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Idaho Moose Pics

Congratulations to you and your wife! It is amazing that an animal so big can be so hard to find. I had an ID moose tag for 71-2 back in 98' and like you and your wife, didn't see much during late summer/early fall. But man, come the end of September/early October, the came out of hiding!
 
Wowser, Great bull! Congrats to you both!
Kudos to the other hunters that helped save the meat.
 
That is a great bull! Congrats to you both! I drew a unit 77 moose tag this year, so its fun to read about "local" bulls like this one!
 
bigoldbull said:
That is a great bull! Congrats to you both! I drew a unit 77 moose tag this year, so its fun to read about "local" bulls like this one!
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That's great. Congrats! Don't worry if you're not seeing bulls early on. We scouted all summer and found bulls but they disappeared once the season started. This was the first bull we found once the season opened and it was September 25th and chasing a cow. They'll show up in the rut or late season.
 
grizzly_ said:
That's great. Congrats! Don't worry if you're not seeing bulls early on. We scouted all summer and found bulls but they disappeared once the season started. This was the first bull we found once the season opened and it was September 25th and chasing a cow. They'll show up in the rut or late season.
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That is good advice. Thanks! I get all sorts of opinions from people, ranging from making sure I kill one before the rut hits and they start wandering, to not even going out until the rut is in full swing because they will be out wandering. Haha

I have already been out looking though. I am so excited for it!
 
bigoldbull said:
That is good advice. Thanks! I get all sorts of opinions from people, ranging from making sure I kill one before the rut hits and they start wandering, to not even going out until the rut is in full swing because they will be out wandering. Haha

I have already been out looking though. I am so excited for it!
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One more piece of unsolicited advice 😉

Get a cow call. We didn't use one on my wife's hunt, but I helped on another moose hunt last year and we sat up and glassed for hours, only finding a few smaller bulls, and then the guy with the tag got out his cow call... I was rolling my eyes when he started blowing on it, but the branches right below us started snapping and that big bull walked right in on us swinging his head back and forth and the guy shot it at just a few yards. It was awesome!
 
grizzly_ said:
One more piece of unsolicited advice 😉

Get a cow call. We didn't use one on my wife's hunt, but I helped on another moose hunt last year and we sat up and glassed for hours, only finding a few smaller bulls, and then the guy with the tag got out his cow call... I was rolling my eyes when he started blowing on it, but the branches right below us started snapping and that big bull walked right in on us swinging his head back and forth and the guy shot it at just a few yards. It was awesome!
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That is great advice! Do you happen to know what kind of call he was using? Thanks!
 
bigoldbull said:
That is great advice! Do you happen to know what kind of call he was using? Thanks!
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I have the Rocky Mountain hunting calls cow moose call (forget what it’s called). Grabbed it last year for my Montana hunt, obviously won’t be needing it at least for quite some time. Would be willing to get rid of it.

my advice, hunt the rut the hardest. Mid-late September, to mid October (ish). They’re way easier to find when they start wandering. It’s not hard to pick out a big black spot on a landscape. I have a pic of mine from June 2nd. I scouted a lot being only 45min away. I NEVER saw him (pic was from someone else), and never saw a single bull scouting. But, I was consistently seeing cows, and one very small bull early in the season. I figured once the rut hits, the bulls would come, and I was right. I heard they could cover 7 miles in a day looking for a cow peak rut.
 
CBender09 said:
I have the Rocky Mountain hunting calls cow moose call (forget what it’s called). Grabbed it last year for my Montana hunt, obviously won’t be needing it at least for quite some time. Would be willing to get rid of it.

my advice, hunt the rut the hardest. Mid-late September, to mid October (ish). They’re way easier to find when they start wandering. It’s not hard to pick out a big black spot on a landscape. I have a pic of mine from June 2nd. I scouted a lot being only 45min away. I NEVER saw him (pic was from someone else), and never saw a single bull scouting. But, I was consistently seeing cows, and one very small bull early in the season. I figured once the rut hits, the bulls would come, and I was right. I heard they could cover 7 miles in a day looking for a cow peak rut.
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I would be interested in more info on the call you have. It probably wouldn't hurt to have it in my arsenal.

That seems to match a lot of what I have heard and read. Getting out and scouting is more an effort to learn the country and get in shape than it is to find a specific bull and pattern him. It sounds like that is how your experience was as well. Do you have pictures of the bull you killed?
 
bigoldbull said:
I would be interested in more info on the call you have. It probably wouldn't hurt to have it in my arsenal.

That seems to match a lot of what I have heard and read. Getting out and scouting is more an effort to learn the country and get in shape than it is to find a specific bull and pattern him. It sounds like that is how your experience was as well. Do you have pictures of the bull you killed?
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There are some pics in the “Moose-Let’s see them” thread, I posted a couple weeks ago.
DM me about the call if you’d like
 
grizzly_ said:
My wife was lucky enough to draw the Idaho Unit 78 bull moose tag last year and got a B&C bull (see pics below). If anybody else is lucky enough to draw that tag, let me know and I'll help in any way that I can.

PS. Take a look at the harvest stats for moose last year. Unit 78 is pumping out some big bulls right now.

View attachment 60103View attachment 60105View attachment 60104
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Hi Grizzly. My son and I drew unit 78 moose tags. We have been scouting and haven’t had luck quite yet. Hopefully you see this. Let me know if you have any info to share. Congrats on her moose!!
 
grizzly_ said:
Joe and Oldgoat31, congrats on the tags. You guys are in for a real treat. I don't know anything about unit 10, but if you want help in unit 77 just let me know. I only live about 30 minutes from there and would love the opportunity to look for moose again.

The condensed story (and not edited for a magazine) still requires a little bit of background about my wife. Andrea, bless her heart, is a picky girl (hence her sexy husband, haha) and was not going to shoot something unless it was a true trophy. But anyway, she is so picky that she actually once passed a 185" buck with a drop tine during archery season at 42 yards because we had seen a 235" gagger earlier in the hunt (this was in 2B in NM a few years ago), so that gives you an idea of what I was up against.

After around 40 days of hunting/scouting and hundreds of miles of hiking, we still hadn't found a single big bull and only one decent end-of-season shooter. We had met a few of the other 4 tag holders and everybody was chasing a big bull that had been seen in the area for the past few years. Leaving the other hunters gathered in one area looking for this big bull, we were hunting a few miles away since there is nothing I hate more than "combat hunting" with other people.

We finally found an area with a few cow moose and spent a night in the area hoping a bull would show up. That turned out to be a bad idea because we were too close to the moose to see much country. So the next morning we staked out a ridge line a few miles away and glassed where the moose had been instead of getting right in the midst of them. It was the 25th of September and would soon warm to over 90F and by 9:30am the sun was already pretty high and the lone cow moose on the sage ridge was all we had seen that morning. As we picked up our gear to head back to camp and have some breakfast we caught a glimpse of horns that had stepped just a few feet out of some dark timber and then the cow started trotting down the mountain towards the bull. My guess is that he was hanging in the timber but had grunted at her to come down and that is why she started running towards him.

It only took a second for us to realize he was a shooter and we loaded up our stuff and took off towards him. He was on the south facing slope in some dark trees and my plan was to head down the valley and then cross onto the bare north-facing slope and possibly get a shot across the canyon at him. As we hit the area below the bare spot and began our climb up the hill, I told my wife to drop her pack because we were going to have to run for it. Standing up after taking off my pack, I looked up and the bull was standing over a false horizon about 30 yards away. Hissing at my wife that he was right above us, and knowing he would spook up the hill, we ran away from him through a little clearing trying to get a better shooting angle but ran smack into a small stream which slowed us down. Looking through the quakies growing along the stream, we saw a cow moose about 20 yards away and closing fast. Instead of running up the hill away from us, the bull was right on her tail.

We huddled by the stream to wait for them to clear some trees but they kept walking straight towards us and she ended up shooting the bull at only a few yards and he dropped right there in front of us. It was truly one of the neatest experiences of my life as she got tears in her eyes from the overwhelming emotion of everything that had just happened. I still have no idea how we were able to cover all that distance and get there before the moose had made it back up into the timber. As we stopped and got the bull checked at the house of the F&G officer, he asked to take a picture of the bull in the back of the truck and said that bull was often seen during the summer and after the season but nobody knew where he went during hunting season. We just happened to get lucky and be in the right place at the right time.

I didn't know it at the time, but I had made a crucial error by even hunting moose on a day when the temps were in the 90s. Luckily, we had made some new friends that were hunting elk down the canyon and they heard the shots (which was during archery season except for moose hunters) and immediately came to help Andrea butcher the bull while I ran back to camp to get the truck. If it wasn't for John H, and his son Johnny, we never would've gotten that bull cut up and on ice quickly enough to save the meat and cape. It was another example of luck coming together to make it a very memorable hunt.

PS. I know some guys are anti-'trophy hunter' but our view is that we love the hunt more than the kill and the success of the hunt is not based on punching a tag so we might as well be selective and hunt longer as opposed to just tagging out early in a season. Sorry if that offends anybody, just trying to explain.
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Awesome!!!
 
Jared123 said:
Hi Grizzly. My son and I drew unit 78 moose tags. We have been scouting and haven’t had luck quite yet. Hopefully you see this. Let me know if you have any info to share. Congrats on her moose!!
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Congrats. Shoot me a PM with your number and I'll give you a call
 
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