Guide Bob Lawrence shares expertise on the eve of 13th annual season
This column originally ran on Saturday, October 1, 1994
Where a windtoppled spruce leaned on the shoulder of a shadowpaved woods road, Bob Lawrence of Rockwood slowed the pickup to a stop. Nodding toward a clearcut beyond the spruce, the master guide said, "Yesterday morning there were five moose in this cut, three bulls and two cows. None this morning, though," he said after a few seconds of scanning with binoculars. Then, easing the truck forward, " yesterday morning was dark and overcast and that tends to keep them out longer."
That casual but informative comment told me I was on the right track for bagging a story about moose hunting from a guide perspective. For the uninitiated, Monday dawn signals the start of Maine 13th annual oneweek moose hunt. An experimental hunt was held in 1980, after which the Legislature approved an annual moose season beginning in 1982. There was no moose hunt in 1981.
This year, 1,200 permitted moose hunters 1,080 residents, 120 nonresidents and their subpermittees will take to Maine six moosehunting zones with the hope of tagging one of North America largest biggame animals. Perhaps you recall that in 1993 the Legislature passed a bill to increase the number of lotterydrawn moose permits from 1,000 to 1,500 by 1996. Accordingly, 200 additional permits were drawn this year. Depending on the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildife approval, moose hunters will set their sights on 1,400 permits next year and 1,500 in 1996.
"With last night full moon and as clear as it is this morning it wouldn have hurt anything if we been an hour or so earlier," said Bob as we cruised the ribbonlike road winding through miles of moosebarren cuts. The day was a strong seven hours old and the sun smiled warmly as a light breeze fanned September smoldering foliage into flames.
Noticing the tracks scuffing and gouging the road, I agreed: "They were out all night, that for sure. With the rut coming on I imagine the bulls are staving around like they own the place."
"Right," replied the guide who owns and operates Lawrence Cabins and Guide Service on Moosehead Lake. "The bulls are feeling real important but the cows aren too impressed with them yet. Another week do it there one right there." About 30 yards ahead of us, a cow moose emerged from a stand of mixed growth and trotted across the road like a horse on a hiatus from the farm.
In spite of its awkward and ungainly appearance, the cow vanished as quickly as it appeared. It was the animal swiftness and agility, in fact, that prompted me to ask Bob if he thought moose were any spookier after 13 years of being hunted. "I say they more camerashy than gunshy," he answered. His reference, of course, was to moose watchers who can hunt from springtime through autumn.
The more we rode, the more obvious it became that, as in all hunting, weather conditions affect the moose hunt. Bob aimed at that when he said: "If we had these conditions on opening day of the moose hunt, a lot of hunters wouldn have to clean their rifles that night. The majority of hunters want bulls, and they just aren out this morning, it so clear and bright. That why I like dark overcast mornings for hunting."
It no secret that successful guides do their homework, and Bob Lawrence has a history of scoring high marks in his tests. Previous to our outing, he made aerial scoutings of the zones in which he would guide his hunters and planned to do so again before the moose hunt. While most Maine hunters don waste much time in tagging their moose meat, most nonresident hunters are after trophy bulls and that makes the hunt more challenging.
Next week, Bob will have six nonresident hunters in camp. "Naturally, I looking for big bulls during my aerial surveys," he said. "But I also looking for fresh cuts that are sprouting secondgrowth hardwoods and, preferably, are near water. You find moose in those places but not there," he said pointing to a sere brown sprawl of stumps, rocks and splintered wood. "That cut been sprayed with herbicide."
"I noticed," I replied. "Some of these clearcuts are real eyesores." Raising a corrective finger, Bob responded with, "Plantations. They no longer referred to as clearcuts. Plantations sounds better. But no matter what they call them, my opinion is that if they keep cutting and spraying and planting softwoods, the moose population will start to decline."
His rationale is that it takes a lot of fuel to keep a moose boiler going and, currently, Maine herd is estimated at about 25,000.
How does one guide handle six hunters? "I have four other guides working for me." Bob explained. "One of my hunters will hunt without a guide. As for myself, this year I guiding a bow hunter. The guy good. He hunts all over hell and has bagged a lot of biggame trophies but never a moose. I only missed getting a moose on opening day twice, but they were taken with rifles. I have to get that bow hunter within 30 yards or so of a trophy bull and that not going to be easy. Usually,http://www.cheaplongchampliechtenstein.com/longchamp-le-pliage-rucksack-c-163, I can stop a bull with a call, but during the rut there a period when they get real edgy and hard to handle."
A trophy bull has an antler spread of 50plus inches, field dresses at 800 to 1,000 pounds or more and is about 7 1/2 years old. Also, it possible for a bull moose to lose 100 pounds during the rut.
The easygoing guide chuckled as he said, "You never know where you cut their trail, though. I been stalking moose across cuts and had bulls that were lying in holes stand up about 10 yards ahead of me." Imagine one of those ol swampers with antlers as wide as a pickup truck rising out of the ground to stare at you like Sonny Liston stared at Floyd Patterson.
"The first thing I tell my hunters," Bob continued, "is to bring the biggest gun they got. A .300 Weatherby or Winchester magnum is ideal, but a 7 mm magnum will do the job and so will a .3006 loaded with 180grain bullets no open sights if I can help it. Then I lay down the ground rules: long shots, no running shots, aim where I tell you and don shoot until I give the word. my hunter has a subpermittee, I let them decide who shoot first. None of this one, two, three, shoot! stuff. If two guys shoot at the same time, they going to compete and that results in poor shooting. The last thing I want is a moose running off wounded. That why I want the first shot to be right where it counts. Most of my hunters are experienced and know the score. They listen to what I tell them and they go home happy. The guy I watch closest is the newcomer who gets his experience out of Field Stream magazine and thinks he the world greatest hunter.
"The way I work a hunt is this: I get my hunter into an area about 15 minutes or so before daylight. If the bull I scouted doesn show soon after, I try calling him out. If that doesn work, I get on the high ground and scan the area. If I spot him and he out of range, we get downwind of him and begin stalking. A bull might not go charging off when he sees or scents you, but he often maintain his distance and can get into the woods before you close enough for a clean shot."
Checking shooting ranges on cuts and marking them by stumps or rocks is another advantage of preseason scouting. "Most people are poor judges of range, especially across open areas," Bob allowed. "I had hunters want to shoot at moose 300 yards or so away, thinking the distance was a lot less. Problem is, the critters are so big they look close even at long range."
As though to confirm that, the next moose we saw were two cows feeding in a clearcut. Bob judged them to be about 300 yards away and they did, indeed, appear closer.
Now, if you dragged a deer out of the woods, you have to wonder about getting, say, a 900pound bull moose off a clearcut and onto a vehicle. "Slowly," Bob answered when I asked how it was done. "I use portable winches, comealongs, chain saws, axes,
UGG Boots Kids, block and tackle, and a lot of heavy rope. Usually, I can move a moose about 100 yards an hour with that equipment."
Perhaps you know that a clearcut stubs, stumps, ridges, holes and humps are on a par with the Maginot Line tank obstacles of World War II.
"But the easiest way to get a moose out," Bob admitted, "is to hire a skidder if there one available. It may cost $100 but it worth every nickel of it. You wouldn believe it, but I seen hunters expecting to haul a moose with 50 feet of clothesline rope. Worse yet, I came onto a couple of guys trying to drag one out and it wasn even field dressed. Hell," he said with a shake of his head, moose innards can weigh 200 pounds or better. Why drag that, too? The most important thing, though,
longchamp taschen, is to get the animal opened up and cooled off. A moose has a lot of body heat and it will bloat and spoil in a hurry if it isn dressed out and iced down as soon as possible."
As for loading the animal onto a vehicle, Bob said snowmobile trailers that tip are ideal. To get a moose onto a pickup truck, a sheet of threequarter inch plywood serves as a loading ramp. "If there a banking high enough to back the truck up to, that helps a lot," he said. In either case, a winch must be anchored to move the animal.
People who rummage around in the outdoors, though, usually are masters at "making do," as we Mainers say. Accordingly, Bob explained how to load a moose onto a truck if a winch couldn be used: "It takes another truck to do it. Park it ahead of the pickup the moose is going into, run a rope from the moose over the cab and hook it onto the truck parked ahead. Then, drive it forward slowly, pulling the moose up the plywood ramp and into the pickup."
In regard to hunting moose from a canoe, he allowed that "adds a lot of luster to the hunt" but it also adds a lot of work. "A moose shot in a bog has to be quartered. There just no way an animal that big can be muscled around in mud and water and rolled into a canoe."
In giving advice to unguided hunters, Bob emphasizes preseason scouting. "Learning the road systems is important," he said. "Hunters can waste a lot of time out there getting turned around and coming to dead ends."
Regarding the six moosehunting zones, he predicts hunters with permits for the Central Zone will be on prime gunning grounds; particularly in the Ragmuff area, where the road gate was opened two years ago.
The last of the five moose we saw was a spike bull wallowing in a roadside bog. Although Bob figured the animal was about 1 1/2 years old and would weigh 450 pounds dressed out, give or take, it still looked as big as a Budweiser Clydesdale.相关的主题文章/Original Link：
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Segler wesentliche Komfortsteigerung ohne störende Emissionen.
Monatsgehalt (für ne Studentin). Also bleibt nur Mittelklasse und die fällt meist "bieder" oder auch langweilig aus.相关的主题文章/Original Link：
Audrey Hepburn und Brigitte Bardot und ist seitdem nie ganz aus der Mode verschwunden.
meine Haare in einen Pixieschnitt verwandeln will. Das heißt bei mir von eine bisschen länger als Schulterlang auf so kurz wie sie teilweiße die Jungs haben. Natürlich war es eine große Veränderung, doch ich hab es gebraucht um mich von meinem alten Leben und meinen Problemen zu trennen. Es war nicht ganz einfach mich dazu zu entscheiden,