Bradley Foss's - North Dakota Bruiser Moose

One Lucky Hunt  by Bradley Foss

            I will never forget the feeling of disbelief that came over me after a colleague of mine came into my office and asked me if I had checked the big three. My initial feeling that I had just donated again, was quickly replaced by first sheer joy and then terror. Not only did I get drawn for North Dakota’s once in a life time tag, but I drew a Moose, a species that I knew very little about. I had put in for the big three many years and in the back of my mind I was envisioning getting an elk permit.

           
        
         So what do I do next?  The question raced through my mind. I had been deer hunting every year for about 30 years and this would be my first big, big game hunt. I called my brother, an avid hunter and fisherman, to get some advice.  He told me that he did ride along with a friend last year during their moose hunt.   Many questions were still unanswered though. How do you prepare for the hunt? Where do you hunt? What equipment do you need? What do you do with it once you get it? How tough of a hunt would it be? All of these questions and more I would eventually sort out as the weeks went on.

             My first question is sought out to answer was where would be the best place to hunt in Unit M10. Because I am an Athletic Director in Hazen, I had some easy contacts of other Athletic Directors in the area of my hunt. A couple of guys that helped me with hunting contacts were Robbie Voigt and Gary Mortenson their help was greatly appreciated.  Not only did they scout for me, they talked to farmers, and lined up a meat locker to process the moose. 

            Finally, the week of the hunt came around. The plan was that my brother and I would travel up to our hunting area to scout prior to heading to the motel in Bottineau.  As we traveled around our area, many farmers were still out harvesting their grain fields. Because of the wet conditions in that area throughout August and September much of the crop was still in the fields and farmers were rushing to get the late harvest in.  As Clay, Brian Mortensen, John Stang and myself  scouted that afternoon we glassed plenty of animals, including a couple of bulls that I would have gladly taken.  As it was getting dark and we were driving toward the highway, we spotted a couple of moose between some tree rows about a quarter mile away. When we stopped and put the binoculars on them I gasped, oh my, this animal was huge. We were able to watch them for about five minutes before they ran off into a sunflower field, which was on the other side of the tree row.  The rest of the drive to our motel was filled with guesses on how large this animal really was. I was unsure what to think, as I had never really gauged how large these animals are.

          
 







        The next morning our hunting party decided to spend the first part of the morning circling the area looking for any signs of this animal. Driving and walking many moose were spotted in that area. There were many cows with calves following them around. We spotted a few bulls, but passed on them because of the few larger bulls from the day earlier. Clay and I drove around about a 10 mile area all morning and had not seen anything close to the size we were looking for. We finally decided to try to push the sunflower field that we last seen the bull and cow go in to. Clay started walking as I posted up along the tree row. I walked along the tree row about 50 yards and waited. After about 10 long, silent minutes passed, here the monster came out of the sunflower field, running along the tree row right at me! OK, what do I do now? He is what I thought was 300 yards away and running toward me. My mind was racing with “do I let him continue to run to me?” In my confusion, the bull had spotted me and turned around and was now running away from me. Great, I thought, from what was a good but scary situation to “now what do I do”? So I started yelling “Hey.” Sure enough the bull turned broadside to me and Bang! I got a shot off. Not only did I hear the shot hit its mark but I also watched the bull jump from being hit. “I did it”. Those three words went racing through my mind. I got a great Bull Moose!

What I didn’t know at the time was that what I thought was a 300 yard shot was later lasered at 426 yards. So that explained why I hit low on this animal. Little did I know that the story that I thought had reached an ending has a few chapters yet to be written. For you see the bull was not really hit that hard. My brother called me on the radio to hear what happened. I told him that I had hit him, and he was coming back into the sunflowers. My brother, while working toward the tree row had found a swampy clearing in the sunflower field, and after the shot he was able to work his way around to see that the moose had lain down. We thought if we gave him a half hour or so he would die. It was 12:30 and so we waited until 1:00 before we started moving again. Clay was about 100 yards away from him and was only able to sit there and watch while the moose raised and lowered his head at every sound. So Clay called me and said that if I could get to where he was, I could get another shot off. I would need to go 100 yards in and 100 yards south.  Have you ever tried walking quietly in a sunflower field with a gun and backpack on your back? Not to mention that the sunflower field was not in good condition, as it was overgrown with eight foot pigweed and the sunflowers themselves many of them were bent or broken over. So for the next two hours I was trying to get to Clay by quietly crawling along. After much frustration, Clay could hear me getting closer.  I was 10 yards from getting out in the clear when, Oh No! He is getting up! As I burst out from the sunflowers, I watched this big animal run back through the tree row across the next tree row and disappear into cattail marsh! Did I blow my chance at getting this big animal? I started following his tracks across the fields and into the cattails. He had to be in there. I waded up to my waist in water and no moose. What should we do? We searched for a while and walked back to the pickup. It was at that time when I received a call from a farmer down the road a ways who had a bull walk through his yard. We knew this was a different bull, but do we give up on this one? We had just spent at least two hours searching for this animal, with no luck. So we decided to go take a look at this other moose. We spent about an hour searching for this other moose. All this time I was thinking about the other moose; where would he be? Did we miss something?  After not seeing this second moose I talked my brother into going back to look again. It was now 5:30 and we went back to search the cattails and areas surrounding the trees. All of a sudden, as we are driving along I see just a glimpse of a paddle sticking out of a clump of Bull berry bushes.  I worked my way around to get a shot; this time I made sure it was a good one. What a great bull! It had a forty-seven inch spread with 25 points. The size of the bull was incredible, It took 6 guys and a come along to get it into the pickup. This tenacious bull almost escaped me, but on this day, luck came along for the ride.