Hunting in America

I just returned from one of the most remarkable hunting trips of my life! I had the awesome pleasure of hunting with my father Sal and my uncle Jim's guides of over 26 years. My uncle actually hunted longer with Bernie the senior guide from back into the 50's and remained friends from then on. Bernie's son Donny continued the tradition and started guiding as well for them since 1980 or so. Donny has a beautiful camp on lake Harvey. We hunted mostly from there with miles and miles of logging roads and choppings. We did venture by boat to Bernies original camp for a day and a half of hunting. Access to this camp is only available by boat or snow mobile. It took us about an hour and 40 minutes by boat to get there. We had to lift the boat over various beaver dams to continue through the narrow stream that takes you through gorgeous country of 100 foot tall evergreen trees, meadows and heaths all the while searching for whitetail and moose. Because of the harsh winter with 6 foot snow falls, their deer population was down 30% to only 60,000 for the providence of New Brunswick. Moose were actually more plentiful according to the guides. I told them I have never seen a moose in the wild and they worked so hard to show me one. Not until we were packed up and leaving for good through the miles of log roads to get to the main road did we see spot a moose. I doubted myself when I saw one and asked cousin Jim for confirmation. Then we realized there were 3!!!. A bull, cow and calf all together. Shortly afterwards, a truck pulled up wondered what we were looking at. They got out and pulled their rifle out. Never said a word to us and started looking for the moose. In canada, the native indians have no laws on hunting and can shoot anything. We think they were going to Jack these moose. Fortunately the moose left and they didn't get a shot. We left so we don't know for sure. They are an amazing majestic animals to see. Our thoughts are to change to moose hunting for the future and are currently looking into it with our guides.