THIS HAPPENED NOVEMBER 1976

I had decided to take a long Thanksgiving weekend and go see my mom. I told Lorraine that I was going to go to my Mom's and go deer hunting, she didn't want to go and she had to work Friday. I got to my mom's Wednesday evening and went to bed early. I wanted to be in the woods with the first lights of the day. Thursday Thanksgiving Day. I am up early, mom has bacon, eggs, fried potatoes and juice, a regular Hunters breakfast with lots of hot coffee. I look outside a see there is about 4 inches of snow on the ground and it is still snowing. I tell my mom where I'm going to be hunting and head out. I start walking down this old woods road to see if anything has crossed it on the fresh snow. If I see a deer track it will be a fresh one. I am walking slowly looking through the woods to see if any thing is looking at me. It is not long and I see a fresh track in the snow, if I had been there a little sooner I would have seen it. I stand looking where the deer had gone and I see the deer off in the distance. He was about the biggest deer that I had ever seen. He had big antlers on it, I think he weighed about 250lbs. I brought up my 30-06 Remington bolt action rifle and look through the sites just in time to see him take a jump deep into the woods. I took a look at my watch and it was 7:30, still early in the morning. I start after him listening and looking. I followed his track and could see he had been stopping and looking to see if I was still on his track. I told myself that I had better be looking more closely. I keep on the track and he went into the big mountains and right up the side of a hardwood forest. The trees were real big and I could see for a long distance in the forest. It was hard to climb the sloop to get to the top of the mountain. It seemed like a long time before I got to the top. After I had reached the top I could see where he had stood to watch me climb to the top. I stood where he had stood for about 15 minutes looking here and there and taking a rest a the same time. While I am here resting and looking it starts to snow real hard. I decide that I had better get going before the snow covers the tracks. I haven't gone more than 15 minutes and I see where they had been a moose sleeping. I new it was a moose because the bed was so big and the droppings were big moose droppings. As I am looking and study the area, it begins to snow harder and the wind picks up blows the snow vertically. I am ready to give up and go back to my mom's home when I see these two big ears moving in the trees about 150 yards from me. It didn't take me long to decide that it was a moose. I am thinking to myself that big buck ran through thoughts moose just to slow me down. I think to myself, it is snowing hard and it is Thanksgiving day. Why should they be anybody up where I am on a day like this. It felt like I was there for about a 1/2 hr. Should I take a shot at it? I could shot it from here an go to the house and call my friends to help me get it out at night. There is only two more hunting days left and no one would be hunting where I was. There was no moose season that year and if there was it would of been in September. So my plan was to shoot and walk away so no one would be following my tracks to the moose. So if I didn't walk next to the moose no one would know that I had shot it. I grab a small tree and rest my rifle on my hand, this would make it easier to get a good shot. I put my site on the moose and look around to see if anyone is around. Bang my rifle went and the moose that I had my sites on was not there anymore. I few seconds wet by and I see the moose walking down toward me and I fired again. Down it went, blood shooting out of his neck all over the snow. I knew I had made a kill so I picked up my spent bullets and went to the house. Mom said did you see anything, she new something was up from just the way I was acting. I said oh-yes I see a big buck early this morning and followed it to the top of Round mountain. I told her that he had run right into where a moose had been sleeping. She said did you see the moose, I said yes I saw it and I killed it. She said oh no how are you going to get it with out getting caught. I said well I am going to call my friends Royden and Don, they will come up tonight and help me. Mom started to mumble and asked what do you want for dinner? I said a little of everything and sat down to eat. Mom said your going to get caught. I said no I am not we will get it out, hey people kill people and get away with it and no one knows this moose is dead. After dinner I called my friend Royden and told him I had a big one down in the woods and I need help getting it out. He said he would get Don and they would be up after dark. Well it was late before they had gotten to my mom's, around 6 p.m. I had gotten the knives sharpen and ready and put in a pack with a meat saw, flashlight and a rope. We followed my track back into the woods to where I had made the kill. I motioned for one to circle from the left and the other to circle from the right and I would say on my track. If any one sees a track next to the moose we would not touch it and go back to the house. Royden went to the right and Don to the left, Don said here is the moose here and it is clean. At the same time Royden said you got a moose over there? Don said yes she is right here. Royden said well there is one here too. Wayne how many did you shoot they asked? I said well I shot one. Don said how many time did you shoot, I said twice. Well it was evident that I had shot two. I told them that I fired ones and a few seconds latter I see it a shoot again. We new that it was another moose because there was two dead moose. The one that Royden came on was a calf. The one Don found was a mother moose and a big one. We all gathered around the mother or the cow moose. Don said what do we do now? Well I said lets take the cow moose first. They had brought there knives and I took mine out and started to cut the back legs off this animal while they helped hold it for me. I had cut up a lot of animals being brought up on a farm. So it did not take a long time and I had the back  quarters and the loans off and de boned. Don put the meat in the pack and it was heavy. We went to the calf and started on it but this time I just cut the legs off and we tied the rope to them and we was going to drag it through the snow. Well we were ready to leave and it had started to snow real hard again like it had when I had shot them. We said that was good because it would cover all the blood we had made in the woods. It took us about 4 hours before we got it out of the woods because it was a very heavy load. We loaded Royden's car up and they asked what are we going to do with the meat? I said take it to my house, put it in the bathtub and wash the blood off it. The next day my brother came to my mom's and we went back into the woods and got more meat that he wanted. He said he did not know how we were able to get all the meat that we did in one trip. That night mom and I went to my house and I put the meat in the refrigerator and went to bed. The next morning we all gathered and cut it into stakes and de-vide it up. Well my brother got what he wanted for one and I took my share equal with Don's and Royden's. They took some off there share and gave some to my mom for helping with the packaging. Mom said what are you going to do with the bones, I took them to the fireplace and burned them. 4 families had meat all that winter and a good time was had and no one got caught. 

Sunday April 7 1996 by Wayne Paul Andrews