August has arrived and another moose hunting season is right around the corner. I'm not sure where our 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 all very much looking forward to it.

This article will follow my hunting quartet's season, Bassan is the license holder this year while I have a Not for Profit-Charity license to fill as well. Preparation is very important so I'll show what we did to get ready and be reasonably well prepared for a trouble free hunt.

Today I headed down the Southern Shore to set 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 mainly a sport on to themselves trying to get that outstanding photo of animals undisturbed.

I have just a few ordinary cameras that need to be checked manually with a memory card reader. They are simple, inexpensive, 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, once you experience it 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 disconnected after just one season, which meant I couldn't get this camera set out on this trip.

Update: Spypoint customer support were fantastic and had a new one in the mail right away, I received it in less than a week at no cost. These cameras have a two-year warranty from the day you activate it. The replacement also included a new rubber grommet to seal the area where this one corroded and failed, that same grommet was included with the new G36 and presumably all new in the box Flex units.

Blueberries are well on their way to being ripe!

Looking after the truck is super important as my 2011 Silverado 2500 will have the all important task of towing Project 6x6 inside our enclosed trailer sleeping accommodations to and from the Southern Shore this season.

Next up Bassan and I hit the range to check 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 my Stevens .223 and my Marlin 30-30 steel sights lever action rifle. These two rifles are cheaper and a lot of fun to shoot repeatedly.

Next Project 6x6 was thoroughly checked over and readied for the hunting season.

Less than a week after ordering, the replacement antennas arrived for the Spypoint Flex. I got two antennas one under warranty and one to have on hand for a spare. The Flex has been such a great camera that I picked up a new Flex G36 at Outdoor Pros to increase my camera arsenal.

Today I got my two Flex cameras in place, I also set out my Spypoint Cell Link which turns this ordinary 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 opened Saturday September 9th. Friday afternoon I loaded up Project 6x6 and headed down the shore to get set up for the hunt and do some scouting. Bassan, French, Matthew French and Michael Stroh would be arriving 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 to cover a lot of ground checking for sign. This could give us some direction for our early 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 back in 2019 and continued improvements and mods each year since.

Bunks, tables and storage bins 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 Huntmaster, Stroh his Yamaha Viking SxS and Bassan his 1997 Foreman 400.

French's accommodations unit is still looking great in it's second year of service!

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

Early the next morning Bassan and I headed into my favourite hunting area and got set-up before daylight. We parked the machines at the trail head and hiked in across an ATV trails to our destination. Set-up far enough apart to have a full coverage view, I made some calls with my new Cocall Moose caller. Meanwhile French and Stroh hunted 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 LTE cellular Camera, which was out in the foreground from where we were standing. Bassan spied her and connected 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 had our work cut out now remaining in two teams to field dress our harvests.

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

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

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

We all got back to camp about the same time, 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 from Georgecraft still works flawlessly for skinning, I'm super happy with this beautiful handcrafted custom knife from Georgecraft in Conception Harbour.

After skinning we got 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 out and tossed at this time as well.

Next the quarters were washed down with a strong mix of Vinegar and coarse salt. Approximately three 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. It also really helps seal the surface of the meat. After a second wash the quarters were brought over to Mark's shop and hung in his commercial meat cooler for a couple weeks.

Two 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 CPA billiards championship tournament down the road at Westside Charlie's.

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 by placing all the roasts & ground in vacuum sealed bags. These maintain the very best freshness and are by far the least likely to leak while thawing 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.

Lighter colour ones are 100% pork, the darker sausages on the left are 60:40 moose to pork.

In December, moose activity in our hunting area drops drastically compared to the previous couple months. It was time to go down and take out my trail cameras for the season, this having been the most successful one 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 G36!

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 our freezers. I didn't have enough time to fill the not for profit license, but such is life. Sometimes life gets 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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