Posted By: sparrish8
Big Yukon Peninsula Bull Moose - 09/25/18 08:44 PM
We kind of fell into this hunt as I'm always looking for a new adventure and I had mentioned on here that I wa was interested in a Yukon Moose hunt and someone told me to check the Accurate Reloading forum Phil Shoemaker a very well known Moose and Brown Bear outfitter had a cancellation hunt, talked to my buddy and we decided if we were doing a moose hunt we were going big or going home so we went after the biggest deer in the world (you can hunt the lower 48 moose or Canada much cheaper but not near the size of the Alaskan Moose), so we just booked this in like March. We flew to Anchirage then King Salmon then took a Charter plan to Phils area 9E which is a million acres known as the Becharof Wildlife Refuge on the Alsakan Penninsula. Flew out that evening to the spike camp in a river bed but you cant hunt until the day after flying, my guide was Taj Phil's son. We decided that 1st unhuntable evening to glass a little and I immediately began seeing Bears....big Bears compared to the little Black Bears I'd seen in NM, I saw 6 Brown Bears right around our little camp which was 2 tiny tents a 1/3 the size of these bears so I was a little uneasy sleeping the 1zt night being that we were in the river bed which reeked of dead salmon and had bear tracks everywhere. We woke up headed up to the glassing hill in the pouring rain at about 48° in hip boots, i was thinking that 10 days of that would not be fun especially when every step you sink 12"-18" into the moss and water bubbled up. About 200yds into our hike a brown bear stood up above some alders and stared us down at 100yds, I stopped and got. afew pics Taj had his Turnbull .475 lver gun ready so I felt pretty safe. Minutes later we began glassing and I started picking up many bears again and remember thinking a moose should be easy to see here with no trees and wasnt seeing any upon my initial glassing. I combed back to Tajs side with my Swaro 15x and much to my delight I saw a moose.....he had to satellite dishes on his head! I told Taj I see a moose and he began looking at it and said wow...that's a good one. It was walking right toward us at 1700yds!! He started to head down toward our camp, how nice of a pack would that be to shoot him in camp but he came across a brown bear and changed to NW back straight toward us, I layed down prone with my 6.5 .284 built by day 2 firearms in Spring tx. I was itching to see what the 143gr ELDX custom.loads would do on a huge animal. At 400 I was ready to crank one.in him but Taj said take your time hes coming right in on a rail so I waited....as soon as he said 205 after ranging he came out of a thicket of alders and stopped, I let one ring off and heard whopp, he said put another in him, trying to be careful not to loose my Lapua brass I brought back by bolt too slow and the brass didnt eject properly but much to my delight after fumbling around the moose hadnt moved i put another one in his shoulder and he tipped.over....WOW that just happened 2 hours into my hunt. I said was it a good one and he said damn right thats a 1st day shooter!the real work began they flew in a packer as we were skinning the animal. 1 quarter skinned out was around 130lbs the animal was a beast probably 1600-1800lbs. After a full day of work that evening the flew me back to main camp where i hung out a day then asked to be flown out to my buddy Dan's camp. His hunt was.more of what i was expecting he passed on 13 bulls and didnt kill until day 7. The weather their was ever changing from 75 the 1st day to 45 and windy and raining on other days. All in all a great hunt with a good outfit in Grizzly Skins. Phil is well known around the world and runs a no BS operation, nothing fancy but a true Alaskan experience. The tenderloins were incredible even on an old bull we managed to bring back about 75lbs of deboned meat so looking forward to eating backstrap tomorrow, wish we could have brought back more.
