Editor’s Note: Mossy Oak pros Pat Reeve and his wife Nicole have hosted “Driven with Pat and Nicole,” a TV show on the Outdoor Channel for the past 10 seasons. The biggest news from Pat and Nicole is that during the 2014-2015 season Nicole was with child.
Nicole and I had a lot of great hunting opportunities in 2014, and several hunts really stood out in my mind. One of our most-memorable hunts was in Alberta, Canada, with Glenn Brown and Blue Bronna Outfitters. We were hunting in the mountains - basically the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The terrain was really steep like that you’d find when you were hunting sheep.But on this hunt, we were hoping to take Shiras moose from this area where some of the biggest Shiras moose in the world live. Before the hunt, Glynn sent me pictures of big moose that had been taken in the area we were to hunt. I’d taken moose before but not a Shiras moose. So, I was very excited about trying to take a big Shiras moose with my bow.
We spent 2 weeks hunting every day trying to find a big moose I could harvest. The evening before I finally took my moose, we were riding on horseback through beautiful aspen forests and snow-capped mountains. We stopped ever so often and called. We had started that day high in the mountains, and we were riding back down toward the valley. We spotted a high meadow a little before dark and started calling, and a bull answered. We had been hunting for several days and hadn’t seen or heard a bull. Once the bull called back, we were totally shocked. We were really getting excited, because the bull was calling and coming closer and closer. Then the bull took a real bad case of lockjaw. He had to come by the spot where we had tied the horses. The horses might have spooked him, or he perhaps he had winded us. But for some reason, my moose of a lifetime vanished. When we finally decided the moose wasn’t going to come in, we made a game plan to ride back to this same area early in the morning before first light.
When we returned to this region the next morning before daylight, we tied the horses in a different place. When we started calling, the bull called back. After we’d been calling the bull for about 10 minutes, we could hear him grunting and coming toward us. I was really surprised at how fast the moose got to us from several hundred yards away. Then when I saw some trees moving, I knew I might get a shot. I could hear the moose grunting. When I spotted him, he looked like a giant 18-wheeler coming through the woods. Instead of coming out into the open meadow, the bull acted more like a weary whitetail and remained just inside the wood line. So, we repositioned and got to a spot where I thought the bull probably would step into my lap before I shot.
As the moose was coming to us, Nicole got good full frame footage over my shoulder. When he got to within 15 yards, he turned to walk out into the meadow, giving me a broadside shot. I came to full draw with my bow. I waited until he moved his leg forward, and I knew I had a clean shot. The moose stopped and looked at me, and I released the arrow. I was using the new Muzzy Trocar 100 grain broadhead. The bull only went 50 yards and fell over
