In October 2019 I had the honor of guiding a young man on a very special Newfoundland moose hunt. He showed up at the A1 Hunts North Twin lodge with two older gentleman and it wasn’t long before I found out the reason why. His father had purchased the hunt along with his two friends but just months before coming to Newfoundland he fell ill. He was a Vietnam vet who had been shot down four times in the line of duty and survived. Being very sick he got his son to promise him that he would go on the hunt with his friends, shoot a nice moose and spread his ashes at the site.
We began the hunt Monday morning early and it wasn’t long before a spike bull showed up and got turned down. We hunted the rest of the week seeing animals either going to an area in the dark or seeing them late in the evening. On Thursday evening we had a little memorial for the young man’s father with his two friends having something to say.
Friday morning the last day of the hunt I took my client to an old cutover area, I intended to take him to a bog that was in the area. As we approached the cutover, we saw a cow and calf, we watched them for a moment and then moved on. Hadn’t gone more than a couple hundred yards and standing in the cutover were two cows and two bulls. One of the bulls he was going take. In the excitement the moose ran into the trees. Looking to our left another cow steps onto the road, looked at us and walked away. Seven moose in just a short while!
We eventually got to the spot I intended to get to and began to call. At the upper end of the bog a spike bull walked out of the trees and passed within 30 yards of us. We waited for a while, didn’t see anything else so we decided to move to another area. There we had a cow and calf come within yards of us.
Time was passing and my client said he needed to get back to the lodge to prepare for an early flight the next morning. When we got back to our bike, I asked him if we could go back to the area where we had seen the four moose earlier that morning, he said sure so off we went. When we got into the area, at the edge of the cutover on a small bog laid the very bull that he would have taken earlier in the day with the two cows. He loaded his gun and with a well-placed shot he had his moose.
I called back to the lodge for help as it was getting late. Once help arrived, we stood around the moose, and he took out a vial of ashes. We had a solemn time remembering his dad, all was well. The moose got moved from the site back to the lodge, cleaned up and put into the meat chiller.
In the off season I made a cross, fiber glassed it, and put his dads name on it. My son-in-law and I placed it at the site of the actual kill, I thought it was very fitting given the circumstances.
Written by A1 Hunts twin lakes inc. Guide, Gilbert Saunders.
