Muskeg Melodies

September is the leading lady for the pageant that is fall. She enters upon that season's stage at the passing of August, and before our eyes, through some magic of alchemy, she begins turning green to gold. High above, geese chortle and trill, and we hunters grow restless. Our thoughts leave everyday chores and responsibilities and begin to dwell on faraway places as we feel the wild lands beckoning.

The whitetail buck is rubbing its antlers, and so is the caribou bull. From deep in the western mountain haunts, nature's most magnificent flautist, the bull elk, rips through the scale, and though we may be 2,000 miles away, we sense his call. And as September wanes, high in the northern swamps comes another sound: Ugmf!

It isn't a pretty melody, but there is no denying its meaning. Deep and low, it belches from somewhere deep in the depths of a beast, more of an eruption than a sound. There is no scale, no trill, just Ugmf!. It is a rather ugly sound when compared to the loon's lonely lament, the coyote's yodel and the wolf's howl, but when the yellow aspen leaves quake in the slightest breeze and frost covers the muskeg swamp, it's obvious that nature has saved her best for last as the mightiest (some say greatest) of the North American big game animals is stirring and rising. The bull moose has awakened, and the rut is on.

I'd love to wax poetic about hunting big bull moose, love to describe what it feels like to see one of those huge creatures heaving toward you, but there just isn't anything like a bull moose bearing down on you to put the word "insignificant" into perspective. Moose are, in my opinion, the most underrated big game animal on the continent, and for pure fun and excitement, they are also my favorite animal to hunt.

There are those who--having never hunted for big mature bull moose--might be under the impression that there isn't much to hunting "big old swamp donkeys." Nothing could be further from the truth. As big as a bull moose is, if he doesn't want to be seen, he won't be.

Moose can be one of the most frustrating beasts to hunt once they get the idea in their heavy heads to disappear into the black timber. Like 1,500-pound ghosts, they wilt into the darkness. Even during the late September rut, if the weather or some other factor turns them off, every moose in the land has the capacity--if not the propensity--to go underground, never to be seen again.

In some northern areas, the two species of moose to be found there--the Canada and the larger Alaska-Yukon--can be hunted early, like in August. The bulls are still in velvet then, and hunters can spot-and-stalk them in their summer alpine habitat. They are easier to see up in the alpine, and while it's an excellent time to hunt for big bulls, calling is out of the question. They'll run from, rather than come to, a call.