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| Cow and calf Moose |
We were separated by a
hundred yards, or so, and were acting all grown up and manly, as we hunted. I
rounded a big fir tree and saw a cow moose lying down, facing away from me. I
knew enough to know I had no business being there, and I was sure the girl was
calving. And, I knew that a cow moose will kill a grizzly that comes near her
new born calf! I didn’t stop, blink, or
hesitate more than a millisecond. I turned and ran as fast as a healthy,
thoroughly scared 16 year old young man could move. I had hell on my heels, and
I could hear her coming behind me. Her feet were pounding, and she ran right
through saplings, grunting, and breathing hard. My only chance at safety was a dead fall 50 yards ahead of me.
Expecting
to feel a hoof in my back at any second, when I got in range, I literally jumped
through the air, over a huge downed fir tree log and under a pile of alder
brush someone had piled up. I kept pushing further down into the pile until I
was on my back, under the fir tree log, wedged in the 8” space between the log
and the ground. I was hugging that tree like it was my girlfriend! My face was
turned to the brush pile where I came in, cheek pressed to the rough bark. My
pistol was in my right hand, and it was as quiet as I ever heard it in the
woods.
It was eerily silent except for a heavy breathing sound six inches from
my face. I slowly turned my head to the left, and looked right into the big eye
of a seriously pissed-off cow moose, with her ears laid back, and her front lip
exposing some big teeth. She pawed the ground trying to get me, but the logs
and sticks protected me. That’s when I heard my buddy, Vince, laughing. He was
safely up a tree a few yards away, and thought this was all terribly funny. To
this day, I think he waited to start laughing until he knew I wasn’t dead, but
I’m not real sure on that point. But here I was, on my back, wedged under a
downed fir tree with mamma moose trying to kill me.
5 hours later (actually,
maybe 10 minutes) she was still there. Just as mad. Finally, I managed to
transfer my pistol from my right to left hand, by feel, over my head, without
dropping it. Then, I put that muzzle just in front of her nose and fired. The
bullet wouldn’t hit her (although, I was kind of hoping for a lucky shot to hit
my buddy, Vince, the jerk. Still laughing his head off.), but she’d feel the
blast. She did jerk back, and it took all 6 shots from that Ruger revolver, but
she finally gave me the stink-eye, one more time, and headed back where I found
her. I gave her quite a while to settle down, and I slid out the back of that
brush pile. We shrugged the incident
off, and moved to another area to continue our hunt. I am more scared now, in the re-telling, than
I ever was then. Growing up in Alaska
was heaven-on-earth for a kid. We
learned a lot about hunting, fishing, and sports outside. Cuts, bruises, broken bones, getting lost and
getting found again were part of every summer day. There were few rules, but we’d better not be
late for dinner.
