Moose Hunting in Alaska

Some years ago, while managing a Moose Lodge, I decided to plan a trip to Alaska and try to bag a Moose.

We arranged this trip to coincide with the birth of my second Alaska grandson. We arrived there shortly after his birth and started planning for the hunt.

Without notes, I will try to remember as much of the trip as possible. I believe that at this time a non-resident Alaska hunting license was $75.00 (A fishing license costs that much now) and the moose tag was $300.00.

Keith, my son-in-law, is a resident of Alaska and had his own plane.

Just before the birth of his son, Keith bought another airplane. Now he has one on floats and the original was on wheels.

We made camp on Bear Lake, which is about 100 miles from nowhere, prior to the first day of the hunting season. We spent two weeks hunting and scouting without finding a suitable moose.

My son arrived in Alaska and we returned to pick him up. With the float plane, there was a problem of weight. We had to remove most of the supplies in order to haul my son. We ended up with one gun, 3 fishing rods, emergency food and tent.

After we returned to the hunting area, we fished for some time. One afternoon while we were fishing, one of us heard a moose thrashing his antlers in the brush. We put down the fishing rods, I took my gun and stalked the moose.

About 300 yards from the lake, a moose stood up, probably 50 yards from me, using very light rifle bullets, I hit him in the front shoulder.

As he staggered, another moose ran away from me. This one was a large bull moose with very nice antlers and had been lying about 20 yards from me when I fired at the other one.

Due to the size and problems associated with taking the moose back home, we decided to allow this moose his freedom.

I turned back to the first one and placed another shot into his front shoulder. Four shots into the front shoulder did not put him down immediately.

Finally , he sagged down on his haunches. Number one son walked up and started taking pictures.

While he was doing this, the moose stood up. While I was hoping son would stop before he got back to the lake, I broke the moose's neck with a well-placed bullet.

The three of us skinned and field dressed the moose. Keith took one load of meat back home, leaving about dark.

My son and I spent a very restless night sleeping up wind of the moose (we were at Bear Lake)..

Daylight was a happy time, Keith returned with hot coffee. Five more trips hauling meat and the trophy and we got to ride back about 7 in the evening.

The next day we took the meat to the butcher. He weighed in over 1100 hundred pounds of rough cut meat for processing. We weighed the head prior to taking it to a taxidermist and it was 185 lbs. The antlers measured across at 57 inches. According to Alaska standards a head has to measure 60 inches to be considered large.

The moose head was mounted and is now hanging in my local Moose Lodge.

The moose meat was cut and wrapped by a butcher.  The thousand pounds of meat filled two freezers and was eaten over a three year period.