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FAIRBANKS - Once again, the News-Miner has compiled its annual 60 Inch Club to salute Interior moose hunters who were fortunate to bag a big bull this fall. Here are their stories and photos.

—Compiled by outdoors editor Tim Mowry

Frank Mikesell

61 3/4 inches

Sept. 4

Wood River

Getting the moose was the easy part for Frank Mikesell.

Getting it out was another matter.

Mikesell and his hunting partner, Richard Bennett, were floating the Wood River south of Fairbanks in a raft.

After not seeing a single moose for the first three days and having to line their raft down a treacherous, boulder-filled section of river, the two hunters were getting “kind of frustrated,” Mikesell said.

When they stopped for a rest after lining the raft through what Mikesell said were Class IV and V rapids carved by last summer’s flood, Bennett took a nap while Mikesell hiked up a ridge about two miles from camp.

Once on top of the ridge, Mikesell heard two bulls grunting a short distance away. He couldn’t see the moose except for their antlers sticking up out of the brush. Mikesell started grunting, trying to get one of the moose to show themselves. Since he had an “any bull” permit, Mikesell didn’t have to worry about judging antler size. Nonetheless, he was pleasantly surprised when one of the bulls stuck its head out of the brush 50 yards away.

“I’ve seen a lot of big bulls; I knew that he was probably 60 inches,” said Mikesell, whose biggest moose was a 72-incher he shot about 20 years ago.

The moose was looking straight at Mikesell, with just its head sticking out of the brush.

“I knew I could him with my .300 Weatherby,” said the 46-year-old Mikesell, general manager for Denali Group moving companies. “I shot him right above his left eye. He just threw his head straight back and dropped like a bomb.”

It was 5 p.m. when Mikesell shot the moose, and he gutted the animal and cut off a front quarter before returning to camp in the dark.

With a two-mile pack, it took Mikesell and Bennett all the next day to get the rest of the meat and the antlers down to the river.

Once they loaded the moose onto their raft, the two hunters headed downstream to find the river clogged with “log jams and sweepers everywhere,” Mikesell said.

They ended up having to portage around two log jams in the same day, the second of which required them to carry all their gear and the raft about 500 yards before loading everything back in.

The going was so slow that Mikesell and Bennett, who had intended to float to Nenana, decided to call a local air service and fly out on a private airstrip about 70 river miles from their destination. Doing so required hauling all their gear about 500 yards from the river to the airstrip.

“It was horrible,” Mikesell said. “We didn’t make it very well at all in seven days. I’m not going to float another river for a long time, if ever, after this.”

Shannon Johnson

66 inches

Sept. 3

Tributary of Yukon River

Floating down Hess Creek in a square-stern Grumman canoe, Shannon Johnson and Art Armstrong came around a bend and found themselves face to face with a monster moose.

“We just kind of came around a bend and it was standing right there,” said Johnson, who was sitting in the front of the canoe. “It was only about 15 feet away. That’s how close we got. We couldn’t stop and he didn’t move.”

Johnson, who had never shot a moose before, did the only thing she could do.

“I got him in the lungs on the first shot,” the 35-year-old construction laborer said.

But that didn’t stop the moose, which had a massive antler spread of 66 inches.

“Once she hit him, he lunged back a little bit and jumped in the water right toward us,” said Art Armstrong, who was sitting in the back of the boat. “I thought, ‘Uh-oh, this isn’t good.’”

The moose “was coming right at us,” Johnson said. “It was like he wanted to take us on.”

Two more well-placed shots at point-blank range from Johnson’s 7mm put an end to the excitement, though, and that’s when the real fun began.

“Then he floated down the creek a little bit, got stuck in a log jam and it took us about three hours to get him out of there,” she said. “His horns got locked in the log jam under eight feet of water.”

That’s where Dave Armstrong, the second of three brothers Johnson was hunting with — the other was Jim — came in. Wearing neoprene chest waders, Dave Armstrong “went swimming,” Johnson said, and tied a rope around the moose’s antlers. Then he stayed in the water and used his feet to push on the antlers while the other three hunters pulled on the rope.

“It took us about three hours to get him undone with four of us pulling on ropes wrapped around trees,” said Johnson, who works with the three Armstrongs at their construction company in Ester. “We were fighting the current.”

Said Art Armstrong, “We worked our butts off.”

Don Lewis

61 3/4 inches

Sept. 6

Unit 20B

Don Lewis didn’t see the bull, but he could hear it.

“We got there the night before and kind of glassed the valley,” Lewis said. “We saw some cows and calves and I heard some grunting down there. I said, ‘There’s a bull in there somewhere.’”

The next morning, Lewis and hunting partner, Eric Watts, situated themselves in the same spot and waited two hours for the fog to lift.

“A couple of cow came out first, and I was looking at the cows when (Watts) said, ‘Bull! Bull!’” Lewis said. “I didn’t even need to raise my binoculars to see how big it was.”

The bull was about 400 yards away and Lewis dropped it with two shots from a Ruger .338.

Lewis, a 31-year-old F-16 mechanic at Eielson Air Force Base, killed a 48-inch bull in the same area last year.

Violet Huntington

62 1/2 inches

Sept. 12

Koyukuk River

It was 9:30 p.m. and the Huntington family was just about ready to call it quits for the day.

They were heading down the Koyukuk River in their boat and had just come around a bend when Donovan Huntington happened to glance over his shoulder in time to see a big bull moose walk out of the brush onto a sandbar.

“We were just kind of going back to the cabin to call it a day,” said Violet Huntington. “It came out after we went by with the boat. We went around a bend, and my son, Donovan, turned around and saw it.”

Her husband, Wayne, pulled the boat to shore and the bull didn’t make any attempt to escape, giving Violet time to take aim with her .308-caliber rifle. The bull was only 50 yards away.

Never having shot a moose before, Violet admitted to a slight case of “bull fever.”

“I was nervous but not that bad,” she said.

Her first shot knocked the moose down but it got back up, so Violet shot it a second time.

They gutted the moose that night but didn’t skin it, she said.

“Since it was big and we knew it was going to be tough, we let it sit overnight,” Violet said. “We kind of built a shade around it and put willows over it to keep it cooler.

“If you gut it and leave it in its skin overnight, it tenderizes the meat,” she said.

They returned the next day to skin and butcher the bull.

It was Violet’s first moose in almost 30 years of moose hunting. In the past, she’s always helped cut the moose up, but this year she drew a permit to hunt in the Koyukuk Controlled Use Area so she was the one who got to shoot it. The bull had an antler spread of 62 1/2 inches.

“I did good I think,” Violet said with a chuckle.

Ed Hartmann

60 1/2 inches

Sept. 14

Tributary of the Yukon River

Ed Hartmann had just finished picking some berries and was sitting on his Argo, sipping a cup of coffee, when he looked down the valley and saw an antler flash.

“I saw this one little flash in the sunlight, that’s what got my attention,” said Hartmann, a former priest.

Looking closer, Hartmann saw the biggest moose he’s ever seen.

“I said, ‘Holy crap! I gotta get down there,’” Hartmann said.

The 62-year-old headed down the hill to get level with the moose and set up for a long shot of about 390 yards, according to his rangefinder. Hartmann was shooting a Ruger M77 300 Winchester Magnum with a mounted Tasco scope and 200-grain Federal Premium high-energy Nosler partitioned bullets.

“I was set up with a good rest position and I aimed at the hump of the moose because it was so far away,” said Hartmann, who was hunting by himself. “I call it my Hail Mary shot.”

Hartmann unloaded five rounds at the bull and hit it three times, one of which pierced the moose’s heart.

“I really respect that .300 Winchester Magnum,” he said

Butchering the big bull, which had an antler spread of 60 1/2 inches, wasn’t easy by himself, Hartmann said. He shot the moose at noon Monday and it took him three days to get the bull cut up and hauled out to the Dalton Highway, a process that required three different trips with his Argo, as well as a trip back to Fairbanks to retrieve a chainsaw and more game bags.

“I had to get the antlers off because I couldn’t turn him over,” Hartmann said. “The backbone was so big I had to cut it in half.”

Despite all the hard work, Hartmann loved every minute of it.

“I’m surprised I can still do this kind of crap,” he said.

Rodney Vesper

63 inches

Alaska Range

Sept. 17

Rodney Vesper knew what he was getting into before he pulled the trigger, but he couldn’t help it.

“It was just one of those things,” Vesper said. “You see it and all you think about is hungry kids and a full freezer.”

So Vesper shot the big bull with a 63-inch antler spread, knowing full well the work involved in packing the meat more than 3 miles back to camp.

“It was bigger than I cared to carry that far,” Vesper said.

Fortunately, Vesper had some help: hunting companions Sal Okon, Mike Helmbrecht and Eric Helmbrecht. Even so, it took the four hunters the better part of three days to cut the moose up and pack it back to camp.

“I shot it Thursday at noon and the last load was carried out Saturday at 3 o’clock in the afternoon,” Vesper said.

The weather made the ordeal even more challenging.

“It was 40 degrees and raining the whole time,” Vesper said.

For Vesper, it was his second 60-inch-plus moose in four years. He shot a 67 1/4-inch bull in 2006.

Vesper was sitting on a hillside glassing when he saw this bull about a mile away accompanied by a handful of cows. He stalked to within about 400 yards of the bull and shot it once with a .375 Remington Ultra Mag.

“One hitter quitter through the neck,” Vesper said.

Ron Hill

60 inches

Sept. 10

Unit 20A

Ron Hill had just chased three black bears away from the tree stand he was sitting in when the big bull moose appeared.

“I was just sitting up there in my (tree) stand watching three bears,” he said. “I finally got them scared off and about a half hour later this old bull came out grunting.”

Hill answered the bull’s grunts with two shots from his .300-caliber Winchester Magnum from 200 yards. The bull’s antler spread measured exactly 60 inches, a mark Hill has been shooting for even though he had he hunts for meat.

“This year it was kind of neat to have the big one come out instead of 40 and 50 inchers,” said Hill, a 61-year-old plumbing and heating technician. “It’s the biggest one I’ve ever taken.”

Hill was hunting with his son, Russell, and longtime hunting partner Tommy Fields. They refer to their hunting area as “the valley of bulls.”

“That’s what we’ve called it for years,” Ronald Hill said. “We get bulls out of there every year. They just come to this big field up in the mountains.”

The area is 20 miles off the Richardson Highway. The hunters use four-wheelers and six-wheelers to get there.

“There’s some big ones running around up in there,” Ronald Hill said. “We seen one that’s over 70 inches, but we couldn’t get a shot at him.”

Cole Thomas

66 inches

Sept. 15

Beaver Creek

His father, Ken, and family friend, Bill Mahaffey, were taking a nap when 10-year-old Cole Thomas, who was standing watch, glimpsed the bull in some trees a little more than 200 yards away.

“I spotted him out of the corner of my eye because I could see his horns flashing in the trees,” Cole said.

The boy woke his father by throwing a “dirt ball” at him.

“He just about knocked me out,” Ken Thomas said of his wake-up call. “He said, ‘There’s a moose in there.’”

Then the waiting game started. The hunters couldn’t advance on the moose because the area they were in was littered with deadfall.

“If we would have tried to go after him we would have spooked him and he would have run off,” Cole said.

Ken assured Cole that the moose wasn’t going anywhere as long as they didn’t do anything to scare it off.

“We had to sit there for awhile,” Cole said.

It took about an hour and a half for the hunters to get in a position where Cole had a clean shot at the bull. When the moose walked into an opening, Ken instructed Cole to shoot.

“I was a little bit excited,” said Cole, a fifth-grader at Barnette Elementary School. “I’m not really tall enough so I couldn’t really see much. All I could see was his neck so I shot him in the neck three times.”

It was a 220-yard shot and Cole was shooting a .308 necked down to a 7mm, the same rifle he used to shoot a caribou from 400 yards when he was 8 years old.

“He shot him three times and put him on the ground,” said Ken, the proud dad.

Downing his first moose was a thrill for Cole.

“I got really excited then,” the boy said. “My dad was all happy because I shot the biggest moose in the family.”

Charles Gewin

62 1/8 inches

Sept. 13

Denali Highway

“Our hunting camp was in unit 13 about 20 miles from of the Denali Highway,” Gewin wrote in an e-mail about his hunt. “I had just gotten up from the supper table and heard some faint horn rattling, so I followed the sound for about 300 yards down the trail.

“The noise being made sounded like someone chopping down a tree,” he said. “This fellow stuck his head up above the brush and looked at me. He started moving sideways to me, and when he walked into an opening between two bushes, I fired. He went down behind one of the bushes.

“I cleared the empty case from the breach and when I looked up again, he was standing looking at me head-on,” Gewin, a 65-year-old retired fisheries biologist, wrote. “I fired again, and he whirled toward my right and went down behind some trees.

“As I approached him lying there, I could hear another moose going through the brush away from us and calling. I never was able to see the second animal.

“This big guy was laying dead at my feet and then the fun really began. My wife, Paula, and I got to bed about 1 a.m. and then we were hard at work the next morning finishing the job along with a couple of friends who volunteered to help.

“I was shooting a Browning .338 Winchester Magnum. It was a couple of days before we found a tape measure to get his width at 62 1/8 (inches).”

Curtis Petersen

61 1/2 inches

Sept. 14

Salmon River

Curits Petersen and hunting partner Jonas Carroll were heading to their moose hunting spot on the Salmon River when they almost bumped into the biggest moose Petersen has ever seen.

“He was just standing in the water when we came around a corner one morning,” Petersen said.

The two hunters cut the motor to the boat and Petersen shot the bull from about 250 yards with a .300-caliber Winchester magnum.

The wounded bull took off running into thick brush, forcing Petersen and Carroll to blood track it a quarter-mile off the river.

“He jumped up 10 or 15 feet in front of me,” Petersen said. “I was so surprised I missed the second shot but hit him with the third.”

With an antler spread of 61 1/2 inches, it was the biggest moose the 33-year-old Petersen has ever taken.

Hauling the moose a quarter mile through thick brush back to the river was a chore, he said.

“We had to run a chainsaw to get a trail through there,” said Petersen, a dry waller who spends winters working in Fairbanks and summers playing in Fort Yukon. “It was thick stuff.”

Aaron Swank

61 1/2 inches

Sept. 10

Unit 20C

Having gone three days without seeing a single bull moose and only a couple of cows, Aaron Swank and Kenny Hoop changed their strategy.

“We saw lots of evidence, but we didn’t see any bulls, so we started calling Tuesday night and all day Wednesday,” said Swank, a 31-year-old environmental engineer. “On Thursday morning we were heading to the spot we had been calling from and as we were coming around the corner we saw him in the water.

“The sun was coming up and we could see the light on his antlers,” Swank said.

The hunters were on a lake in a 15-foot skiff and the big bull was standing near the edge of the lake.

“The water was calm so we were able to motor up fairly close to him,” Swank said.

Hoop cut the motor and the two hunters were able to drift and paddle within about 150 yards of the bull to give Swank, who had never shot a moose before, a clean shot. He pulled the trigger on his 30.06 and watched in dismay when the bull didn’t flinch.

“I thought I completely missed,” Swank, a 31-year-old environmental engineer said. “He didn’t do anything. He turned and walked onto the shore and into the bushes.

“I was kind of disappointed because I thought I missed my chance,” he said.

But as Swank and hunting partner Kenny Hoop got closer to shore, they could hear the bull’s heavy breathing in the brush. It was obvious Swank had hit the bull. They found the bull lying down and were walking up to the wounded bull when it stood up and presented Swank with a broadside shot from 50 yards. A second shot from Swank’s 30.06 put the bull down for good.

“He fell like a ton of bricks,” Swank said.

Gary Isaacson

64 1/2 inches

Sept. 19

Interior Alaska

Going hunting with his father, Ike, for the first time was a memorable moment for Gary Isaacson. Shooting the biggest moose of his life made it unforgettable.

It was the day before the season ended when Isaacson and three hunting partners spied three bulls about three miles in the distance with spotting scopes.

“There were three of them and one for sure we knew was big enough and the other two we weren’t sure,” said Isaacson, referring to the fact he was hunting in an area with antler restrictions that required bulls to have at least a 50-inch antler spread or a minimum of four brow tines on one side.

The hunters used four-wheelers and track rig to maneuver within about a quarter mile of where they had seen the moose. They then shut off their machines and proceeded on foot.

“We kind of broke off in three different ways,” said Isaacson, a 45-year-old maintenance mechanic for the Alaska Housing Finance Corp.

Isaacson evidently chose the right direction. He was hiking along when the big bull came out of the brush and presented Isaacson with a perfect broadside shot from 150 yards. All it took was one, well-placed shot from Isaacson’s 7mm.

“I got him through the heart and lungs,” said Isaacson.

The bull had an antler spread of 64 1/2 inches with five brow tines on each side.

“It’s the biggest bull I’ve ever harvested,” Isaacson said. “My family will be enjoying moose for quite some time.”

Rodney Pangborn

61 1/8 inches

Sept. 15

North of Fairbanks

With only about one hour left before dark on the final day of the moose season in the area he was hunting, Rodney Pangborn decided to glass the mountainside they had been scouting one last time.

“One cow was feeding by herself and no other sign of moose was visible,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I let out one short cow call and this bull stood up from his perch on the spruce-infested mountainside a mile away.

“He waved his antlers at us as he took a few swaying steps towards us,” Pangborn wrote. “I told the other eager hunters that this bull had to come to the river edge before we could shoot it.

“I let out one more short cow call and this bull was coming to us,” he said. “After 10 minutes, the bull cut the distance to 400 yards.

“We decided we needed to move to the side or a broadside shot was not possible,” Pangborn said. “We moved, and five minutes later this beautiful animal was harvested with my new .270 right where I was calling from.”

The moose’s antler spread was 61 1/8 inches.

“He was very old, complete with grayish hair and almost no teeth left,” Pangborn wrote.

It was the second straight year that Pangborn has made the 60-Inch Club. Last year, he bagged a bull with a 61 3/8-inch spread in the same area.

In addition to the bull he shot, his wife, Terri, bagged her first moose, a 34-inch bull she shot from the tent in her bare feet, and hunting partner John Tranum brought home an 8-foot grizzly bear with a 28-inch skull. Another member of the hunting party, Ken Swank, came close to harvesting a 50-inch bull, but an Army helicopter flew over the bull and scared it as the hunters made their final stalk, Pangborn said.

Brian Gnoffo

62 inches

Sept. 7

Tanana River

Sitting in a tree stand, Brian Gnoffo glimpsed the tip of an antler palm about 800 yards away. Rather than trying to call the moose closer, Gnoffo went to the moose.

“I didn’t call; it was like 70 degrees and I didn’t think they were in rut yet,” he said.

Instead, Gnoffo gauged the wind and planned his stalk accordingly.

“I walked downwind a couple of miles and walked in on him,” Gnoffo said.

The 27-year-old electrician’s apprentice found where the bull had been bedded down and kept walking until the woods opened into a marshy area. He found the bull there, standing about 200 yards away. One shot from Gnoffo’s .338 ended the drama.

Gnoffo wasn’t aware how big the moose was until he walked up on it. The bull had an antler spread of 62 inches.

Danny “Boone” Slane

66 inches

Sept. 13

Interior Alaska

After passing up the opportunity to shoot five smaller bull moose the day before because he knew there was a big one hanging around, Danny “Boone” Slane’s patience finally paid off.

Slane first saw the big bull on Sept. 11, about a quarter of a mile away.

“I called him within a couple hundred yards and couldn’t get a shot at him,” he said.

Slane saw the same bull again the next day right before dark, but it was about a mile away.

“He stood there for 45 minutes in one spot,” said Slane, a 44-year-old mechanical insulator. “I tried to call him closer but he didn’t move.”

That was the same day Slane had the chance to shoot any one of five smaller bulls that he spotted.

“I knew that big one was in the area,” he said.

The next day, Slane had the good fortune to run into the bull early in the day from only about 70 yards.

“It was kind of a fluke deal,” Slane said of the encounter. “It was early in the morning, about 6:30, and I caught him coming up the creek. He’d come down off the mountain to get some water.”

Slane shot the bull twice with a 33.78-caliber Weatherby, once while it was standing still and the second shot when it was running. The bull’s antler spread was 66 inches, the second-biggest Slane has ever taken.

He shot a 72-inch bull in almost the exact same spot about 10 years ago, and his hunting partner, Mitch Osborne, bagged a 73-inch bull there two years ago.

“We’ve been hunting in the same area since 1984,” said Slane, declining to reveal his secret spot.

Randy Miller

Sept. 12

61 inches

North of Fairbanks

Randy Miller had just awoken from “a blueberry patch snooze,” as he put it, when his hunting partner, Scott Brandon, told him he thought he had heard some moose-type noises a short distance away. Miller walked over to investigate and heard the telltale sound of a bull thrashing willows with its antlers.

Miller tried to call the bull out into the open, but the bull, sensing something was amiss, stopped at the edge of the woods.

“I expected it to walk into the open, but instead it froze up at the timber’s edge with trees blocking a clear shot,” said Miller, a 52-year-old sheet metal worker. “I could see his head and his rear end, but there was a tree between me and him.

“He just stood there for a long time,” he said. “He wasn’t stupid. I waited what seemed like four days for that bull to take a step.”

As it turned out, the long wait probably was a good thing, Miller said.

“That gave me a chance to calm down,” he said. “I was pretty pumped up. I knew that bull was mine. I knew it was just a matter of time.”

The bull finally took a step and Miller downed it with one shot from his .338 at 200 yards. He shot the moose again as it was trying to get back up.

It was the biggest moose Miller has ever taken.

Aaron Soland

61 inches

Sept. 16

Tanana Flats

A lot of people may not like the noise they make, but bull moose evidently could care less about how loud airboats are.

At least that was Aaron Soland’s experience after shooting a 61-inch bull from his airboat this season. Soland was only 100 yards away when he shot the bull.

“I was just driving along in the airboat and there he laid in the grass with just his antlers showing,” Soland said of the big bull he shot in a swamp off the Tanana River in Game Management Unit 20A. “He didn’t even move. I don’t think he cared one bit.

“Finally he stood up and I shot him,” Soland said. “There was a cow there with him and the cow didn’t run off, either.”

Soland had a drawing permit to shoot any size bull moose and it just so happened the first moose he saw was a 61 incher.

“When I got up there I said, `Holy smokes, thing is big,’ ” Soland, a 52-year-old electrician, said.

Richard Charlie

65 inches

Sept. 14

Tok

Richard Charlie and Shawn Frank were perched on a hilltop looking for moose when a giant bull “just happened to walk out in the flats below.

“Were sitting there and it came out of the woods,” said the 37-year-old Charlie, who works for Alyeska Pipeline Co. at Pump Station 4. “We went down and called it within 30 yards with cow calls.

“He just stood there and watched us,” he said. “He was sitting there grunting at us.”

When the big bull turned toward the brush like it was going to leave, Charlie stepped out and said, “Hey moose.”

The bull stopped and turned back toward Charlie, who dropped it with one shot from his 7mm. The bull’s antlers measured 65 inches.

Tom Whittingham

61 inches

Sept. 5

Unit 20C

To hear Tom Whittingham tell it, there wasn’t much drama or excitement involved in bagging the 61-inch bull he shot this season.

“We were out walking and happened onto it,” the retired 61-year-old school teacher from North Pole said. “We were just fortunate enough to walk up on it.”

He and his hunting partners, son Dale, and friend Larry Hannesson, spotted the moose’s antlers in the trees about 400 yards away and stalked within 100 yards before Whittingham shot it three times with a Winchester Model 70 30.06 rifle that he has used since high school.