One Heck Of A Ride

54 More Antlered Game wanted. His six-by-six antlers were extremely heavy with exceptionally long tines, and his “whale tails” reached almost to his rump. Tom, Tiernan and I made a classic stalk down the side of the mountain, and the closer we got Author with happy grandson Tiernan Paulin and his first big game animal, a six-by-seven bull to the bull in that meadow the larger his antlers seemed to be. When we were 250 yards from where the bull was, it was close enough. I found a stump for a rest for my rifle, quietly placed my backpack on it, sat down and found the bull in my scope, and rolled him over when I shot. Tom had done a great job for me, and I’d taken the “perfect bull” I’d always wanted. His antlers had 56-inch main beams that still were mostly white after only recently stripping their velvet. It was a great bull that scored 445 3/8 SCI. Tiernan shot a great six-by-seven bull with a red-deer-like crown on his right antler the next day. His bull scored 342 1/8 SCI. A Bull Shiras Moose With A Crossbow As I’ve written in other chapters, I shot a western Canada moose in British Columbia in 1972, an Alaska-Yukon moose in Alaska in 1984, and an eastern Canada moose in Newfoundland in 1991, as well as a Chukotka moose in Russia in 2003. I’d also unsuccessfully hunted a Shiras moose in southern B.C. in the mid-1990s with Steve and Stephanie Leuenberger’s Ram Creek Outfitters in an area where a legal bull had to have at least one forked brow tine. We hunted both sides of a mountain from horseback from a cabin that year and the only legal bull we saw had only the broken stub of an antler on one side. We also saw several immature bulls, as well as a handsome bull with what seemed to have good antlers. We spent at least five minutes with binoculars trying to find a fork on his brow tines, and when we couldn’t we had to get closer to make certain I couldn’t shoot him. We made a great stalk, only to walk away without chambering a round. Three days into the hunt, Steve woke up with severe back pain and Stephanie had him taken to a hospital in an ambulance. I spent the rest of the day glassing the hillsides and creeks near the cabin, looking for moose. We resumed the hunt the day after Steve returned. When the eight-day hunt ended and we had not seen a legal bull, I called Marty and extended the hunt for another three days. The next day, we saw what we had been calling the “no- fork bull” again, and again stalked him to confirm that he was not legal to take. It had been a great hunt, even though I didn’t fire a shot.In 2015, hoping to collect the last animal I needed to complete an SCI North American 29 Slam, I returned to British Columbia to hunt a Shiras moose with outfitters Darrell and Joyce Sword. As fate would have it, I would celebrate my seventy-fifth birthday on this hunt. I’d had surgery five months earlier to replace my left shoulder. Although it didn’t affect my shooting a rifle, it was an archery-only hunt and I used Darrell’s new Excalibur. I’d never shot a crossbow, but I was confident this one would kill a moose efficiently. It took less than a dozen shots at a target at Darrell’s lodge for me to realize how critical judging yardage would be. The trajectory