With my injured ankle finally feeling decent and a welcome break from the rainy & very windy weather of late, this morning Dad, Bassan and I finally managed to get a day up in the woods. Dad has an either sex moose license for the Southern Shore and with eight weeks of the season already passed we were eager for this long overdue start.

We left town at 5:25am and given the length of travel time next time I'll leave earlier. The ride into our hunting area was uneventful, dad and I were aboard my 1989 Argo - Project 6x6,  and Bassan his 1997 Foreman 400 both of which continue to run great and never caused a single problem all day.

It was quite chilly this morning showing 0 to -1ºC on the drive down, made evident by ice in all of the mud puddles. In our opinion it was ideal conditions for a fall hunt.

Since I don't have a charity license this year, Dad carried my trusty Browning BAR cambered in 30.06 and paired with a Leupold VX3 scope as it's a better setup than his older rifle and scope.

We started out each setup this morning calling using my Cocall 2X moose caller which was new last year and I'm very pleased with it.

After a bout of calling, Bassan headed in to drive some woods in case there was an animal hanging out that wasn't interested in our calls. This is getting late in the year for successful calling, not impossible but not as likely for success.

We repeated this process at two more sets that morning before breaking for lunch.

I left the boys set-up on a nice overlook and took the Argo back to the trucks to grab lunch supplies, along the way I took a quick run into another outlook for a quick scout about the area.

Bassan firing up his trusty Kelly Kettle. He's come a long way from the very first time he tried to light it back on day two of our Glenwood trip in 2022 where he learned green wet wood is not a good fire starter! Thankfully he has it down pat now, he's quite a good student!

On the menu today were more Moose Sausages, chunks of Bologna, and topped it off with two cans of Beans cooked up in style on my Coleman Hyperflame stove.

Dad had a cup of tea while Bassan and I enjoyed a fresh cup of coffee made in his GSI french press.

After lunch was cleaned up, we moved on to scout out a new area we haven't hunted before.

By this time French was clued up with work so he dropped down to join us on the evening hunt.

Today the weather was near perfect, stories great, lunch fantastic but the moose were scarce and we didn't see anything all day. Its been common for hunting to get harder in November/December in this area as the animals move deep into thicker woods when temperatures drop. However we will persevere and give it our best try for the rest of the season!

Cheers, MIKE

Copyright © 2025 Michael Smith