Sitka Gear Turkey Tool Belt

KHunter 2022 ID bull and CO cow moose hunts

drove around familiarizing myself and orienting @abqbw this morning, then set up camp and floated most (10.5 river miles in a 15 ft South Fork Skiff.


Great inaugural river run. One cow moose along the way. actually spotted by kayakers who were a little behind us.

Learned a lot about rowing and boat management on a river as there was a stiff headeind on a slack river most of the way.

Trip took about 4 1/2 hours and we didn’t really feel like we had the time to be stopping off and tromp around on all the public and private lands that I’ve cornered access to so this really was jusr of a shake out for us and the boat and to see if there were any obstacles or tricky spots along the way. Wanted to mot end up finishing too latecin the evening snd account for possible mishaps.

Fun!!! First time on a boat on a river in forever for me. Total newbie. All in all great first day of getting serious about this hunt and great having my brother for the fun and there he knows a lot more about boating rivers than me after his 2019? ID moose hunt in tougher waters.

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Stream braids in a few places and certainly has some dead fall cottonwoods and what not in places you just gotta be mindful for but nothing too bad at all. perfectly fine for future use of the alpacka pack rafts as well.
 
Today/Sunday we put the Alpacka Mule and Forager rafts to work for scouting upper stream reaches and smaller braided channels. We agree we both love these rafts, pack up small, weigh.8.5 and 13.5 lbs, and super stable and easy to navigate.

Brandon spotted a moose out in sage brush country at a long distance before we hit the water.

These rafts are also a lot of fun! Floated 6.9 river miles in 5 hours, including a nice lunch break and hopping out numerous times to scout on foot on BLM,. state and some of the private land access I rounded up permission to hunt. Great moose habitat.
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And Bigfoot prime habitat.

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On one onshore excursion on a chunk of BLM, darned if we did not walk up on 4 young teenagers out prscticing there archery shots from tree stands for the archery deer season that starts Tuesday, same as my moose hunt. Great kids and fun to talk to about hunting.


When we told them we were scouting for moose they shared a game cam photo of a bull from a week ago right in that spot. An OK bull and cool to have the photos. We wished them luck and premised to text them any good deer we see and they said they would send moose info to us.

The teenager’s game cam photos:

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A little while later I spun my boat around to look back upstream and there was a bull moose walking from right to left in the river where we had just passed maybe a minute before. Exciting to spot our first bull, and pretty decent to boot! Got to watrch him feed for 8 or so minutes before he finished crossing the stream. Here is a video and photo. See what you thunk. Fling an arrow if se on opening morning or pass? Cell phone video and pics so not as sharp as would like.

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Here is the vid @abqbw shot when he finished crossing the river. Yeah, we marked that waypoint!




Monday will start buy scouting on foot on the pvt land we are camped on and adjacent lands we also have permission on. (Also is where I saw two different cows and a calf, including one of the cows Oscar barked at. The landowner had sent me a photo of a small/medium bull back in July and said his big brother was much much bigger. Intriguing at the least and worth trying to dig therm up if still around.
 
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Here’s a little action shot from our jet boat tour. Think we were going about 30 miles an hour in 10 or 12 inches of water which means you got to keep it fullbore so you don’t get stuck in the gravel. If I had not already been running video of the scenery when I saw this cow I never would’ve got her on film.


Spotted one other cow mouse during the tour i’m about 6 miles up river then back down.




I’m gonna go meet up with my brother again we’ll probably go float another chunk of the river in RS for the final scouting before opening morning tomorrow!



Because I’m superstitious cracked open the hostess donettes day before the season.

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