Authentic Mountain Man Experience?

[ColonialRifleSmith]

G

I spent the last couple of days hunting with my .54 cal flintlock GPR. Mountain man Warren Angus Ferris spent a lot of time in this valley and wrote of it in his journals. I think of his writing often when I hunt this area.
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I haven't taken anything yet this season. Usually I see quite a few deer in this area. Unfortunately this dead deer in the river is the only deer I've seen in the last two days.
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In the heavy river bottom cover I've walked right up on four moose in the last two days. This cow had no idea I was around. I put in every year but I have yet to draw a moose tag.

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Just like when Ferris was here there are still a lot of beaver in this valley.
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Now for what I feel was an authentic mountain man experience. This big cow moose had a calf with her which just exited into the cover to the left. It looks farther in the pics but she's about 35 yards away.
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She started to follow her calf into the cover.
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Then she stopped.
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She turned around and took a few steps toward me. Then she started licking her lips which can be a sign a moose is about to charge. That definitely got my attention. I started backing away and didn't turn my back on her until I put some cover between us. While she didn't charge, the possibility of having to defend yourself against a 1,000+ pound animal with nothing but a flintlock rifle in your hands definitely feels like an authentic mountain man experience.

I spent the last couple of days hunting with my .54 cal flintlock GPR. Mountain man Warren Angus Ferris spent a lot of time in this valley and wrote of it in his journals. I think of his writing often when I hunt this area.
View attachment 171241

I haven't taken anything yet this season. Usually I see quite a few deer in this area. Unfortunately this dead deer in the river is the only deer I've seen in the last two days.
View attachment 171242

In the heavy river bottom cover I've walked right up on four moose in the last two days. This cow had no idea I was around. I put in every year but I have yet to draw a moose tag.

View attachment 171243

Just like when Ferris was here there are still a lot of beaver in this valley.
View attachment 171244

Now for what I feel was an authentic mountain man experience. This big cow moose had a calf with her which just exited into the cover to the left. It looks farther in the pics but she's about 35 yards away.
View attachment 171245

She started to follow her calf into the cover.
View attachment 171246

Then she stopped.
View attachment 171247

She turned around and took a few steps toward me. Then she started licking her lips which can be a sign a moose is about to charge. That definitely got my attention. I started backing away and didn't turn my back on her until I put some cover between us. While she didn't charge, the possibility of having to defend yourself against a 1,000+ pound animal with nothing but a flintlock rifle in your hands definitely feels like an authentic mountain man experience.
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Good story. The year you draw a Moose tag, you'll see a lot of deer and no Moose. Semper Fi.

 

[Absoroka]

Making noise while hiking helps reduce the potential for conflict. Startle anything with a calf or cub, or a half-eaten kill and the situation can turn very quickly into one that does not end well. The rut can change the mood of bulls beyond reasonable. The bison in Yellowstone prove that every year with what locals call tourons. The Bulls will also occasionally jack up a vehicle that gets too close. There was a guy in Arizona that was taking a short cut through the back country in his VW Beetle and tried to beep his way through a rutting herd. He had to drive to Flagstaff with a punctured lung. A bow hunter in our area had to be life flighted out after startling a grizzly. Most outings end well but being unprepared or dismissing the potential for unexpected behavior may result in a bad ending.

 

[Tacitus]

pab1, thanks for sharing your nice pics of one of my favorite critters. Moose are fairly regular visitors to my cabin along with black bears, brown bears, elk, deer, the occasional mountain lion and a host of more diminutive critters, but the moose are a special treat. This cow strolled by just eight feet from my front door a few days ago. Despite the many I have seen I still marvel at how huge they are. Their behavior and demeanor is very much unlike deer or elk. There is just something special about Bullwinkle.

 

[Tacitus]

It may be true that the trappers were wasteful at times, but some if not all must have been aware of the sin of wastefulness. Well, at least one of them for sure was aware.
"It is a shame to kill one of those large fat cows for two men's supper." Osborne Russell (Journal of a Trapper) 1834-1843

 

[Dale Allen Raby]

Nothing ever really gets wasted in nature. The left-overs get eaten by something that probably appreciates an easy meal.

 

[Nuthatch]

I have to take people at their word when they talk about dangerous moose. I've heard enough stories to believe it. But my limited experience has been quite the contrary. I spent a couple summers up in the ID panhandle. Seeing a cow with a calf was a daily experience while backpacking up there, usually about a week at a time. Many would walk right up on me while I was wading in the river or lake with a fly rod. I never tried to approach. Sometimes they saw me and sometimes they didn't. But they always minded their own business. Sometimes only about 15-20 yards away. Closest I've ever gotten was about 7 yards away from a nice-sized bull. Not rutting, mind you. Probably late June or July. He was feeding next to the trail & I just walked up on him. We looked at each other for a minute or so & then I backed off to tell the others, who were a little distance behind me. He casually walked off like any domestic cow. Geeze, that bull was impressive at that distance! Certainly had me a little nervous. I think I was only about 15 years old at the time.

I've had black bears get testy once or twice. Never a direct confrontation but I've gotten a warning or two over the years. But never a moose. Again, I just have to take the word of others on that one.

 

[Tacitus]

I have to take people at their word when they talk about dangerous moose. I've heard enough stories to believe it. But my limited experience has been quite the contrary. I spent a couple summers up in the ID panhandle. Seeing a cow with a calf was a daily experience while backpacking up there, usually about a week at a time. Many would walk right up on me while I was wading in the river or lake with a fly rod. I never tried to approach. Sometimes they saw me and sometimes they didn't. But they always minded their own business. Sometimes only about 15-20 yards away. Closest I've ever gotten was about 7 yards away from a nice-sized bull. Not rutting, mind you. Probably late June or July. He was feeding next to the trail & I just walked up on him. We looked at each other for a minute or so & then I backed off to tell the others, who were a little distance behind me. He casually walked off like any domestic cow. Geeze, that bull was impressive at that distance! Certainly had me a little nervous. I think I was only about 15 years old at the time.

I've had black bears get testy once or twice. Never a direct confrontation but I've gotten a warning or two over the years. But never a moose. Again, I just have to take the word of others on that one.

My experience with moose has been similar to your's. They behave similar to the horses that also frequent my property. They go about their business paying little to no mind of my presence. I'm not doubting other's experience. I am saying my experience over the years has been that they are fairly chill as far as large wild animals go, though I've no doubt they could stomp a fellow a new one in the span of a heartbeat if the were so inclined to do so. Perhaps panhandle moose are a pacifist tribe of their nation.

 

[ColonialRifleSmith]

My experience with moose has been similar to your's. They behave similar to the horses that also frequent my property. They go about their business paying little to no mind of my presence. I'm not doubting other's experience. I am saying my experience over the years has been that they are fairly chill as far as large wild animals go, though I've no doubt they could stomp a fellow a new one in the span of a heartbeat if the were so inclined to do so. Perhaps panhandle moose are a pacifist tribe of their nation.

My experience is with the time of year. That goes for Moose, Geese or any other critter. Breeding season makes them unpredictable. Semper Fi.

 

[SOLANCO]

My experience is with the time of year. That goes for Moose, Geese or any other critter. Breeding season makes them unpredictable. Semper Fi.

Drove up on two whitetail bucks fighting before dawn in late November, Blew the horn. One ran. The other hooked out one of my headlights with an antler. Guess the noise spooked him because then he ran off.

 

[Will]

Nice story and pictures. I did have flashbacks though about a cow moose that I walked up on to take pictures when I was in Canada in the 80's. I was younger and dumber then. I didn't realize she had a calf with her as she hid it in the bush. I only got to about 150 yards of her when she charged. I couldn't run fast enough. I was very fortunate that it turned out to be more of a scare tactic by her and she stopped short and tuned and went the other way. That was a test of a good heart, MINE !

 

[flntlokr]

I once disturbed a Bull moose I had spotted him & the Cow & tried to get round them by the river edge but Brer Moose came crashing through the thin trees and stopped to study me as I looked up his nose & felt his breach .Thus confronted I was not a little taken aback it was October. But my Rifle I had made from an old Martini Henry barrel into a style known as' military match' .I had loaded 15 grains & a naked 45 ball wadded with slightly oily rag for the Spruce Grouse & Francolin fool hen's I sought .. I was aware I wasn't best armed but I had read an account in' BC Outdoors Magazine' how talking to Bears shakes their confidence so I tried this plan on Brer Moose With hastily thought up Nonsense about how I eat Moose for Tiffin & once won a gold medal at Bisley ( Which was true )if not the tiffin part and my fears ebbed as his confidence Waned . & he took off . For which I was greatly relieved as ide likley never be writing this today some nye 50 years later . All the Moose & Bears I encountered never got to be a problem, I didn't fear them I was the visitor to their back yard ,Sure I kept big fires but to demonize them to justfie hunting them I deem unkind & unfair . I did shoot a bear with this same rifle but though I did need meat I often regretted it .
Rudyards take on this matter

35 years working in the forests of British Columbia (never armed), I never had a problem with bears or moose. Came across a lot more black bear than moose. Don't know if I got close to griz; never saw one except on roads (they can run about 30mph; timber wolves can run faster), although there was more than one day I got the distinct feeling I was under observation, and heard something shadowing my progress. Colleagues pretty much all claimed that they worried more about getting a cow moose upset than they did about bears. I know a couple who spent significant portions of a workday sitting up in trees waiting for moose to lose interest.

 

[Dale Allen Raby]

35 years working in the forests of British Columbia (never armed), I never had a problem with bears or moose. Came across a lot more black bear than moose. Don't know if I got close to griz; never saw one except on roads (they can run about 30mph; timber wolves can run faster), although there was more than one day I got the distinct feeling I was under observation, and heard something shadowing my progress. Colleagues pretty much all claimed that they worried more about getting a cow moose upset than they did about bears. I know a couple who spent significant portions of a workday sitting up in trees waiting for moose to lose interest.

It was Boris and Natasha looking for Moose and Squirrel....