Steve Moseley

Bull moose hang out in a field in the Bighorn Mountains.

Tribune photo by Steve Moseley

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Tough to draw a bull moose permit in the north Bighorns, you say? Au contraire. I “hunt” moose up there permit-free anytime I want to … and can get there.

All four seasons? Doesn’t matter. Limits? Not for me. I can shoot a dozen a day just as legal as can be. If I can find that many.

The secret, of course, is to exchange lethal equipment for camera gear.

Back when this time of year would find me up in the trees above Lovell frequently when we were blessed to live down the hill in Powell. Residing in eastern Nebraska as I do now presents complications.

Take Burgess Junction for example. From my home in York, Nebraska, Google makes it 756 miles/10 hours, 44 minutes to get there. In our planning we mustn’t neglect to account for the 756 miles/10 hours, 44 minutes required to get back home.

This burden is not insurmountable, as a trip coming up on next month’s calendar will prove, but it’s dang hard to run up there a couple times a week during prime antler season like Good Wife Norma and I were known to do in those days.

Fuel is not insignificant in the equation, either. Double so when I fire up the 25-year-old, ’99 Suburban.

The vehicle has a rust problem, but mechanically it’s as sound as my mechanics can get it. It just turned over 150,000 miles last month, so it has that going for it, which is nice.

It’s big and comfy to drive and feels like a tank out there among less substantial vehicles, but there’s a price for smoothness and safety: That price is extracted from the wallet at the gas pump.

The dang thing creeps up to 12 miles per gallon on a good day, which is downhill with a trailing wind. This in combination with a 40 (yes 40) gallon gas tank makes fuel stops fiscally debilitating at north of 100 bucks a throw. Over time I solved this shortcoming with uncanny ingenuity. It’s simple; never permit the gauge to fall below half-full. This, I found to my joy, cut each and every fill-up by exactly half, down to a much more palatable $50 or so. I’m confident a personal financial audit would prove the benefit of my cleverness in dollars and cents. Feel free to employ it yourself. You’re welcome.

Once in moose country, it’s important to kinda-sorta know where they are and when to digitally ‘shoot’ them. I know where they are and so does Mark Davis, your very own award-winning, Powell Tribune outdoor journalist. We will meet next month for a weekend of cruising slowly on logging roads way back in the timber, unobtrusively with long lenses and in silence.

The bull pictured here is the most magnificent specimen of the species I have ever been privileged to encounter. It would be amazing if he’s still up there along this creek, and of course we will go see, but I judge the intervening 20-plus hunting seasons make that unlikely.

I absolutely despise poachers, but have nary a bone to pick with legal, lethal, fair-chase hunting and have taken my share of critters that way over the decades. It just isn’t for me anymore. I’ve become too selfish and entitled to suffer all those annoying regulations. Long ago, I found a better way for me. Tromping way back in the thick stuff, field dressing until you’re up to here in blood and hot guts, dragging a huge carcass way back out of the thick stuff and butchering is a lot of hard work. Give me an impressive trophy photo for the wall and a nicely aged beef steak to enjoy while I look at it. Do that and I’ll feel like as successful and contented moose hunter as any other.

The real trick is timing. Get there just before hunting begins when antlers are glorious. Wait until hunters arrive, however, and the only moose you are likely to see will be hanging by its antlers from a campground tree. This was exactly our experience when I waited a few days too long to take my folks up there a couple decades ago.

I learned a lesson that summer. One I intend to apply next month.