J-Man
10-14-2011, 02:52 PM
(view, river - bank - plateau meadow - hill - woods)
So i was up moose hunting outside of Vanderhoof. Went up river for the evening hunt. There is this flat plateau with tall grass about 6-7 feet up the bank. My father and I dock the boat and decide to do some walking and calling. As we crest the bank we see the head of a moose about 70 yards off in the tall grass, sitting. Can see its a big cow, neck and head above the chest high grass. Being its calf season we start glancing around. At this point its pretty much dead ahead of us and aware. We keep our distance and circle left to get to the back of the grass meadow area. And hike up the hill to get a birds eye. Whole time the cow just swivels its head to watch us. Now with some height we can see the cow has trampled down a large area. And is still just sitting, we try some calling. Still wondering if maybe a young bull is about or hopefully a calf. At about this point I think my dad picks up on some blood he can see down by the cow. So we now hike down the hill pretty much heading to her. We stop about 15 yrds away, sure enough there is some fist size blood pools in the trampled area. So no one in camp has a cow tag. What do you do? Put it out of its misery? Or walk away and hope it recovers? That was our discussion for the next 10 minutes, we decided to give it a fighting chance since it seemed still pretty bright eyed. Our guess was it was shot in the a.m., and being we only saw one other boat on the river we had a good idea who it was.
We headed back to camp, ours - the other river hunter and then a 6 person atv crew. The other guy on the river I'll call him "old timer". (I've been hunting here about 5 years now and hes been here way longer then that.) We let him know we saw a cow up river. He says "oh with a calf?", no just a cow. Bedded down in the meadow past the sleugh.
Next morning the old timer doesn't get up to hunt, odd hes always up before us. We head up river, on th way back I get out take a quick look for the cow, shes still there same spot head looking around. We leave do our thing, back to camp around 11am. CO shows up at camp just to check everyone out. We tell the CO about the wounded cow up river, he does the yea ok. Lets us know he found dead one on the road in this morning. We leave out who we think shot the cow.
We go out again after lunch about 2pm ish to fish and check the cow. We walk right up to her at this point. She's died sometime between 11am and 2pm. We head back to camp and let the old timer know the cow in the meadow died. Someone shot and wounded her, hes sitting on his bunk looking pretty depressed at this point. He hadn't hunted since we found the cow, I guess guilt had got the better of him. At this point he relays the tale, he had gone up river and was coming back, by the meadow in the late morning he cut the engine to drift down past it, He was standing in his boat and saw a cow calf. Excited he didn't stop or dock the boat, and shot standing on the drift. And instead of hitting the calf some how hit the cow. He apologized and went on about how bad he felt. I asked about the calf he said it ran off towards the sleugh. Its about 430pm, so leaving my dad with the old timer to have a beer. I head up river to the mud flats before the sleugh. At about 5:40pm I bag a calf coming out to get some water, no cow I'm left to assume its the orphan.
So would you have finished off the cow?
Would you have pointed the CO in the old timer's direction?
So i was up moose hunting outside of Vanderhoof. Went up river for the evening hunt. There is this flat plateau with tall grass about 6-7 feet up the bank. My father and I dock the boat and decide to do some walking and calling. As we crest the bank we see the head of a moose about 70 yards off in the tall grass, sitting. Can see its a big cow, neck and head above the chest high grass. Being its calf season we start glancing around. At this point its pretty much dead ahead of us and aware. We keep our distance and circle left to get to the back of the grass meadow area. And hike up the hill to get a birds eye. Whole time the cow just swivels its head to watch us. Now with some height we can see the cow has trampled down a large area. And is still just sitting, we try some calling. Still wondering if maybe a young bull is about or hopefully a calf. At about this point I think my dad picks up on some blood he can see down by the cow. So we now hike down the hill pretty much heading to her. We stop about 15 yrds away, sure enough there is some fist size blood pools in the trampled area. So no one in camp has a cow tag. What do you do? Put it out of its misery? Or walk away and hope it recovers? That was our discussion for the next 10 minutes, we decided to give it a fighting chance since it seemed still pretty bright eyed. Our guess was it was shot in the a.m., and being we only saw one other boat on the river we had a good idea who it was.
We headed back to camp, ours - the other river hunter and then a 6 person atv crew. The other guy on the river I'll call him "old timer". (I've been hunting here about 5 years now and hes been here way longer then that.) We let him know we saw a cow up river. He says "oh with a calf?", no just a cow. Bedded down in the meadow past the sleugh.
Next morning the old timer doesn't get up to hunt, odd hes always up before us. We head up river, on th way back I get out take a quick look for the cow, shes still there same spot head looking around. We leave do our thing, back to camp around 11am. CO shows up at camp just to check everyone out. We tell the CO about the wounded cow up river, he does the yea ok. Lets us know he found dead one on the road in this morning. We leave out who we think shot the cow.
We go out again after lunch about 2pm ish to fish and check the cow. We walk right up to her at this point. She's died sometime between 11am and 2pm. We head back to camp and let the old timer know the cow in the meadow died. Someone shot and wounded her, hes sitting on his bunk looking pretty depressed at this point. He hadn't hunted since we found the cow, I guess guilt had got the better of him. At this point he relays the tale, he had gone up river and was coming back, by the meadow in the late morning he cut the engine to drift down past it, He was standing in his boat and saw a cow calf. Excited he didn't stop or dock the boat, and shot standing on the drift. And instead of hitting the calf some how hit the cow. He apologized and went on about how bad he felt. I asked about the calf he said it ran off towards the sleugh. Its about 430pm, so leaving my dad with the old timer to have a beer. I head up river to the mud flats before the sleugh. At about 5:40pm I bag a calf coming out to get some water, no cow I'm left to assume its the orphan.
So would you have finished off the cow?
Would you have pointed the CO in the old timer's direction?