Story By: Ty Brown
My cousin Eric and I had a fantastic DIY moose hunt in 2021 where we both harvested great bulls and saw several more. When we returned home, my good friend Brian said the photos looked amazing and that he’d love to do a hunt like that someday. Fast forward to 2024, and the three of us were headed north to chase giant Alaska-Yukon moose.
On the first day, we loaded up in a Beaver and a 206, both on floats, for the one-hour flight to the river we’d be hunting. We were dropped off on the river and had camp set up by mid-day. Our gear included camp equipment, two rafts, and a small outboard motor. With the outboard, we decided we could afford to take our time, staying and hunting in areas that looked promising. We spent two days at the drop-off spot hunting and calling before starting our float. The next two days we spent floating, calling, and making periodic stops to call into swamps and oxbows, though rut activity was minimal.
On day five, things got a little western. Brian and Eric were in the front raft, floating and calling, while I followed about a half mile behind. They had rounded a bend in the river when I stopped to take pictures of the biggest beaver dam I had ever seen. Suddenly, I heard Brian’s rifle go off three times. I jumped back into the raft and started rowing like crazy, thinking I’d round the bend to find a huge bull down on the bank. As I came around the corner, I saw Eric holding onto their raft with one hand and his rifle with the other.
As I got closer, I could hear Eric yelling, “Don’t let him get into the river!” Right then, he took a shot toward the trees on the bank. The next thing I knew, a giant bull moose leapt off the ten-foot-high riverbank straight into the water about fifty yards in front of me. I instantly started rowing for the opposite bank, knowing this rodeo was about to get wild. The moose finally expired mid-river, with just the tip of one antler sticking above the surface. I rowed toward him while Brian and Eric jumped into their raft and paddled over too. They eventually caught the bull and tied an antler to the raft so we could float him down to a gravel bar to begin the monumental task of processing him.
Luckily, we came prepared. Both Brian and I are rescue technicians on our local fire department, and Brian had brought pulleys, ropes, and carabiners. We quickly built a 15:1 rope system and were able to haul the bull up onto the gravel bar with ease. After processing the bull and hanging the meat, we all had a good laugh. We’d spent three years telling Brian not to shoot a bull and let it get into the river because it would be a nightmare to deal with. But in the end, it worked out far better than Eric or I could have imagined.
The next five days, the weather turned bad, and we had no choice but to float in pouring rain and cold wind with zero moose activity. By day ten, we’d had enough and decided to fire up the outboard and motor to our take-out spot. We had barely started the motor when a huge bull stood up in the willows not eighty yards in front of us. After some excited debate about his legality, I shot him head-on in the chest. He went about twenty yards and expired. After processing the bull and loading him into the raft, we motored the four cold, wet hours to our take-out—only to find out our pilots couldn’t come get us for another five to six days due to weather.
We spent the first two days at take-out camp caring for meat, cutting firewood, and periodically calling. Since we were still stuck in the field, we figured we might as well keep hunting. On the evening of day thirteen—of our ten-day hunt—a bull came within a hundred yards of camp, grunting and raking. Eric jumped up in his pajamas and flip-flops, grabbed his rifle, and ran to the edge of camp. The bull winded us and moved across the small lake we were camped beside. I grunted to stop him at 419 yards, and Eric made a few shots that knocked the bull down. We threw on our waders, grabbed our gear, paddled across the lake, and finished the bull on the far bank before processing him there.
By that point, we had run out of food, so we spent the remaining five days cooking moose meat over the fire and drinking lake water. With over two thousand pounds of meat hanging in camp, we were constantly on alert for bears. Sure enough, on day fifteen of our ten-day hunt, a massive grizzly showed up on Eric’s gut pile across the lake. Fortunately, he stayed on his side, and we made it out of the field by day sixteen and back to civilization. All three of our bulls ended up measuring between 62 and 64 inches wide. It was truly a hunt for the books and one we’ll never forget.