Moose hunting : 5 secrets

02 August 2024

Oh yeah … hunting. A bunch of friends alone in the woods. Looking for animals all day long. Over a beer in the evening at the cabin. Man versus Nature. Who will win?

This year, it’s you who will win because every hunter in your group will bring back a moose with him. With the tips you are going to read in this article, if you don’t already use them, you’re guaranteed to increase your chances to find and shoot your moose.

What you have to understand is that a moose is not a great thinker. It’s only an animal and it acts accordingly to its primal instincts, who answer to their environment. If you want to attract or approach a moose, you will have to fool his senses. 

How to fool a moose’s smell — grab them by the pecker

The first of our secrets for moose hunting. You can find hundreds of different commercial products to help you lure a moose. Flasks of pheromones, fake urine and other sexual lures. A lot of companies ferociously compete with each other so you can spend tens or hundreds of dollars on their products. They promise you great results, and they are probably right, but what they offer is artificial substances that emulate what Nature already offers to hunters.

Ideally, you want to use the natural and original substances. Between copy and original, the latter will always be better. Real urine, full of pheromones that came from real moose glands will always be better … liquid gold!

But there are to main obstacles separating you from using real urine. The first and major one is that you need to already have killed a moose before using it to lure another one. You cannot ask a moose to pee in a little container like if you were a nurse in an old folk’s home. The urine has to be collected inside the dead animal and if you never killed a moose before, that’s impossible.

The second obstacle is that you have to collect the urine inside the bladder and not outside of it because the urine will blacken when it gets in contact with the air. The pheromones will also dissolve slowly in the air. No problem, you’re saying to yourself, I’ll just salvage the urine from the bladder once I eviscerate and clean the moose.

Problem is, animals, just like humans, will empty themselves from all their urine and feces as they are dying. So … you cannot retrieve the urine that comes out of the penis because it won’t be good in a couple of minutes and you cannot take it from the bladder because it will be empty.

Solution? Grab’em by the pecker.

The trick is to grab the penis firmly as soon as possible, before the moose dies for good and releases its liquid gold on the ground. The urine should go back up to the bladder and you will be able to cut it with a knife. You will finally have to freeze it inside a plastic bag until next year.

This is Simon Lemay’s trick, from the outfitter Le Chasseur. You can watch the video clip just underneath, produced by the magazine Sentiers Chasse-Pêche, in which he explains in depth his technique.

Careful, the video is kind of gory so if you don’t like this stuff keep away! Also, it’s in French.

How to fool a moose by his taste — give them the total care

The second of our secrets for moose hunting.The second trick is very simple and easy. It has been found by Benoit Cloutier of www.chevreuil.net. In order to save tens or hundreds of dollars in the confection of your saline, he invites you to shop in stores dedicated to farmers and not to hunters.

The majority of the products sold for hunters are commercialized as if they were drugs for animals. You will be able to bring back your moose every day to your saline with our new formula. Like a drug addict!

The secret ingredient of Benoit’s saline? Mineral supplements that are designed for milking cows.

Sounds ridiculous? Think again! According to recent studies by local biologists, mineral supplements improve the nutritional quality and efficiency of the salt you put in your salines and mudflats.

Benoit suggests that you buy P-10 supplements that are sold in any branches of the Coop Federee that are located almost everywhere in Quebec. It’s effective, it works well and the results are, according to Benoit, satisfying.

You can also find, in these stores, your salt and sulfur, again, for a smaller price.

And above all, you are improving the health of your moose. Just like the Japanese companies who massage their beefs before killing them.

How to fool a moose’s hearing — the magical moose call

The third of our secrets for moose hunting.The “Maheu” is a well-tried moose call and if you don’t already use it, you are missing something. This call has an exceptional guaranty.

Louis Turbide, editor-in-chief of the magazine Sentiers Chasse-Pêche brought back 5 moose the first six times (years) he tried the call. He claims that in one normal hunting week, he can get as much as 20 to 25 answers by different moose while only using the Maheu.

The Maheu is a call that seeks very far and broad around the hunter, even in deep covered forest. It’s a call that automatically wakes up moose. As soon as they hear it, they know that a female is in heat.

Because the Maheu is the call that the cow makes when she really wants to mate, when she is at the peak of her ovulation. It is not a human invention; it is a real moose sound.

Not a single moose can resist to it: big male, small male and even the ones that are already coupled.

Look at the video clip below if you want the full explanations if you ever want to learn that call. The video is in french.

How to fool a moose’s sight — the masquerade ball

The fourth of our secrets for moose hunting.If you want to hunt a moose, you have to become a moose. So, why not dress up as a moose?

The technique has been developed by Jason Tremblay-Morneau of the magazine Sentiers Chasse-Pêche. The assumption behind his technique is that when the moose sees the hunter, he will not use his other senses to identify the hunter, like his hearing and smell. And because the moose’s hearing and smell are one of his two best senses and his sight being his worst, it becomes easier to fool the moose by the means of his sight.

So the goal is to be seen by the moose. But you have to be sure to be always on the move so that the moose does not see you as a predator.

As for the costume, you only need to wear a hat that you attached a moose rack on. It can be a very simple and ugly homemade rack. You then need to put your arms in the air as to imitate a bigger rack. Don’t forget to wear dark clothes and hide your silhouette behind trees. After that, you only need to learn to behave like one of their own and you’re ready to go. Happy masquerade!

Here is the link to a video clip from Jason Tremblay-Morneau explaining how his technique works. And it really works! No kidding! You will see at the end of the video a real hunting situation where his technique is successfully used to kill a moose.

How to find the moose on your territory  — IQHO maps

The last of our secrets for moose hunting. The quality index of moose habitat maps (IQHO) is a real revolution in moose hunting in Quebec. You can call your moose like a real cow in heat, wear the most realistic moose costume ever made and maintain healthy salines surrounded by real moose urine, but if you’re not in the right spot, nothing will ever happen.

Because moose don’t just randomly wander around a given territory. They’re going to hang around the habitat that has the most resources available to satisfy their fundamental needs: eating and sleeping (a lot of food!).

In order to find those habitats, Michel Breton, moose hunting guide, trainer and writer, has created a moose hunting map that gives a quality rating to all the small sectors of your hunting territory. Before the invention of this map, hunters had to order forestry maps from the Ministere des Ressources Naturelles and analyze them at home before going out to their hunting territory. Problem was, those forestry maps are designed for engineers and technicians and not for the general public. Analyzing their very long alphanumerical codes could take up to a whole day of your precious time. But not anymore!

After a couple years of existence, Michel Breton can now confirm that more than 8 times out of 10, hunters will find interesting moose activity signs where the map pointed out.

How to read them

The darker the colour is, the more chances you have to find action. The darker the colour is, the more points the zone has compared to other adjacent zones. The points are given according to the presence of different elements that help create a good moose habitat.

1. logged site, natural disturbance, mature hardwood and mixed wood forest
2. type of species, density and height of the stands, the age of the forest, the maturity of stands whether disturbed or not, and the type of slope

IQHO maps are personalized and centred on your territory. They include the data for public and private land. The maps are made using the most recent data from the Ministere des Ressources Naturelles du Quebec: tree species and logging roads.

Each map is printed on a large very large sheet of paper and can afterwards be installed inside your Garmin GPS.

Do not hesitate, order the IQHO map of your hunting territory as soon as possible and increase your chances to kill a moose this year.

You can order your IQHO map by calling or visiting the store Aux Quatre Points Cardinaux, official distributor of the IQHO maps.