This story, “Moan for a Moose,” appeared in the February 1951 issue of Outdoor Life.
Our outfit consisted of a small umbrella tent, sleeping bags, two canoes, food, and a few cooking utensils. That was all, and it was enough. At that, the plane had to make three trips to fly it forty-five miles from the railroad.
Our take-off point was on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, some twenty-five miles above Mattawa, Ontario. Frank Sloan and I, hunting partners for years, had driven as far as Mattawa, then taken a train north, and finally transferred to the plane. We were camped now with our two French-Canadian guides, Pete and Nels, on White Pine Lake, ready to begin a moose hunt we had dreamed about for many weeks.
We had arrived on October 8, one day later than we’d planned. Since the Quebec moose season opened that morning, we had hoped to get in one day of scouting beforehand. But now we decided to content ourselves with what we’d seen from the plane as we flew in, and get the hunt under way without delay.
It was Frank’s first try at moose and my first in twenty-four years. We were much too impatient to take time for any scouting.
The region around White Pine Lake was wild, rugged, and beautiful in autumn coloring. Rough, timbered hills surrounded the lake on all sides and small islands dotted it. Birches, aspens, and maples were aglow with all the colors of the rainbow. From the plane they had looked like a magic carpet of red and gold and dark green. And among the hills we had seen plenty of swamps and bogs. It looked like good moose country, and Nels and Pete assured us it was every bit as good as it looked. Best of all, we had it to ourselves. The plane had put us beyond the places of easy access, one of the great advantages of that mode of travel for the sportsman who likes elbow room. In five days of hunting we would not see another human.
It was midafternoon when the plane arrived with Frank and me, our rifles, and personal duffel. Nels and Pete, who had flown in earlier with canoes and equipment, had the tent up and a good thick mulligan steaming on the fire when we landed.
Eating was the first order of business. Five minutes after we finished we were in the two canoes and the moose hunt was on. Frank and Nels headed down the lake, Pete and I up. From the plane I had spotted a section of low, swampy shore at its upper end that looked like an ideal place for moose to come down to feed. There was a strip of brushy bog running back from the water, with a big tract of swamp behind it, and I had seen what looked like moose trails leading through the grass and brush.
Before we started from camp Pete suggested that I take my casting rod and a couple of spoons, as well as the .300 Savage I was carrying for moose medicine. The lake was alive with big walleye and pike, he explained, and I could get in some fishing while we looked for moose.
The guide pushed the canoe out from shore and I dropped a spoon over the side and started trolling. I had a strike before we had gone 100 feet, landing a good walleye. After that they came at such a steady clip that I almost forgot the real reason I was there!
But I was yanked with abrupt suddenness from my fishing to realities of moose hunting while we were still more than a mile from our destination.
The sun was down now, the afternoon wind had died, and the lake was like a mirror, reflecting flawlessly every island, the sawtooth skyline of the spruces, the yellow and scarlet of birch and rnaple, and the flaming colors of the western sky. The stillness of early evening hung over the wilderness, unbroken by any sound save the soft rhythmic drip of Pete’s paddle blade and the little hiss of water at the bow as the canoe slid along.
Then suddenly the silence was ripped by a crashing, clattering racket at the end of the lake, about at the spot toward which we were heading. It sounded as if a whole hillside of forest was being knocked down, with sticks cracking, brush and trees breaking, and something heavy smashing through the undergrowth. It was an amazing and startling noise, unnaturally loud in the evening stillness despite the fact that the ruckus was a mile away; for a moment I wondered what was happening. Then I heard, clear above the other sounds, the loud clashing of antlers.
“Two bulls!” Pete whispered. “Scrap!” And the canoe literally shot ahead as he leaned into the paddle with every ounce of strength.
The noise of the battle continued unabated. Its site was hidden from us by a timbered point. When we cleared that point and could see the end of the lake — less than three quarters of a mile away — we heard the low, deep grunting of two moose, a sound that accented the repeated clash of antlers and the breaking of brush.
Pete was driving the canoe as fast as he could while I crouched in the bow with my rifle across my lap. Dusk was gathering, and the bog in which the moose were fighting lay in heavy shadow. I tried repeatedly to locate the bulls with my 7X binoculars, but failed. It was a safe bet, however, that we’d spot them when we came close to shore. But by that time would there be sufficient light left for shooting?
The tense time for me on any big game hunt is the period between the finding of an animal and getting close enough for a shot. I was really sweating blood while Pete pushed that canoe down the home stretch with long, powerful paddle strokes.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the moose fight ended. The noise stopped as if someone had thrown a switch, and complete silence settled over the lake. My heart plumped clear down into my boots! In my mind I’d had one of those bulls as good as in my scope. That wouldn’t happen now, and it was hard to give him up when we were so close.
But then I realized that Pete was still sending the canoe on with no slackening of speed. He hadn’t ventured so much as a whispered comment. Maybe the moose hunt wasn’t ended yet, after all.
I kept my glasses on the shore ahead, searching it painstakingly. Suddenly I saw water splash at the edge of the lake. I concentrated on that spot, and even in the deepening twilight I could see the black bulk of a moose — and a rack of antlers on his head.
He was moving along the shore at the water’s edge, coming toward us. While I watched, I heard a loud crashing of brush in the swamp beyond him and clearly made out the sound of big animals moving off.
It was easy to piece the story together. The bull I had spotted was the loser in the fight. Beaten and, as we learned later, badly used up, he had quit the arena and come down to the lake, perhaps for a drink. The animals I could hear going away were the victorious bull and the cow that was the cause of the ruckus.
But with all the drubbing he had taken, the defeated bull suddenly showed that he wasn’t ready to give up. The noise of the other bull and the cow, moving back into the swamp, was still clear, even to my ears. It must have been tantalizingly loud to the loser, loud enough to goad him into making one more try. He broke into a lumbering trot and, through the glasses, I followed him for 300 yards around the edge of the lake, in and out of the water and rushes. My heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest by that time, but the moose was too far away for shooting. There was nothing I could do but keep the binoculars glued on him and watch the range shorten a few yards each time Pete dipped his paddle blade.
When the vanquished bull reached the spot nearest to the departing couple, he turned and crashed into the brush, hot on their heels, without even breaking stride.
Three or four minutes later, some seventy-five yards offshore, Pete put down his paddle and let the canoe slide ahead on its own momentum. When I glanced over my shoulder he had picked up the birch-bark megaphone he’d fashioned the day before and was holding it to his lips. I could still hear our bull going through the swamp, and faintly, far ahead of him, an occasional rustle of sound from the two other moose.
I waited for Pete’s call but nothing happened. When I looked around I saw he had dipped water in the birch-bark horn and was gargling soundlessly. That blazing stretch at the paddle had left his throat too parched for moose calling!
Then he laid the megaphone against his mouth, pointed it down toward the water, and rolled out a faint, moaning call.
The sound of breaking brush that marked the course of our moose died instantly.
“Got heem!” Pete’s lips formed the words almost without sound. But his eyes were shining with excitement and satisfaction, and my state of mind at that instant is not hard to imagine!
The guide waited an agonizing two minutes. Then he tipped the horn up toward the darkening sky and let go a loud, clear moan. Back in the swamp we heard the bull start for us, smashing brush in a way that showed reckless, headstrong determination. He did not pause until he was in the bog, only a few yards from the lake. There he halted to locate the cow that had lured him back.
At that moment, in a stillness so profound that I could hear my watch ticking, Pete held his cone of birchbark almost on the water and played his trump card, a soft, whimpering grunt.
The moose stirred again in the brush and came on, one step at a time. But we could still see nothing of him. He was close now and I had the safety off and the .300 Savage ready at my shoulder.
Now I tested the scope, trying it against the dark, deep-shadowed line of the shore, and found it useless in the half-light. I removed it from its mount and laid it on the bottom of the canoe. Next I raised and tried the peep sight, but it, too, was useless, so I lowered it again. Whatever I did would have to be done with open iron sights.
The canoe now lay just inside the shadow formed by the brush along the edge of the lake. I watched the black reflection of the shore in the water only a foot or so from where I sat. Suddenly a part of it moved, and a great rack of jet-black antlers emerged from the silhouette of the brush!
That was the first warning I had that the bull was at the edge of the brush. I saw his reflection before I saw him. I was expecting him and yet it gave me a queer start to see his rack mirrored there in the water almost within reach of my hand.
When I looked up, I could see only his horns above the black brush, silhouetted against the fading glow that still lingered in the sky. That wasn’t enough for a target. How was he standing? Head on or broadside? If the latter, which way was he turned?
The front bead of the rifle was invisible now in the dusk and the barrel was no more than a dim blur, but l pointed it just below the antlers and waited. After what seemed a full minute he took another step ahead, and enough of his shape materialized out of the brush to tell me what I needed to know. He was coming straight at me, facing head on. Aiming more by guess than by sight, I tried for the center of the target well below the horns.
The Savage stabbed a red finger of flame into the darkness and I saw the antlers and forelegs of the moose go flailing up as he reared in a back somersault, knocked off his feet by the smashing impact of the 180-grain bullet in the center of his chest. I actually saw his hind feet thrust up against the sky as he pinwheeled completely over and then crashed heavily into the brush.
There wasn’t a sound after that. No threshing, no struggling. Pete and I pulled the canoe into shore a few yards down the lake and waited twenty minutes for some sign that I had failed to make a clean kill. Having heard nothing during that time, Pete took a tiny flashlight from his pack and we went ashore to get a look at the moose.
We worked our way toward him a few steps at a time, through brush higher than our heads, detouring around fallen logs and the worst of the tangles. We finally got where we could see the bull. He lay motionless, half wedged between two down logs, apparently dead. We moved a step closer and turned the flashlight on his head for a better look at the rack. And without a quiver of movement to give us warning, he suddenly drove a vicious kick with a hind leg that moved like a steam piston and missed me only by inches!
I leaped wildly backward and tumbled to the ground, losing my rifle in the fall. Precious moments passed as I groped for it in the coarse, knee-high grass. Scared? I’ve never been so frightened in my life. A wounded bull moose can be pure poison in broad daylight. Now, in the dark, I knew I wouldn’t have a chance if he decided to run me down. Pete, meanwhile, had lammed out of there as though he were jet-propelled. I stumbled to my feet and backed away into the brush. Finally I got behind a big, snag-branched pine and waited for the bull to charge.
Seconds passed and nothing happened. Finally I mustered my courage and yelled to Pete to bring the flashlight. He did — but I’ve never seen a more cautious man!
Our panic had been for nothing. The moose was still alive but his back was broken, and while there were a few good hefty kicks left in him he could not get up. We found later that my bullet, fired at a steep angle, had ranged upward from his chest and shattered the spine just behind the shoulders. The wonder was that it had not killed him instantly.
We finished him with a shot through the neck. He was a big bull, with a 53-inch spread. No record, but a good, satisfactory head for eastern Canada. Wedged between the two logs, he was too heavy for us to move, so we dressed him out where he lay, leaving the job of skinning for the next morning.
We got back to camp at 9:30. Frank and Nels had heard the two shots and were waiting eagerly to learn whether we had scored. You should have seen their eyes pop when we told our story.
I felt pretty happy when I rolled into the sack that night. In camp only a few hours, I had a nice catch of walleyes and a moose. For once, I told Frank, we had found hunting country that lived up to its promises. (Of course, we didn’t know it then, but he was to get his moose, a 48-incher, three days later on an island in the lake.)
The four of us went after my bull early next morning. When we skinned him out we discovered how much punishment he had taken in his fight. He had a deep gouge between the eyes and one side of his neck was slit in a dozen places, as if with a sharp knife. An antler tine had punched an ugly hole in a foreleg just above the knee, tearing away skin and muscle, and he bore too many minor cuts and bruises to count.
“Gosh,” said Frank. “After that trouncing he must have ached all over.”
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“Yeah,” I replied. “But he was ready for more trouble. The only one who did any moaning was Pete. That horn of his sure did start another ruckus!”
Pete shrugged. “We’re lucky dis bull is dead, not us. Dat rifle of yours is good medicine for sick moose!”
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