Grand Prairie, Alberta

Alex

I thoroughly enjoyed your Moose Madness DVD series; you have some awesome video footage and I was very impressed with the in-depth research that went into the Series. You’ve covered all aspects of moose behaviour and the techniques needed to harvest one of these magnificent creatures.

I had a lot of fun trying out your calling techniques this year, and called in several moose earlier in the season starting about September 20th. The most memorable day was when I used a combination of passive and aggressive routines to call in six different moose at the same time. At first two cows and a calf came in to about 20 yards, followed by two bulls. Then a third cow came flying out of the bush, leg striking at the other cows to drive them away. I then got the two bulls really heated up with cow moans and they came in grunting like crazy to about 25 yards with their tongues hanging out, drooling all over the place. There was also another bull that I didn’t actually see grunting and thrashing bush off to the side. I didn’t have a tag for this area so I couldn’t harvest an animal, but in all this was a very exciting day and I got some wonderful video.

I had a tag for the Sheep Creek area this year and on October 13th I hunted there. While slowly moving across a slope, cow calling along the way, I eventually got a bull grunt in reply. I then set up on a nice open-pine slope and continued my cow moaning. The bull continued to grunt in response to my calls, and after about 25 minutes I could see his rack making its way towards me. He bust out of the cover at 35 yards and presented a perfect broad-side shot. The 45-70 knocked him right off his feet and he was down for the count. The cool thing is that I had set my video camera up on a tree branch and had turned it on to record his grunts as he came in. I got lucky and managed to film him coming in to the call and me shooting him. A great day in the bush! I’m attaching a photo as proof of the power of using the cow calls and the passive calling techniques you cover.

Take care & keep up the good work!

Brian Bildson
Outdoor Columnist
Alberta Outdoorsmen