videos and read reports on how to field judge moose, but this was still virgin territory. I didn’t know where to start my scouting in such a huge district. My best move—the one to which I attribute my success on this hunt—was getting a hold of a Huntin’ Fool Hunt Advisor. They got me in touch with a previous hunter who had been successful in the same district three years previously.
I called Tom Cook who had shot a beautiful bull moose in 2022. Tom graciously spent hours on the telephone as we went over the district in the onX app. He told me where he had seen moose and gave me contact information for some local ranchers, so I started knocking on doors. After spending a couple weekends stopping by various ranches and talking with the owners, I had secured several ranches for my pursuit. I also have a ranching friend in the northern part of the district who started keeping an eye out on his land for moose. He spotted a beautiful mature bull, but, as luck would have it, the bull had crossed the highway into the next district to the north by the time the season opened.
Scouting was done primarily by driving the back roads and doing a lot of glassing. While I had spent a fair amount of time in different parts of district 303 over the previous two decades, I saw beautiful land and wonderful habitat that I had no idea existed. I did get excited after seeing three bull moose during my scouting trips, including one beautiful moose that I thought would push into the upper 40-inch range.
The season opened on September 15, and I had secured permission to hunt an area of block management on the western side of the Crazy Mountains. Thirty minutes into the hunt, as the dawn was breaking, I had my first encounter with a moose—a cow who was feeding on brush at the edge of a meadow. I hunted morning and evening most days and had several encounters with moose. There was one magical morning where I crept into an area in the dark after hearing a cow moose call. When the sun came up, I was about 40 yards away from the cow moose, her calf, and the first bull moose I had encountered while hunting. It would’ve been a chip shot at 50 yards, but the bull was only about 32 inches wide. I had set my goal at 40 inches, so I passed this bull up.
Over the next several days, I wondered if I had made a mistake. Some days, I didn’t even see a moose. Other days, when I did get into moose, all I found were cows, calves, and one- or two-year-old bulls. One morning, while hunting the same piece of block management along the Shields River, I saw a beautiful bull just as he was crossing into posted land that I did not have permission to hunt. This would be the bull I eventually took.
More days than not, I did not see moose when I was out hunting. The days were very fulfilling however, as it’s not the harvest, but the experience that really makes a hunt. Hunting in the end of September, I was serenaded by bull elk. I saw eleven different black bears. There were gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. The crisp fall air, filled with the scent of decomposing leaves, was invigorating.
Really, the only negative side of this hunt was the pressure that I put on myself. After applying for the tag for thirty-six years, I was afraid that I would let a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity pass without success. I remember feeling very disheartened several evenings when I returned to my cabin after another unsuccessful day.
As we got into early October, the rut started to heat up. I was able to see the moose I would eventually harvest a couple of different evenings, but he was on land that I did not have permission to hunt—land that was very highly posted. I found the contact information for this ranch and decided to inquire about accessing this beautiful country. The worst they could say was no! The ranch manager graciously allowed me access to the river bottom where I wanted to hunt, with the caveat that I needed to check in with him when I saw a moose I wanted to pursue to make sure that no one else was in the area.
I headed out the next evening and very quickly glassed up a beautiful mature bull. A quick call to the rancher was made, but when I got into the field and glassed him in my spotting scope, I could see that he had broken off his left antler. The next evening however, I briefly saw a mature bull as he slipped into the brush. After another call to the ranch manager, my hunt was on.
I slipped into the field and hiked to within half a mile of where I had last seen the bull so that I could come in down wind of him. The willows were quite thick, and I started a slow, still hunt towards where I had last seen the bull. I heard a cow moose give an estrous moan, and I headed in that direction. As I closed in on her calls, the moose I was after walked out of the willows and into a clearing about 80 yards away. A quick shot with my Ruger 7 mm put him down, and a follow-up shot finished the deal.
I walked up to my downed bull moose, and a sense of profound gratitude poured over me. Lying before me was a beautiful animal, a true trophy, my first true trophy in fifty-seven years of hunting. After seventeen days of hunting, the pressure was off.
Here is where you generally hear, “This is when the work starts.” But for me, this was when I realized how truly blessed I was. The ranch hand had said that I should call him if I was successful, and so I made a call to him and to my son Seth, who drove over two hours to come help. The ranch hand, Ryan, was able to bring a tractor to the harvest site, and we skinned and quartered the moose hanging from the bucket. I later spent two days with my great friend Paolo cutting up and packaging this magnificent animal.
I had set my goal on a 40-inch moose, and mine came in right at 50 inches. I cannot thank Huntin’ Fool enough for getting me in contact with Tom Cook, who guided me through this process. I also want to thank the several generous landowners who made my thirty-six years of applications culminate in truly once-in-a-lifetime hunt.