Outdoors Ontario

My first experience at actually even attempting calling moose happened while I was living in Northwestern British Columbia. One of my fellow Forestry officers had observed a large bull moose up on a cut block in mid to late July. Our hunting trip took place September 20th; and was just one of those last minute ideas….hey lets go wack a moose tomorrow.ok, be at your place at 6:00 a.m. Well he arrived at 8:00, we got up to the cut block at about 9:00 a.m. parked the truck walked approximately 1 mile on an old skid trail and looked around observing large tracks lots of sign but old. I decided to stand up on a log and call, I had read and listened to calls so I attempted to mimic that sound. Much to my amazement he answered. This bull was over 2 kilometres away but I could clearly here his low gutteral grunt. I said to my partner do you think he’ll cross that lake? No, we’ll have to go around the other side. Well I kept calling the bull kept answering and you could tell he was getting closer to the far side of the lake. So I said well lets just walk back to the truck and I’ll call him right to the truck. 45 minutes later he was standing broadside to me at 30 feet, 54 inch rack…..two shots with a 338 and he was down. So we turned the truck around, slid the plywood out to make a ramp, hooked a winch to his horns and winched him up into the box. Hunt complete, hunt successful and my partner shaking his head in absolute disbelief. So don’t worry about sounding stupid it works, and its not hard to do. Remember though that moose lock into your position from your first call and can locate you like they have an onboard GPS unit in their head. Give it time as sometimes smaller bulls will come in silent worried they are going to get their butts kicked by the big boy. Good luck give it a try, but also be careful, I have had numerous bulls charge me. The moose in the photo is not the one I shot, but I thought I should include a photo.

This is a little bit outside of Ontario; however I did live here for seven years and not only was the fishing excellent, the moose hunting was the best I’ll ever do in my life. Back on topic regarding the fishing….I lived in the Town of Stewart BC; which sits on the end of the Portland Canal (Pacific Ocean) on the border with Hyder , Alaska. The fish in this photo were caught in the harbor in January trolling a cut plug. It took me about two hours. These fish had so much fat on them it was unreal, good fighters I might add. They all ended up in the smoker. Crossing over into Hyder Alaska , populatiom of around 100 people, if you drive just out of town the State of Alaska built a Grizzly and Black bear viewing platform. Some brave fisherman attempt to fish downstream of the platform, however I never felt the need to tempt fate. Meziadin lake is also an excellent choice, I usually always caught my limit of Dolly Varden on the far side of the lake trolling about 10 feet from shore in 4-6 feet of water. On one occasion I was using an old push button reel, with a very small Clio…….much to my surprise I thought I was caught on bottom……..”Big Surprise” a 54 pound Chinook…worst part I had to throw it back as once they reach the lake you can’t keep them. If you are wanting excellent fishing; Terrace BC, can’t be beat, springs, pinks, steelhead, sockeye………….I’ll post more info in the future…..