Yes it's that time of year here in Alaska.
Bow season was Aug 10-17 & I didn't get out once. We took a family "vacation" during part of that time & I used that as my excuse, but when I think hard about it I wasn't interested in going even though the longbow has been my favorite weapon for years.
But general season opened yesterday & I'm starting to get pumped. I had hoped to be out yesterday morning, but due to other committments couldn't make it. At 6am friend of a friend killed a nice 52" bull within a couple hundred yards of where I would have parked :)!!!!
That's OK though, I probably would have walked the other direction anyway
Hope to get out tonight & maybe tomorrow morning.
I'll be packing the 15" Encore in 450 Marlin with 405 Remingtons ahead of a bunch of H332. I wanted to have the 35 Welen AI ready, but just haven't had time.
Weather is standard moose season weather here. The 14 day forcast has 10 days of rain, 1 day of "very cloudy", & 3 days of simply "cloudy". It's been a steady light rain for 2 days.
Yup, it's moose season ....

Good luck!!

Good Luck Vance. LOve that swampdonkey name its a classic

Vance, How far is the hunting area from your home?? James

Get a big one Vance!!!

Get it done buddy and send pics, as you know I can relate to the rain

Good luck Vance! I bumped into this guy while elk hunting the other day. I know he's small compared to the moose up in your neck of the woods.

Thanks for the encouragement guys!!
Pab, thanks for the pic. Now I know what they look like!!!! So far all I've seen are cows & calfs.
James, all the public land near me is open. I can literaly be hunting after a 5 min drive. Unfortunately so can everyone else (I live in a town of 5,000 with another town the same size 10 miles away & rural areas around us), so the accessible areas get hit pretty hard. We also have a very limited road system, so areas with roads receive lots of pressure. The neat thing about this country is that usually if you get a mile off the road it's just as if you are 100 miles off the road (and you get away from most folks. An average bull means about 6 or 7 pack loads & most "wise" men don't want to pack that far). Brown bear etc are right there in the area with you. You may be close to yown but for all practical purposes you are in the wilderness. It's just that the cell phone works :-)
We have fairly long seasons (one month for "general"(any weapon) season, & a week before that for bow only), but the hard part around here is finding a legal bull. They have to be either a spike or fork on one side, OR be over 50" wide, OR have at least 3 brow tines on one side. Most of the 16 month old bulls with good genetics will have small palmated antlers so they aren't legal. Determining if a bull is legal can be a real pain, & a concientious hunter will sometimes end up passing on a couple of "maybe" bulls & end up empty handed.
I've got out only twice so far, one morning & one evening, but no luck.
Rod, our rain didn't materialize & it's been in the 70s the last couple of days!! I'd rather have the rain myself.

A friend of mine got a shiras moose on a bow hunt last year, about the same size as the one from my picture. This is a guy who only hunts in wilderness areas and packs 1-2 elk out between 4 and 6 miles year after year. When he walked up to his moose, he just stood there for a while in disbelief at its size and said he had no idea where to begin.

I know how he felt Pab1.
I've helped a lot of others with theirs, but have only killed one myself & that was in Montana with my stickbow. I'd lived here almost 10 yrs & never killed one, then went down there, drew a tag the 1st elegible year, & got my bull :-)
I was hunting alone when I got him & even after being around the bigger ones up here as I stared at that guy(also about the size of the one in your pic) laying in the lake , it was just after dark, about 37*, & I was feeling awful alone!! It was a chore.
5 yrs later we moved back up here & I still haven't killed one here yet, but again I have helped with a few. The 1st one after we got back was a road kill (I'm a pastor & "charitable orginizations" like churches can get on a "road kill list" where the troopers call you to come butcher road killed moose. Only catch is you also have to haul all ineddible meat, plus the entire carcus with guts to the land fill. And of course most of them get hit in the middle of the night)& I got the call to go get it at 2am @ it was about 15*. There was nobody available to help me & it had been 5+ years since my last moose butchering job. I have to tell you that old cow looked big!!(and she was!!) I'll bet I made 15 slow laps around her wondering what I got myself into before I got the knife out. Six o'clock I hide all the meat in the truck & the guts laying on a tarp & got a friend to come help me load the guts & hide in the truck. Long night, but only one front quater was damaged so it fed a few families.
The ADF&G has a good video out on gutless butchering, & it'd definetly the way to go on the big critters.

I agree that gutless and boneless is the only way to pack game out. No reason to carry out what your not going to use or eat. An elk can be packed out in two (hard) trips if you are by yourself like this.

well our rain has come to an abrupt halt also, all of a sudden summer is back it has been in the 60s' and 70's in the day and 50s' at night and to top it off I drew my mule deer tag for eastern Oregon this year and I just found out the entire area we hunt burnt up in a forest fire so I have no idea how this is going to work out. I hope you get a big bull, keep us posted and I'll send you some pictures of burnt trees if nothing else after deer season

Rod I have heard that deer and critters do well in recently burnt areas. Kind of backwards thinking, but hey nature will fool you all the time. Around here if something burns all it takes a hint of moisture and the green starts to pop everywhere. The old times use to burn the pastures in the spring to remove the old dead grass and let new gras take off. The burnt pastures always looked greener that spring.

Good luck and harvest a big one.