My Experience

Experience is a bit of a misnomer here, as I've yet to go moose hunting.  I am, however, currently involved in the research phase of booking a hunt in 2002 for moose.

I started this process by trying to figure out where to go and the pluses and the minuses of each area.  While moose may be hunted in the lower 48, the opportunities are somewhat limited. That being the case, I quickly focused my research north to Alaska and Canada.  Alaska, without a doubt, offers the largest moose in North America and plenty of opportunities to harvest one.  It is, however, pretty expensive based on what I've found out so far.  In my research, I stumbled on to Newfoundland, and I have to be honest with you, prior to this effort, I knew absolutely nothing about Newfoundland's hunting opportunities.

It turns out that Newfoundland appears to be just what I'm looking for.  While I would love to shoot a trophy moose, I'm really more interested in learning a little bit about moose hunting, seeing a few, and hopefully getting a shooting opportunity,  this being my first experience with moose.  Newfoundland has the highest success rate for moose of any place I've found doing my research to date.  Province wide, the success rate of 85% seems to be the number with individual outfitters talking 98%.  Those kinds of numbers along with an estimated population of 120,000 - 150,000 and an annual harvest of 30,000 got my attention. You may well find individual outfitters elsewhere who experience these success rates, but no other state or province has an average this high. 

Now before you get too excited, you should be aware that these moose a not as large as the western brethren.  With 50+ racks being taken occasionally and the norm being down in low 40s for a good one.  Quite a change from those Alaskan monsters at 70+.  But if you just want to get your feet wet moose hunting, read on as I bring my proposed hunt in Newfoundland to fruition.

It seems that one of the really neat things about this hunt is that for few more dollars, you can make it into a multi-species hunt very easily.  Most of the outfitters offer combo hunts for moose, woodland caribou, and black bear, with a reasonable opportunity to take all three. All for less money than you would have to spend for just a moose hunt in western Canada or Alaska.  This is what really convinced me that this was the next hunt I wanted to take and the place I wanted to go.  From what I've found thus far, it appears that the going rate is in the $4500 - $5000 range for a moose/caribou combo and while I'd like to have a bear skin rug, I'm not real fired up about having to eat a bear to get one.

Finding an Outfitter

Now that I've pretty much decided that Newfoundland is where I'm going, I hit the web looking for all the outfitters I could find.  The results of this search were then put into a database so I could automate the process as much as possible.  It also allows the creation of this page of Newfoundland Outfitters  .  It includes every outfitter that I've been able to locate with the exception of a few that appeared to be outfitting as a very minor sideline.  This will continue to be updated  as I continue my research to flesh out more details and reference checks. One other major difference between package costs that you should note is that some include licenses and taxes and some do not.  Licenses for moose and caribou run over $1000, and taxes are 7.5%.

At this point, I generated E-Mails requesting information packages including rates, what was included and not included, and references both successful and unsuccessful, to about a dozen outfitters based on a database query.  Surprisingly, after 3 days only about half have replied by E-Mail. Who knows, maybe I'll just receive snail mail from the others, but it surprised me that they didn't at least acknowledge receipt of the request.

I also posted a request for information about outfitters on several of the larger hunting forums.  I received numerous responses from the forums, 2 brokers, 3 outfitters, and several hunters.  I have been in correspondence with the outfitters and one of the the brokers.

Stay tuned, as I continue the process.