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A wild moose chase

Hunting guide Bill Chapman was a tad shaggy after living for months in a wall tent in north-central British Columbia’s majestic Rocky Mountains.

“Anything new happening in the world?” he asked shortly after I flew into camp in the back seat of outfitter Jordy McAuley’s Super Cub bush plane.

A rocky riverbed near an oxbow on the Akie River was our landing strip following a flight that wound around mountains shimmering with the yellows and reds of late September’s foliage. The higher mountain peaks were already blanketed with snow.

Chapman and Australian wrangler Lewis Reid had been catching arctic grayling in the river. A spinning rod rested against a tree.

“Nah, not really,” I replied.

Why ruin the mood? I was ready to escape the “civilized” world.

This is rugged country, home to the highest population densities of grizzly bears in North America and huge Canadian moose, some with antlers rivaling their larger Alaska-Yukon cousins. Late September is prime time to call rutting bulls looking for a little cow moose love.

A half-dozen horses were tied a short distance from camp.

“We’re about eight hours by horse from the closest main logging road,” Chapman said. The nearest camp with electricity and other humans was about 50 miles away.

McAuley is laying in miles of new trails to improve wilderness access for the hunters he spreads out over the nearly 1.3-millionacre Finlay River Outfitting concession he recently purchased at the north end of 160-mile-long Williston Lake. The area is part of the vast Rocky Mountain Trench, which extends from western Montana to the Yukon.

The spacious, comfortable Fort Graham Lodge, where a chef whips up elk steaks for dinner and Full Monty breakfasts, is home base for the operation. McAuley’s late father, Murdoch McAuley, served in the Canadian army. A shadow box on the wall sports his uniform and service medals. The family crest, “Dulce Periculum” — “Danger is Sweet” — hangs nearby, along with impressive hunting trophies.

A couple of fall hunters usually stage from the lodge. Others move to fixed outposts or set up spike camps, packing a tent and food.

Bull moose party

I held moose and black bear tags. The hope was to take a moose at the outpost camp, then return early to the lodge for black bear.

The hunt gods had other plans.

Chapman’s rangy frame moved easily with the gait of his horse as we navigated a wide variety of terrain along the Akie River. Behind him, riding a horse called Mystery, I fought to ignore increasing discomfort in my right knee, courtesy of torn cartilage suffered just two weeks before this hunt of a lifetime.

Horses quickly figure out a rider’s experience level. Mystery sized me up early, figuring he could sightsee and eat often from the grasses and willow leaves along the trail. While my saddle savvy progressed, the bum knee deteriorated steadily over three days of riding five to seven hours.

We almost scored a bull moose on our first stop along the river. A cow moose sounded off on a hillside. Seconds later, we heard the deep grunts of a bull moose less than 100 yards away.

“Bull,” Chapman whispered, intensity flashing in his eyes. We quickly retreated to the cover of some low spruce. Chapman let out a long, wailing moose call.

If this moose were a shooter — the goal was a moose with at least 50-inch-wide antlers — then this would be over quickly. But as Chapman’s call rolled toward the river, the wind shifted and blew our scent directly to where we had heard the moose. We neither heard nor saw him after that.

On the hunt’s third morning, Chapman succeeded in calling in a bull from several hundred yards away. I sat, enjoying a good rifle rest, listening to timber snap underneath the moose’s hooves and anticipating a quality shot.

A big bull would come fearlessly, Chapman said. A smaller bull would be more cautious, wary of bigger bulls.

I saw bits of a gray leg, some parts of a body. Chapman, who was standing, said he saw antlers before the bull moved back into the cover.

“You wouldn’t have wanted him,” he said.

“How big?” I asked.

Chapman stretched out his arms and hands to about 40 inches.

“Don’t bet on it,” I thought to myself, rubbing my aching leg.

By that evening, it took both hands to lift my right leg over the saddle. McAuley flew in and we retreated to the main camp, landing at dusk.

When something just isn’t meant to be, the signs can be obvious. For me, they included coming down with flu-like symptoms within hours after arriving in main camp. Still, guide Dennis Maki and I set out in a truck, putting in many road miles daily, glassing from strategic spots and walking into some hillside cutovers to call.

One bull responded to a call as we stood along a logging road. When the moose wasabout 70 yards out, but still obscured, a pickup truck crested the hill behind us. The bull vanished.

We spotted several big bulls in a swampy area behind a small lake, but access to them proved difficult and trying to call them away from the cows was fruitless.

Sometimes you eat the bear

Seeing fresh grizzly bear rubs on pine trees will cause a tingle in the lower neck hair of most hunters used to plying the lower 48 states.

We saw five grizzly bears, including a couple walking the dirt roads close to our truck — but in keeping with my luck, the only black bear we encountered was a big specimen crossing a road near a beaver pond right at twilight.

While I struggled to fill a tag, Pennsylvania hunter John Petrone moved into the Akie River camp behind me and connected on a first-morning moose while hunting with Chapman.

The nice bull sported a 48-inch-wide rack.

McAuley had taken a husband-and-wife team from Florida, Tim and Elizabeth Dilts, to a camp on the Finlay River, where they first accessed moose-hunting areas along the river by jet boat.

“Jordy had this one area that he was confident could produce a moose, and we stopped there late one afternoon and moved in to call,” Tim Dilts said.

The swampy area was thick with deadfall trees and spruce snags. Waist-deep pockets of water punctuated the terrain. A bull responded to McAuley’s call, but was too far away for a shot.

A stalk to within shooting range was possible, but daylight was waning and McAuley warned the couple, “We can get that moose, but if we get him, we’re going to end up spending the night out here.”

Agreeing it was worth it, they closed to within 265 yards and Elizabeth Dilts dropped the bull in its tracks with a spine shot from her rifle chambered in .300 Winchester Short Magnum.

The next two days were spent packing out the moose, which had a 51-inch-wide set of antlers and weighed well over 1,000 pounds. That left Tim Dilts only two days to try for a grizzly. Mountain grizzlies in this area can reach 8 feet, and McAuley’s clients already had taken three big boars. Tim Dilts was optimistic.

Spotting a bear on a mountain clearcut late in the afternoon, he and McAuley stalked across a long draw while Elizabeth Dilts watched the bear with a spotting scope. She gave signals to direct them through the brush, which reached 10-feet-high.

“When we reached the area where we thought the bear was close, Jordy started cow moose calling and the bear stepped out. I shot, and darkness fell within a couple minutes,” Tim Dilts said.

Looking for a grizzly in the dark is a dangerous proposition. The next morning revealed that the bear had not been hit well. It traveled straight up the mountain and then down the other side. Eventually, four bedding sites with blood were located.

Heavy snow began falling and the hunters began circling, knowing that any trail would beobscured. They didn’t look far. Tim Dilts’ grizzly was barely 25 feet away.

“When all was said and done, it was a good hunt, an adventure Elizabeth and I will always be able to look back on,” Tim Dilts said.

As for me, that prime spot on the den wall is still vacant, begging another return to beautiful British Columbia. Somewhere up there is a big bull moose with my name on it.