The Luck of the Draw

Utah Shiras Moose | The Luck of the Draw

In the fall of 2023, while guiding archery elk hunters, I received a text message via my Garmin inReach that one of my guide’s, Gavin Whiting, had just had an encounter with what he termed to be a “world-class Shiras bull moose.” As the hunt wrapped up and we met back at the trailhead with our clients, Gavin showed me the pictures and video of the bull. There was no doubt that this bull moose was something special and a true giant.

We began to dream about the possibility of drawing or buying a tag and being able to hunt this moose. As auction season arrived, we bid on the governor’s tag with no luck. We told everyone we knew with moose points to put in for the hunt, including one of my friends who had max points for moose. In May when the draws came out, I reached out to my friend. We were disappointed to find that he didn’t pull the tag.

Later that same day, I found out that by some absolute miracle my brother had drawn the tag in the random draw with only 18 points. We couldn’t believe it. We started making plans to hunt this moose and hoped that he was still on the landscape. As Labor Day weekend arrived, we packed our family in for a fishing trip and to scout the area for the moose. When we were roughly two-thirds of the way to the basin where the bull had been seen the previous year, we rode right into him. As we rode over a mountain pass, we saw him. He was feeding in a little draw of willows just off the trail. Everyone in the family was able to see him as he trotted off, only stopping briefly to look back at us before disappearing into the timber. He was quite a ways from where he had been rutting the previous year. Because of that and multiple sightings of a big bull in the same area we had just rode through, we decided to change where we had originally planned to camp.

As the September rush ramped up, some of my family and friends went in to hunt the bull. I was right in the middle of all my archery elk hunts and checked in nightly with my brother via our Garmin inReach. There were a number of elk hunters in the basin where my brother was hunting the moose. He made sure to let all of them know that he had a moose tag for the area and was hunting the big bull.

Things really slowed down, and for the first few days of the hunt, they were only able to find a couple cows, calves, and one little bull. Close to a week into the hunt, some stormy weather moved in and my brother, Korey, was sitting in camp enjoying a cup of hot cocoa. There was another elk hunting camp just across the meadow not far away. Korey began to hear someone running towards camp and gasping for air. When he came out to see what the commotion was about, the neighboring hunter told him he had just seen the giant bull cross the meadow between their tents. He had run all the way across the marshy meadow in his cowboy boots to get Korey and hopefully shoot the bull.

By the time Korey got his rifle out of the tent, the bull was just going into the timber on the opposite side of the meadow. They had missed their chance. He tried calling to the bull that evening up close to where he had gone into the timber. They thought they could hear grunting in the timber, but the bull never did show himself.

As my archery hunts were wrapping up, my brother and his friends came out of the mountains. Some of them had to return home, and he wanted to regroup. The following Sunday after attending our church meetings, we loaded up the mules and rode back into the high country. This group was made up of my dad, Korey, me, and a good friend who is also one of my guides, Adam Percival. As we approached camp near dark, we ran into a cow and a calf, but the bull wasn’t with them.

The following morning, we all split up and went in different directions. I rode to the top of the pass where we had originally seen the bull on Labor Day weekend. I climbed to the top of the baldy. From there, I was able to see for miles through the broken timber and meadows. About a half an hour into the morning, I glassed up the bull pushing a cow on a neighboring mountain pass. I watched as he followed the cow off of the pass into a patch of thick timber in another basin. We regrouped at camp and climbed another baldy that was just above the pass and patch of timber where the bull had been.

After glassing for a bit, I started calling, and within just a couple minutes, Adam saw the bull pop his head out of the timber, looking our direction. We were just south of the trail he had originally descended the mountain pass from. There was a ledge blocking him from getting to us, so he started trotting south along the ledge and disappeared out of sight. The ledge ran for at least a mile to the south. It seemed like it had been forever since the bull had left our view and everyone was getting a little worried that the bull might have winded us. I knew from watching him that he thought he was coming to a hot cow.

After about half an hour, I spotted the bull coming through the timber straight towards us. He had made it through the ledges. As he approached broadside close to 300 yards away, one more cow call stopped him in his tracks and Korey anchored the bull. Months of dreaming and anticipation had ended in success. It was a bit surreal walking up on this giant bull. We all celebrated together.

The next morning, other family members and friends rode back into camp to see the bull and help us pack up. It took three fully-loaded pack mules to pull the bull out of the high country. We recently had the bull officially scored and he ranks in the top five bull moose ever killed in the state of Utah. We are all very grateful and feel very blessed to have had this experience together.