Just got the mount of my bull shot last September... It was shot from the ground at 19 yards, by no means a record breaking moose at 41'' spread... but the hunt was textbook perfect!
Thanks for all the nice comments... Took me over 500 hours to build the fireplace,(not including the handpicking of all the stones). This part is 18 feet high and starts with another fireplace in the basement that runs through the floor, both with separate flue and I'm pretty proud of it. As for the hunt, I was on my second day of prospecting, looking for fresh signs of moose presence, walking a hill that had been logged 5 years ago where the regrowth was pretty thick and difficult to walk in. After a couple of hours I heard a cow call a progressed toward those calls. Then found fresh signs of feeding and tracks. I went on tracking them for close to 6 hours, initially following a cow an a young bull. Called in the young one and he stayed in front of me for about 10 minutes not offering any shot. After he left I tried to call him back and started following him and found a fresh scrape on the ground, made a few calls and started to stomp on the scrape with my foot pretending to be another bull trying to steel his mating territory. To my surprise, that scrape belonged to a much bigger bull that was behind the little guy(The one I shot). He was the one that had made that scrape and he started grunting and trashing branches trying to intimidate me. That interaction lasted just over 30 minutes, all that time he was getting closer and closer, moving in for a fight with what he thought was another bull. There were still lots of leaves that early in the season, so I spotted an opening between bushes, so when he walked across I let my arrow fly. Couldn't find any blood and it was getting dark, so I flagged the area and left to get my buddies. We found him later that evening, after about 45 minutes searching. Never found one drop of blood even though both lungs had been hit. All the bleeding was internal. We gutted him and went back the next morning to quarter it and hang it in our fridge. It weighted 656lbs in quarters, without skin head and legs and we ended up with 363 pounds of meat in the freezer. Here's a few more pics... When we found it... Part of our group... That's only half the meat
Can't imagine... Had to handpick rocks for a pond but that wasn't even 1/4 of what is in your fireplace. Great mount as well. Perfect spot.
Great looking spot. Moose is cool looking. That fireplace is great and even better with the moose. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
