It's now August and another moose hunting season is right around the corner, not sure where summer went only that it went by way to quickly! With that said, big game season is one of the most exciting hunts imaginable so we are very much looking forward to it.

This article will follow my group's hunt, Bassan is the license holder this year while I have a Not for Profit license to fill as well. Preparation is super important so I'll show what we do to get ready and be best prepared for a trouble free hunt.

Today I headed down the Southern Shore to put out some game cameras in our favourite moose hunting areas. Game cameras are a fantastic tool for scouting animals, keeping track of animal movement, but are absolutely a sport on to themselves as well.

I have a few standard cameras that need to be checked manually with a memory card reader. They are simple, inexpensive, and reliable silent sentries of the woods.

My favourite units by far are cellular trail cams. This Spypoint Link Micro is a great entry level cellular camera. These units send pics live to the Spypoint App on your Smartphone. There is no more exciting sound than the "new picture" notification on your phone!

I was disappointed to find the antenna on my newer Spypoint Flex corroded and damaged after just one season, which meant I couldn't get this camera set out on this trip.

Blueberries are on their way to being ripe!

Looking after the truck is super important as my 2011 Silverado 2500 will have the important task of towing the Argo and our enclosed trailer sleeping accommodations to and from the Southern Shore this season.

Next up Bassan and I hit the range to sight in our rifles, and most importantly shoot some rounds to get in practice for shooting. I patterned my Browning BAR 30.06 but did most of my shooting with the Stevens .223 and my Marlin 30-30 open sight lever action. These two rifles are cheaper and a lot of  fun to shoot repeatedly.

Next Project 6x6 was thoroughly gone through and readied for the hunting season.

A couple weeks after my first outing parts arrived for the Spypoint Flex. I got two antennas (one to use & a spare) and purchased the new rubber boot. This part is a fix for these antennas to prevent the damage I experienced. The Flex is such a great camera that I picked up a new Flex G36 at Outdoor Pros to add to my camera arsenal.

With the two Flex cameras in place I also set out my Spypoint Cell-Link which turns this standard trail camera into a cellular trail camera.

We captured some absolutely outstanding shots this season, check them out on the Moose Trail Cam Pics 2023 article!

Moose hunting season opens Saturday September 9th. Friday afternoon I loaded up and headed down the shore to get set up for the hunt. Bassan, Mark & Matthew French and Michael Stroh would be down a little later in the afternoon.

One of the first things I wanted to do was take Project 6x6 on a scouting run, a mixture of walking & riding checking for sign. This could give us some direction for our morning hunt the following day.

My '89 Argo 6x6 continues to run amazingly well, I'm super happy with it especially after all the restoration work in 2019 and continued improvements and mods ever since.

Bunks, tables and more set up and ready to go in the trailer.

By suppertime most of the crew arrived and finished setting up camp. Mark is piloting his 2017 Argo Avenger 8x8, Stroh his Yamaha Viking SxS and Bassan his '96 Foreman 400.

For supper Matt French brought along his famous home made Beans with Brisket mixed in, a dandy feed in any situation, but truly epic up in the woods.

Early the next morning Bassan and I headed into my favourite area  and got set up before daylight. I made some calls with my new Cocall Moose caller. The French's and Stroh would hunt an area closer to camp.

We didn't have to wait long. Amazingly this dandy Cow walked out right in front of my Link Micro Camera, which was in the foreground of where we were hunting. Bassan saw her and made a successful shot with his Browning A-bolt .308.

While walking over to confirm our harvest we heard shots from the direction of where French & Stroh were hunting. We confirmed that they also had a moose down, a young bull. This is the first double header we've had so we stayed in two teams and got to work field dressing our harvests.

Early season hunting can be a trick as daytime temps can get quite warm. Thankfully here at 6:30am we were still in single digits so we set to work to get this field dressed and back to town ASAP. A thermocell fly deterrent and Black Pepper are a huge help in keeping flies away this time of year.

Having the Argo in place as an anchor point makes this process much easier whether Solo as I've done many times or with help. I tied a rope off the upper back leg to the rear of the machine, and used the winch to pull over the upper front leg. This kept everything held secure and steady so we could get to work.

To make lifting the harvest easier as it was just the two of us, we used Bassan's Milwaukee M18 saw to quarter up the front and rear halves. We placed two in the Argo and strapped two to the Foreman for the ride out.

We got back to camp, loaded up the machines and hit the highway back to town. Bassan and I headed to my place where I had the moose rack ready to go, the French's and Stroh headed to Mark's place in St. Phillip's to skin and clean their quarters.

My custom Damascus steel ULU still works flawlessly for skinning, I'm super happy with this beautiful handcrafted custom knife from Georgecraft in Conception Harbour.

After skinning we get to trimming. We don't use moose fat as it's sour and generally unpleasant so it was trimmed and tossed at this time. A very small amount of blood shot meat around the bullet hole was also trimmed and tossed at this time as well.

Next the quarters were washed down with a strong mix of Vinegar and salt. Approximately 3 gallons cold water, 1-1.5L vinegar and about 1/4 box of salt. This helps remove dried blood but importantly kills bacteria that may be present after field dressing and/or from flies and really helps seal the surface. After a 2nd wash the quarters were brought over to Mark's and hung in his commercial cooler for a couple weeks.

A couple weeks later the quarters were aged nicely so it was time to begin final processing and packaging.

Bassan and Roger took care of the first two quarters while I was taking part in a Billiards CPA championship tournament.

The boys followed our standard process of separating muscle groups to cut out beautiful roasts and placing the rest in a separate bin to be ground.

Over the next couple evenings we finished cutting and packaging placing all the roasts & ground in vacuum sealed bags. These provide the very best freshness and are by far the least prone to leaking out.

A month or so later, Bassan and I got together and made some moose sausages. The flavour this time was his families traditional Alce Salsaccia Italian sausages consisting of ground moose & pork, salt, black pepper and red wine.

In December, moose activity in our area drops drastically compared to the previous months. It was time to go down and take out my trail cameras for the year, this season having been the most successful with the cameras to date!

Skull from this year's harvest. Nothing goes to waste in nature!

Few wildlife chew marks on the new Flex!

Found it just as I had left it!

All in all moose hunting 2023 was quite successful.  A ton of beautiful pics captured on our trail cams, an opening day double header and lots of meat in the freezers. I didn't get enough time to fill the not for profit license, but such is life. Sometimes other tasks get in the way, but that doesn't take away one bit from a very successful hunting season!

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Cheers, MIKE

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