Since my total stands at zero that's a reasonable assumption.

I heard the tuktus all buggered off to Alaska so I guess it's just moose, sheep, grizzly, rabbits and waterfowl from now til freeze up. Oh yeah plus black bear, and wolf. Lots of wood to haul and some new trails to cut for the trapping season too. Always something to keep busy. Less than a month to go for beaver and rat season to open too right muskrat? I haven't been this motivated and excited to trap in a few years. Can't wait.

26 days until beaver season counting today. I hope the Pineapple express blows in again so we can get some beaver hunting in. Its weird that the beaver season opens in the NORTwest territories later than it does in Ontario and Minnesota (not totally sure about that but I think Oct 1 in MN?) (I think Tom Orr started trapping Oct 1 in Montana also).

Southeast Idaho usually gets an October beaver open also. The season opens November 1 for everyone else.

October 5th here Muskrat.I wait until the 20th-much better fur just waiting those couple weeks.

MN is Oct 28th this year in both the North and South zones.

Well my snare order came in yesterday. Enough supplies to make another 200 lynx snares for the coming season plus a few other goodies. I finally know what GUSTO smells like. Pretty potent smelling stuff.

Gusto has a whole other meaning here lol

I guess all it took was my lucky charm. Morgan wanted to come moose hunting with me last night so I gladly took her along. She is the best company I know and her sense of humour is much better than most adults I know. We left town after supper and with only 3-3 1/2 hours of day light we didn't waste very much time getting to the moosey areas. I kept the 150 Suzuki almost wide open for about 25 minutes before reaching a grassy, swampy area that is a known moose producing area. Its the same general area where I seen the 2 young bulls and cow a couple weeks back and I figured with limited day light our best bet would be to go and call while we drift. I eased up on the throttle and started looking into beaver ponds and hidden bays as we travelled along slowly. Well low and behold there stood a moose! As we passed a beaver pond with a very active house I spotted a moose. We drove just passed the opening to the pond, quietly tied up the boat and slowly walked back to get a shot at the big cow. We spotted the moose plus another cow standing in moose knee deep water and as soon as I let out a small grunt they both bolted for the far side. Well I wasn't going to let these ones get away so I held my gun ahead of the running moose, waited until it just hit solid ground (just barely hit solid ground) and squeezed off a 150 grain core lokt which hit home with a loud CRACK as it nearly popped the top of the skull off! The first thought I had was "Did that moose just die in the water?" I lifted the outboard and started pushing through the shallow, grassy pond towards our moose as I told Morgan a hundred times how happy I was that we 1. Got a Moose and 2. WE got a moose together! I gave Morgan a big hug, told her I love her and thanked her for coming along and bringing her good luck too. As I poled across the pond I spotted a cow with 2 calves and told morgan that with all these girls around there has to be a bull too. Turns out our moose died with only the very end of the rump in the 4" water near the shore. The front half was high and dry and after a few minutes work with a tow strap and one strategic flip of the beast so was the back half. Geese calls filled the cold fall air as I quickly got to skinning and quartering the fat cow. The ground was muddy and just a little bit soft so I took extra care to keep our moose meat clean. Couldn't be happier with the meat on this moose. Fat and healthy and very clean as the pack to the boat was maybe 2 feet! Morgan kept me entertained the whole time with questions and stories. As I finished the first side of butchering I heard the unmistakable sound of a bulls grunt and spotted the bull across the pond. We kept a close eye on him for the rest of the meat cutting and I was glad he didn't come check us out. As I finished loading the last pieces another bull and dry cow joined the original bull and it was fun watching them. I pushed/paddled us back out of the beaver pond and we sped for home as the sun disappeared and darkness set in. I think we left at 630pm and I finished hanging the last pieces at 11pm so Id say that was one of the fastest moose hunts yet for me. Morgan can now add September moose hunter to her growing hunting resume! I plan to hang the moose for a few nights since the temps are dropping and the puddles were iced over this morning. No risk of spoiling anymore. Just wondering if I should go get another of the 8 this evening. If I do I will definitely be carrying my bow and come along.

Angus Tartif is not doing much, you should take him as an apprentice. You can call him Gusto!

No thanks Muskrat. I'll be better off without.

Congratulations Ryan on getting winter meat with your hunting partner ! It's extra special when you have such a good helper along !
Allan

Shot a young bull with my uncle Steve last night. He speaks their language he does.

Steve grew up in the southern yukon so he knows a lot about moose and is my go to guy for any moose related questions. My question yesterday afternoon was "what age do bull moose start Rutting?" He answered, "why? You know where there's a moose?" I replied, "I know where there's 8"
He gave me a quick lesson over the phone about antler development and stuff and then said he would be done work at 8pm and on his way to the spot I described at no later than 802pm.

I went ahead and started calling at my moose spot but no moose were in the mood for conversation or anything else so I checked another spot and called for half an hour again with no answer so I returned to my favorite spot and resumed calling.
(Uncle Dan is here for moose meat...to be continued)

Now where was I? Oh yeah!

At this point I realized I hadn't slept in 42 hours and was on my Skidoo for the last 29 hours but I was determined to...oops! Wrong story.

I let out a series of calls and then there she was, the cow with 2 calves! I figured the rest were close so I started bull calling and almost immediately heard the answer. I spotted the bull walking along the beach and I quickly idled out to the main river to wait for Steve to show up in his 16 foot Jon boat. Once he showed up I got him up to date on the moose situation and told him to jump in my boat so we could idle back to the moose. We could see the cow and Calves right away but the bull mustve heard Steve was on his way and split for safer pastures. Steve did some calling and got the bull to start back out of the willows but it hung up just out of view. Shortly after that a 2 year old bull showed up and stood there staring. With the daylight starting to fade we decided that the big bull might be too far into the Rut and that the 2 year old was looking too good to pass. A 150 grain core lokt to the neckbone dropped him in his tracks and reminded me of a line from my old favorite hunting magazine "Big Game Adventures" in which the author described an animal dropping "as if struck by the hammer of THOR" I know, pretty dramatic but that's what popped into my head in that exact moment of time. Our "celebration" was pretty simple. I just said "right on, better get to work" Steve replied " yup. Nice shot Ryan Jay!"

Between the two of us we had the meat in the boat in no time. During the cutting we heard moose calls in the dark from around the lake and some of those cow calls were down right scary sounding. I'd describe it as very aggressive cow in heat come find me right now calling. Fiona was busy hanging dry meat during the hunt and I came home to 3 full racks of meat. Once we get enough meat dried I'll be back out looking for a giant dry cow. Might be trapping camp bound tomorrow for a weekend of preparing for the season. Lots of moose out that way...

Right on, good job on the moose!
I plugged a couple moose with my .270 Corelock 150 gr this year. One neck shot on a 33" and 1 heart shot at about 200 yards on a 58". A lot of people got moose meat this year

That's really good Nunamiut! I really like the 270 for moose. I had chances at a couple big moose in the early fall but wasn't the best situation to be adding all that meat at the time. I gave away a few pieces and we will be drying the rest.

Nunamuit: That's really good to hear that you guys on the North Slope are getting moose. I thought Sue on Life Below Zero said moose were closed never to reopen on the North Slope. Do the porcupine Caribou herd go as far west as to you? If so they must be all over now they pushed back into Alaska early this year. I hope they circle back again.

What you use for bait in your wolverine bucket sets. That is the only set I have not caught a wolverine in so far. Not that I have set a lot of them mind you and the milk crate set is more or less the dame thing. Snow on the ground today, deep snow on the mountains my boy said when he was up there. Unfortunately he had my Tundra and the track busted on him, so my Tundra is still up there in the deep snow. Order a track and pick it up once it freezes I suppose.

I have a .300 that is open sight also, but my Weatherby Vanguard .270 is my go to gun nowadays. Super accurate and most importantly, I shoot it enough to know how it shoots.

I don't know where Sue is at, but she's not from unit 26 or unit 24, lol. The porcupine caribou stay more towards the Alaska/Canada border to the east, so we don't get them this far. We usually get some of the Western Arctic Herd early fall for a few weeks before they move back towards the West side of Alaska. Then the Teshukpuk herd comes down late fall/early winter and pass on by migrating south of the Brooks Range. Last year the TH came through October 10, and we got to hunt them for a few weeks before they moved on. We have not had a wintering herd in our valley for many years now. They are usually found 60-100 miles outside of the village nowadays.

Tainted squirrel is a good bait, caribou/bear/moose innards and inedible parts of the animals. I usually use tainted bear fat too, in bucket sets and leg hold sets alike. Wolves and wolverine go right up to the sets and lick the fat right off the rocks. We have some up on the mountains and some here in the valleys. Sheep are coming down to the bottom of the mountains now, I harvested a couple of them last week and we just had to drag them 300 yards to the Argo. My uncle and I are going out this weekend to look for more sheep, since we do not have caribou around yet.

You might as well buy a seat too for the skidoo, a bear might find that before hibernation.