Cold-weather moose hunting

There are many elements to hunting that make it appealing to people.
Some love all the time spent outdoors, most of us enjoying eating what we harvest, and there are deep social and cultural traditions in this activity that most people who participate surely absorb.
For the past several years, my friends and I have had a tradition of heading north to the Red Lake area to hunt moose during the last week of the season. We travel to hunt moose in a beautiful part of Sunset Country and stay in a remote cabin for the week.
Our group generally ranges in size from six-10 hunters and we have been fortunate to tag at least a couple of moose each year.
This year there were 10 of us involved in this hunt and we came home with four moose, so we’re going to be eating really well this winter!
Moose meat is some of the finest-eating wild game available, so we all are very excited that we’ll get to enjoy it over the coming months.
Cooked as steaks or roasts, it is phenomenal. It can be used in stews, to make burger, and it is very popular for use in smoked products like pepperettes, garlic sausage, or smokies.
The way we hunt is to bring snowmobiles or ATVs with us that we can use to cover ground on old logging roads and trails. We cover as much ground as we can until we find fresh sign, which is easy to see in the snow, then we will orchestrate drives or try to track the animals down.
The massive snowfall we got back in early October really wreaked havoc on the woods up in the area that we hunt, so many of the old roads and trails that we usually hunt were totally impassable.
As well, the woods were very difficult to walk through in many areas. But I think that helped us a bit in that it was sending more animals than usual out to the cut-over areas that we were focusing on.
For those of you who have hunted moose before, you know how big these animals really are. I find it really amazing how big they get, especially when you start to try and move them around.
We were fortunate during our trip last week that we were able to get to the animals with snowmobiles and pull them out.
It’s pretty impressive what these machines can do. We tried to pull one moose out with an ATV and could hardly move it in the foot or so of snow that was on the ground up there.
But when a snowmobile arrived and we tried to pull it with that, it was a piece of cake.
I understand hunting is not for everybody and that’s okay. But people should consider that we live in a part of the world with some of the best hunting opportunities available anywhere.
It really is a part of the culture across our region. For many of us in Northern Ontario who enjoy this activity, it is a great way to spend some time in the outdoors with our friends.
The experiences we have create great memories that last forever.