While driving home the other day, my foot went for the brake pedal as I rounded the corner. The evening shadows on a snow bank and crumpled tree made it look like there was a moose about to cross the snowy road. When I realized my life was not in peril, the ‘non-encounter’ reminded me of different face to face meetings I had with moose over the last couple of years.
Ther first time happened when I was walking down a ‘back-trail’ to the deer camp on a bright, sunny afternoon. The trail was covered in pine, tamarac, and spuce needles so it made being quiet somewhat possible. After the trail cleared out of a pine tree thicket, I noticed lying down, right smack on the trail, a cow moose. She was only 15 yards away and very casually stood-up and stared at me. Then, off to the right of me (almost parrallel to the cow moose) a bull moose stood up and took out some overhanging branches with his rack while he stared at me. I debated bringing my gun up to my sholder after I startled the bull moose. After they ‘figured-out’ what I was, they started to walk along the trail ahead me.
I let my finger move away from the safety as I began to move ahead along the trail toward where the moose had left me. I walked another 50 yards and there they were again – lying down on the middle of the trail. It was like I was interrupting a dinner date or something. This time they scrambled up to their feet and the bull snorted in annoyance. I never saw them again as the dissapeared off the trail into some thick spruce.
They must have got the memo that it was now deer season. I did not see any moose one week earlier in moose season.
The second encounter I had was during deer season this year. The moose must communicate well because, again, I did not see ANY moose during moose season – something any ‘greenpeace’ visitors might like to hear.
Anyway, I was walking back towards deer camp on the main road (picture a logging type of road). There was 15 minutes of legal shooting time left, but it was getting dark. I rounded one of the corners in the road and 15 yards ahead of me were 2 ‘back-ends’ of the moose variety. They spun their heads around and one had a very large rack on it. The other one must have been a cow as they were similar in body size. It was obvious that I startled them so they picked up their pace slightly while they were walking along the road. This time instead of bringing my gun up I brought my hands to my mouth and grunted (maybe more of a simulated moose grown). The cow moose veered left into the bush off the road. 
The bull stopped and looked back at me. My ‘spider-sense’ kicked in as I wondered if I just insulted the bull with some off-the-cuff moose insult. He turned and faced me (at about 50 yards). I felt a potential change of pants coming on. After he faced me, he stepped off the road and followed the cow into the bush. For fun, I grunted again and waited about 30 seconds. My jaw hit the ground. That bull moose came back out to the road and stared at me. I grunted a couple of more times (my curiosty was in overdrive). It was really starting to get dark at this point and I needed to get back to camp in case around the next corner was game warden wondering where my gun case was. I took a couple of steps toward the moose (after I grunted) and it broke his trance. He walked back into the bush and dissapeared into the dark.
The whole encounter was awesome. Those animals are so huge! Most of the time in hunting or fishing it is what you see along the way that makes the whole experience worthwhile. This was no exception.
Bill Anderson
Muskoka Outdoors
good story!